By Willy Chowoo
Willy Chowoo investigates what the people and Uganda Wild Life Authority consider the ‘Magic Bullet’ to straying Elephants in the Nwoya district that for decades has become a menace to crop production, especially to the community that borders Murchison Conservation areas.
The decade wait is over. “This is like the second coming of the Messiah, the saviour”. The excited farmers in Nwoya narrate, as they welcome the electric fence to salvage them from the burden of intrusive elephants.
On their faces, there is a sign of excitement and hope; the small-scale farmers feel now a sense of relief following the government response to fence 31 km of borderline with Murchison Falls Conversation Areas (MFCA) to stop the intrusive elephants from destroying their crops.
Murchison Falls Conservation Area covers 3, 893km2 and is Uganda’s largest protected area. The park alone is 3840 sq. km. It lies at the northern end of the Albertine Rift Valley, where the bulky Bunyoro escarpment merges into the vast plains of the Acholi land.
Just a few weeks into the commencement of the project, the smallholder farmers described the move as an ideal option that would increase crop production as they expected the continued loss of their lives and crops every year at the hands of straying elephants to come to an end.
“We as farmers here had abandoned farming because our crops have been turned into wildlife feeds, this is a big relief, this is like the second coming of Messiah, we have hope that many farmers shall have better yields at the end “, Ojok David, a rice farmer in Lagazi cell, Purongo Town Council and local leader in the area said.
Ojok, the LCI chairperson of Lagazi cell says the delay to fence the area has made the community wild on leaders accusing them of doing nothing to protect them against the intrusive elephants.
According to the 2022 Elephant Conservation Report by the African Wildlife Foundation, the number of elephants at Murchison Falls National Park, and the elephant population has increased to 2,726 over the past years, the greatest number of elephants in Uganda and Africa.
However, the unforgettable damage caused- the loss of lives, injuries, destruction of crops, and displacement of the locals by the intrusive elephants is something that the electric fencing by Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) is yet to change.
The community neighbouring the MFCA over the past decades has registered several setbacks in crop production as straying elephants usually escape from the national park to invade community gardens. They (elephants) have turned their gardens into their second homes, and they have killed several people, the latest being Opiyo Walter Kitara-38, who was killed on his way home in the early month of March 2024.
To stop the intrusion, UWA in mid-March 2024 launched a four-month electric fencing exercise in Purongo Town Council, in Nwoya district. This is a continuation of a multi-billion-dollar project launched early in 2020.
The Murchison Falls Conservation Area (MFCA) Chief Warden and Conservation Manager Mr. Kizza Fredrick said the exercise started in March this year with bush clearing from Tangi Ward as they planned to connect other places that have already been fenced and shall run until June 2024.
“We shall show elephants no opportunity to cross, our target is to put 20 km now and we shall later then cover that stretch of about 10 km connecting to the neigbhouring sub-county of Anaka at Lolim and Agung areas, these are the areas we shall be moving to because we know the elephants have been disturbing people there”, Kizza adds.
The initiative is expected to benefit over 2000 small-scale farmers who had initially abandoned farming in Purongo Town Council. The area with the most fertile land and has even attracted many farmers to farm including the non-residents who have hired farmlands in the area to do commercial agriculture.
The project has given ‘tears of joy’ to the affected communities, as more than 200 members of the community sprung up to volunteer as the causal labourers for erecting the fence as a result of exasperation due to the delay of the project.
40-year-old Obedi James is a farmer from Kitgum District, but he is one of the victims of elephant intrusion in the area. Over the last two years, he hired 5 acres of farmlands at Lagazi cell at the cost of UGX 1,000,000, but he lost all his crops to the elephants.
However, this has not stopped him from participating actively in volunteering to help set up the electric fence. He is part of the community who are working with UWA to do bush clearing at the initial stage of the exercise.
“This is a very good initiative, we are here working with the anger because we have lost our crops and our people to the elephants, we want to help UWA set up this fence quickly to enable us to resume farming”, Obedi notes. He adds that much as the damage by the elephant is difficult to forget but with the electric fence in place, they shall be able to improve on their production.
To Ajok Christine-61, a resident of Lyec Cam village (a village whose name was derived from the activities of the elephants in the village), Lyec Cam loosely can be translated as ‘Let the elephants eat them’; she sees this as an opportunity to increase crop production. She lost her 5 acres of rice and millet to elephants last year.
“We are gathered here as women, young people, and men to work hard to stop elephants from destroying our crops because we know that this shall help us plant more crops without guarding them, and at the same time, we shall be able to sleep in our houses with peace.”, Ajok narrates.
Oringa James Opiro is a local leader in Purongo Town Council representing the people of Tangi Ward, one of the most hit places in the town council, and also a local farmer in the area who describes the initiative as a saviour to the people of Purongo.
“Displaced people are ready to return to their villages, some have started repairing their houses, we are very happy that people who were displaced shall be able to return, this is a Saviour, we shall now be able to plant Bananas and Maize which people had abandoned”, excited Opiro notes.
With the support of the community, UWA was able to bush-clear 13 km within the first week of the start of the project. “We are excited and working cardinally with the community, they are having a lot of hope because the fence is theirs, it is really a magical power as they think the fence is theirs and that is okay”, adds Kizza MFCA Conservation Manager.
How it all started:
The exercise comes barely three months after The Elephant News Publication shared the agony of the straying elephants on this site which has become a death trap and source of food insecurity to over 38,000 small-scale farmers in Nwoya district. Mr. Okot Ben, the chairperson of Purongo town council says the project shall bail out smallholder farmers who are greatly affected by the activities of the intrusive elephants and some were displaced up to the town council.
Mr. Okot believes that the project has come at the right time, and “the work is moving on very fast, we believe those that have abandoned farming in the areas are now able to go back”.
Farmers in the district had already derived a costly local mechanism to protect their gardens by mounting makeshifts with solar-powered light on top of them to help guard their gardens at night. The makeshifts are mounted in the middle of their gardens as shelters to enable them to guard their gardens from the merciless straying elephants.
Additionally, the farmers bang metals, blow vuvuzela, burn woods as smoke scares the elephants from approaching their crops.
The electric fencing is one of many initiatives introduced by UWA to stop the problem animals from crossing into community land, other initiatives which have not yielded efforts to stop the elephants from invading the community gardens are digging trenches, beekeeping, planting and growing red pepper, rescue and translocation of animals.
Early in 2019, during the launch of the multi-billion electric fence project, Uganda Wildlife Authority started with the fencing of a 30 km low-voltage electric fence in the major human-wildlife conflict hotspots in Nwoya district.
The cost of fencing 145kms:
Nwoya district shares a total of 110 km of the borderline with Uganda’s biggest National Park and the Conversation Area – Murchison Falls which are bordered by six sub-counties of Anaka, Purongo, Purongo Town Council, Got Apwoyo, and Lii respectively from Acholi sub-region. And these are the most affected sub-counties affected by the wildlife intrusion.
Uganda Wildlife Authority by 2021 had only fenced 23 km of 30 km of the project area in Got Apwoyo Sub County, but the wooden poles have become a diet for the mobile termites. To avoid this loss, the Wildlife Authority has introduced now synthetic or concrete poles to replace the wooden poles which are prone to rotting as well.
The four-month exercise shall have the cells of Lagazi, Patira West, Lyec cam, Koyo, and Pabit East all in Purongo Town Council fenced. Purongo is one of the most hit administrative units in Nwoya district which had not benefited from such intervention, but they will become the first beneficiary of the electric fencing with synthetic poles.
The km being fenced shall be 13 km in Tangi Ward, connecting to the old site to the west and 7kms is on the eastern side at Kibaar Ward, all in Purongo Town Council.
However, this is not even half of what is supposed to be fenced. UWA says the total area to be fenced is 145 km in the Murchison Falls Conservation Area. But they have more than 100 km to reach this milestone. “We are supposed to fence 145 km in MFCA, and we have so far done 44 km”, adds Mr. Hangi Bashir, Communications Manager with UWA.
This means the Authority will have 101 km to be fenced and this shall be reduced further to 81 km after they complete the current exercise in four months.
The cost of fencing a kilometer of borderline with electric fence according to Bashir is estimated to be between UGX 55 to 60 Million shillings depending on the terrain.
This would mean that to fence 145 km at MFCA, requires between UGX 7,975 to 8.7 billion shillings.
The cost of the current project to fence 20 km in Purongo Town Council will now be between UGX 1.1 to 1.2 billion shillings.
Therefore, to complete the remaining 81 km, the government needs to provide between UGX 4.455 to 4.86 billion which shall take a longer time unless they increase budget allocation to the Tourism development in the country.
Government in the financial year 2023/2024 allocated only UGX 256.7 billion shillings to Tourism Development out of the total budget of UGX 52,736.8 trillion shilling representing only 0.5 % of the total budget approved, yet tourism is one of the largest sectors that accounts for 3.64 percent of the Gross Domestic Product GDP in terms of the direct contribution and also directly employing close to 1.6 million people in the country.
However, the low pace of fencing the boundaries of the parks with the community has been a result of the Uganda government relying heavily on the funding from World Bank.
In the financial year 2023/2024, it is the first time the government of Uganda has allocated funding to electric fencing using her own money from the local revenues generated.
Nwoya East Member of Parliament and member of the parliamentary committee of Tourism, wildlife and Antiques, Okello Charles Geoffrey said they escalated the process last year much as the amount located was too small.
“In the current budgeting process (2024/2025), we are targeting UGX 200 billion shilling as per the ministerial policy statement presented to us, we have been told that the cost of fencing a kilometer has increased, and we are trying to approve at worst UGX 203 billion shillings”, he adds.
Hon Okello believes that once this money is distributed well, it will help to fence an additional 30 km in Nwoya district.
Electric fences are expensive to install and maintain and most community fence projects in Africa are funded externally or by corporations.
An electric fence is a barrier that uses electric shocks to deter people or other animals from crossing a boundary. The voltage of the shock may have effects ranging from discomfort to death.
However, the ones being used in the management of the problem animals at the national parks are those with a low voltage that on touch, causes pain, and harmless electric shock discouraging further contact and preventing them from crossing the boundary.
It is believed that electric fences are cheaper than conventional fences and, because of this; they are being used increasingly to manage mammals. Kenya and South Africa are the countries that are using electric fences to stop straying animals.
Electrical experts say electric fences create an electric circuit between two or more conductive posts and when an animal touches the fence, the circuit is interrupted, and a pulse of electricity is sent through the fence.
Mr. Odoki Richard, an Electrical Circuit expert and the Director of Multitech Electrical Ltd Company in Gulu City says making constant exposure to electric shock, can’t make you get used to it whether it is an animal or human being, hence, it is a good remedy to stop the elephants.
Mr. Odoki notes that the elephants are very sensitive to the environment, “for example, like the bare wires carrying electricity, they may not come into contact with it, they detect them before touching it, they divert their movements, they don’t expose themselves to the wires”.
The Expert adds that the airwaves near the fence present a different atmosphere that can signal danger to animals before they come into contact with it.
Electric fencing to reduce Human-wildlife Conflict.
Electric fences are used in national parks as a measure to mitigate human-wildlife conflicts, especially with elephants. They are designed to prevent elephants from raiding farms and causing damage or harm. It has proven to be effective where they have been used like in Kenya and South Africa.
They are increasingly being used also to reduce crop damage by elephants. The fences act as physical as well as psychological barriers to separate elephants from settled areas. In Kenya, more than 1200 km of electric fencing has been installed to protect farmlands from elephants and an additional 1300 km of fencing is planned.
In Nwoya district where the fence has been installed, the electric fence has proven effective, and the number of elephants crossing into community land from the area where the fence has been installed drastically reduced. It has also helped to reduce human-wildlife conflict, especially with the elephants.
Human–implant conflict is widespread in most elephant range areas and has intensified where elephants and humans are in close contact. This has led to negative interactions between humans and elephants as a result of the continued crop-raiding, deaths, and injuries to humans and livestock.
Available data from UWA indicates that between 2009 and 2018 over 17,000 Human-Wildlife Conflicts incidents were reported around UWA protected areas in Uganda. And MFCA contributed to 7342 (43.2%) of the cases. This means MFCA has the biggest number of Human-wildlife Conflicts in the conservation areas in Uganda.
While incidents of Human-Wildlife Conflicts occurring entirely outside UWA-protected areas have been reported, the data available is not comprehensive because of the limited presence of UWA staff in these areas.
Electric fences registering setbacks:
With smiles on the faces of the local communities in the project areas still hot and unending, the mobile termites have turned the wooden poles into their diet. Without the exact number of wooden poles destroyed by the termites within the 44 kms not yet established, the magnitude of the destruction looks so enormous.
The park authority, however, has established a new plan to replace the wooden poles that are destroyed with well-treated and improved quality poles in order not to water down their gains.
The MFCA Chief Warden and Conservation Manager Kizza said they are going to use poles that can be recycled which are not eaten by the termites.
“We are making sure that in the areas where we are going to use wooden poles, we intensify the treatment and we are also improving on the size of the poles which are not eaten by the termites, Kizza adds. He notes that “Some of the areas where we are going to work, we shall improve from wooden to polythene poles and will continue to replace them.”
The second rare scenario are the poachers cutting electric wires to enable them to enter the park illegally to hunt wild meat. Such incidents are becoming common and the latest was at Got Apwoyo.
The Park Authority recently arrested two people over the allegation of cutting the electric wires, but they were released on Police bond from Got Apwoyo Police outpost.
The electric fence had stopped the beasts from crossing from the park into the community areas which are easily accessible by the poachers, as a result they now want to take advantage by entering the park to create space to poach.
Mr. Kizza says poaching remains one of the biggest challenges to conservation in Uganda.
“We are working with the political leadership, but people need to shun away from poaching, to stop eating game meat, that game meat has magical power, is a lie.”
The Chairman Local Council Three of Purongo Town Council Mr. Okot Ben urges the community to refrain from destroying the fence materials which he describes as Saviour to his people.
“At the moment, we are calling on our people to unite, they need to stop abusing the initiative, we shall deal with those who will wish to destroy the fence, this has come as a savior to us here”, Mr. Okot Ben adds.
Patience Jennifer Turyareeba, a conservationist (Forester) argues that much as electric fencing has been effective in areas where it has been used, cases of community stealing materials and poachers cutting wires are rampant.
“Ugandans as you know, we are very good at vandalism, the very people you are trying to protect are the very first ones to go and steal the panel and the wire”, Turyareeba added that because UWA does not have people to watch the solar and the wire along the boundaries.
Community tourism as an alternative to electric fencing:
Ugandan Legislator Okello Charles Geoffrey says while the country concentrates on electric fencing as a mechanism to stop problem animals, they should begin to look for another alternative.
“We should also look at other ways of stopping elephants from crossing into community land, in the next 10 years to come, elephants could have mastered electric fences, and will come out an intervention because elephants are not machines.”
Hon Okello was referring to a scenario in Lii Sub County where the elephants have derived a mechanism to backfill kilometers of trenches dug in the sub-county.
The Legislator believes that fencing off the park shall fence the community from their resources which is a revenue opportunity.
“To me, I want us not to be fenced off from our resources, because in other places, people are generating a lot of revenues by people neigbhouring the parks”. Okello notes.
The MP appeals to UWA in overriding policy; they should do proper planning of the corridor so that they manage it better because fencing shall squander the opportunity.
“We if had a civilized land policy within the corridors, where we have heritage centers, Leisure parks, Institutions, etc., elephants would come openly on the compound, and that would be much better than fencing of the elephants”. He adds.
The MFCA authority says it is the community that has not shown interest in community tourism, especially the middle-class people. Currently, Nwoya district does not have vibrant tourism which is owned by the community.
Murchison Falls NP is the oldest, largest, and most visited tourist site in Uganda. The Chief Warden of MFCA, Mr. Fredrick Kizza argues that if individuals or groups of individuals are involved in community tourism, they will start seeing the money coming into the community.
“So, we are having multiple engagements /strategies to make sure our people stay safe, and their livelihoods can be enhanced through tourism investment, we want to see a community that is vibrant, we want to see a country that has the livelihoods”, Mr. Kizza adds.
Mr. Kizza notes that they are working closely with the political leadership in the district to make sure that they realize community tourism in MFCA.
