Who is UWA new boss Mwandha?

Kampala.

Mr Sam Mwandha, a forester by training, has been appointed the new Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) executive director. He will be in charge of Uganda’s 10 national parks, 12 wildlife reserves, 10 wildlife sanctuaries and five community wildlife areas spread across the country.
The veteran conservationist with more than 20 years of natural resource conservation and wildlife management experience, beat off competition from Dr Andrew Seguya, the outgoing UWA boss, and Mr Achilles Byaruhanga, the executive director of Nature Uganda.
“It is true I have been appointed but I cannot talk now because I have not yet written my acceptance letter. Give me a week,” Mr Mwandha told Saturday Monitor by telephone.

His career
During his two-decade stint in conservation thus far, Mr Mwandha has been the chief of party at African Wildlife Foundation, worked as executive secretary at the Greater Virunga Transboundary Collaboration (GVTC) and from September 2005 to October 2010, he worked as the director conservation with UWA, among other roles.
He went to Jinja College for his O-Level, Namilyango College for his A-Level and then Makerere University where he pursued a degree in Forestry in the mid-1980s. He has been a conservationist for decades, having worked as chief of party at African Wildlife Foundation.
Mr Amos Wekesa, the founder of Great Lakes Safaris and Uganda Lodges, a tourism company, welcomed Mr Mwandha’s appointment, complimenting him as “a very exposed, not excitable and qualified candidate” for the top job.
“That job needs someone who has love for conservation. I think Sam is. We all need to support him since there are many challenges in conservation,” Mr Wekesa said.
Key among the challenges Mr Mwandha is bound to face, Mr Wekesa anticipates, is political interferences as the population grows around protected areas.
“There are politicians who have vowed to give out parks to people, we have experienced human-wildlife conflicts and I think to overcome such challenges, even the President has to support him,” he said.
Dr Seguya has faced a number of accusations during his time in office, and President Museveni at one point asked the Inspectorate of Government to investigate UWA, listing eight issues, including alleged export of pangolin scales contrary to international conventions.
In July 2014, UWA issued a permit for the export of more than 7,000kg of pangolin scales to Laos. Pangolin scales, skin and meat are all highly valued, making it the most illegally traded mammal in the wild, according to International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Pangolin meat is a delicacy among the newly affluent parts of China and Vietnam.

Some of the challenges he faces

Degradation. Stopping poaching and degradation of parks.
Game reserves. Management of game reserves that have been neglected and become a haven for poaching.
National parks. Making national parks more accessible to Ugandans through construction and better maintenance of UWA budget bandas. The bandas in most of the parks have fallen apart in the last few years even though private sector investment in accommodation in and around parks has grown.
Gorilla tourism. Reclaiming Uganda’s position as the choice destination for gorilla tourism which we have lost to Rwanda even though Uganda is home to more than half of the world’s mountain gorillas.
Conservation. Balancing the conservation role of UWA with investment in revenue generation activities. He will likely get a push back from private sector investors who are keen to monopolise the travel business but only target rich foreigners, leaving would be domestic tourists as spectators.