Why an antelope came 460kms from Murchison Falls and died in Busitema

Last week, a very rare event happened to a couple of Ugandans who were travelling to Tororo. Their car hit and killed an antelope that dashed into the road around a corner near Busitema Forest.

They were lucky they were in a big vehicle; otherwise the antelope wouldn’t have been the only fatality. I have been travelling that route since I was just out of my nappies for 40 years now, and I had never even, heard stories, or rumours about antelopes in the area.
The wild animals that rule Busitema forest are baboons. Apparently, a car striking some rare game had ever gifted the villagers who live nearby. Still, the likelihood of encountering an antelope in that part of this fair land is as rare as seeing a wild ostrich crossing the road there.
Word spread quickly, and soon villagers arrived with their pangas, sharpening them in the darkness on the edge of the tarmac, and hastening to cut off a piece of antelope meat for themselves. The people of Busitema had a 50th anniversary of independence celebration like no other in the country.

For the good folks who had a run-in with the antelope, the more immediate question was; “what was it running away from?” Accentuate by the unease that comes with darkness, they feared that the antelope was being chased by a leopard! Now that the villagers had carted away its dinner, it was likely to turn to the passengers stranded on the roadside.

I thought there was even a bigger question; “where was the antelope coming from?” I could only arrive at two educated guesses. Either it was being transported by wildlife authorities and it escaped from the back of the truck or, and more likely, it came from Murchison National Park!
Murchison Falls National Park is nearly 460 kilometres away from the spot where the antelope met its fate, yes. However, it is the only place that touches a corridor that would bring it to Busitema. It probably left the park, possibly in a group, and travelled along the bushy banks of Lake Kyoga – where it would also have water to drink – then drifted through Busoga to Busitema.

Therefore, the story of the Busitema antelope is an indicator of how severe the pressure on their natural habitat is. The figures for Uganda don’t look good in this regard. Up to 50 per cent of Uganda’s forest cover has been lost since 1970. It is estimated that the country will run out of fuel wood by 2025 – just 13 years away. This in a country where 93 per cent of the population depend wholly, partially, or occasionally (during power outage when the charcoal stove is brought out) on fuel wood.

Increasingly, there is no place to hide if you are a wild animal in Uganda. Now the Institute of Zoology has been tracking the fate of vertebrate species in natural ecosystems in Uganda since 1970.

It says that; “For some species, the rates of loss have been close to catastrophic…60 per cent of Crowned Cranes since 1970, a third of the species of fish in Lake Victoria and more than 90 per cent of the once-famous Kampala bats have disappeared”.
You need a sense of humour to remain levelheaded when faced with such carnage, and the Institute of Zoology notes that, “Some things are of course increasing, most noticeably the Marabou Storks in Kampala”.

The Museveni government, fortunately, reversed the extreme poaching in Murchison National Park that happened during Idi Amin’s rule in the 1970s and some period of the Obote II government. There is still poaching, of course, but it has been drastically reduced and is no longer semi-state policy.

The main interest these days is no longer the animals, but the land. Some folks would like to build golf courses in the parks. Say what you will about John Nagenda, the colourfully querulous and lyrical senior presidential adviser on media and public relations, but his heart and words on protecting Ugandan wildlife and their homes against such invasions is extremely admirable.
Now, though, there is an adversary even he can’t push back against – oil. Environmentalists have charged that oil-drilling activities in the neighbourhood of Murchison Falls National Park will endanger the environment and park in the long run.

The death of the antelope in Busitema was probably not in vain. It was a message that all is not well back at the farm. Maybe, since it seems there is no oil in Busitema, we could grow millions of trees and tall grasses there, and create a new park in such places as a haven for the Murchison park refugee animals.We shall deal later with the “natives”, who seem to have a very lively appetite for wild game meat.

cobbo@ke.nationmedia.com & twitter@cobbo3