Lion poaching: Big cats at Kidepo park dwindle

A wild stench of skins and hides of, among others, buffaloes, antelopes, crocodiles, and Colobus monkeys assails our nostrils. We are at Kidepo Valley National Game Park in the company of Sgt John Moi Opio. He is a member of the law enforcement unit at Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA).

Sgt Opio has opened a metallic container at one of the park’s joint strategic surveillance and monitoring command centres. At one end are bales of confiscated hunting nets loaded on heaps of hunting traps, spears, arrows, and clubs, among others. There are also heaps of more than 500 wheel traps and more than 600 snares.

“These are lethal weapons that kill most of the animals in the park,” Sgt Opio says of the wheel traps and snares, adding, “We have sent about 18 guns recovered between 2021 and 2022, to the UPDF because they are the custodian of guns.”

Sgt Opio, a native from the neighbouring Karenga Sub-county, says the park—located northeast of Uganda—has in the past five years made modest gains in repelling a hodgepodge of poachers. They are not only from the indigenous Karimojong community but also hail from South Sudan with arms.

Per Sgt Opio, the South Sudanese look for lions, leopards, and cheetahs. Their intentionality is to extract some of their unique parts like the manes, canine teeth, and claws. They believe these animal body parts make them powerful and authoritative. It is, for instance, believed that eating testes of the animals increases one’s manhood.

Five lions were lost between 2021 and 2023, thanks to the allure of the animal parts among the Loriwo and Naukori people from South Sudan, as well as the Karamojong tribes.

“These clans that are in Karamoja and some parts of Acholi also believe in those things,” Sgt Opio tells us, adding that the poachers mostly use weapons like wires and metallic wheel traps.

Existential threat

Kidepo Valley National Park is located in Kaabong District, in the northeastern corner of Uganda. It borders Biira, South Sudan, from the northwest where Kidepo Game Reserve sits. It was gazetted as a game reserve by the British colonial state in 1958 to protect wild animals from hunting.

According to UWA, the reserve currently has a profusion of big game and hosts more than 77 mammal species. Whereas the game rangers deployed at the facility have maintained and controlled the area, Sgt Opio says they are overwhelmed and lack the manpower to maximally scout the park. As such, the lions at Kidepo Park currently face an existential threat.

“The leopards are also one of the species getting extinct, although their isolation mode of life has kept them a bit safe since they do not want to expose themselves to humans so much,” Sgt Opio discloses.

The semi-arid and arid environments of southern South Sudan make the area neighbouring the park food insecure.

“This is how we have lost so many buffaloes, giraffes, antelopes, etc. because they kill them for food, their tails and horns are what they use for traditional make-up, especially putting on the body, wearing the tail tuff of the giraffe,” Sgt Opio says.

UWA recently learnt that while they initially thought the ostriches were being hunted for food, a new market for oil extracted from its bone marrow is what poachers now target.

Besides the ostrich oil, the dealers also target the park’s few remaining pangolins, an herbivore specie marked by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to be among the most endangered species.

“Those that sneak in from South Sudan, at times we have engaged them and we have recovered some guns from several squads from South Sudan,” Mr Richard Muhabwe, the chief warden of Kidepo Valley Conservation Area, says, adding, “Last year on December 30, we recovered four guns from the poachers, bringing the total number of guns recovered in 2023 alone to six.”

 Bottlenecks

This job can come at a great risk such as  the loss of one ranger—Charles Okawa—last year. Per Mr Muhabwe, Okawa died at the hands of a gang of poachers. While the identity of the poachers remains unknown to date, the ones that hail from South Sudan sneak into the park via porous and isolated parts. They are known to be heavily armed, and often outnumber the few UWA rangers who have to keep sentry over a vast space in the park.

“When we try to counter them, it is not a joke. There is death,” Sgt Opio says, adding, “In 2022, we lost a staff in the process of counterattacking the raiders. It’s always hard for us to capture them.”

Work in progress

Besides poaching, Mr Muhabwe says they are still grappling with the challenge of human-wildlife conflict. This is where wild animals inflict damage after straying into areas inhabited by humans. He discloses that “elephants have become relentless in the areas of Abim, and Agago” and that UWA has had “to forcefully drive them back.”

In a 2023 report, Mr Tom Butime, the Tourism minister, underscored tourism’s impact on Uganda. He, for one, noted that inbound visitors to Uganda spent more than Shs4.58 trillion on tourism services in 2019. That same year, domestic tourists spent approximately Shs2.97 trillion.

“Tourism Direct Gross Domestic Product accounts for 3.64 percent of the GDP in terms of the direct contribution,” he noted. “Tourism also accounts for a large share of total employment, directly employing close to 1.6 million people, 68 percent of whom were females and accounting for 14.7 percent of the total number of jobs.”

Last financial year, Kidepo Valley National Game Park alone generated Shs1.6 billion in revenue from visiting tourists. Post-pandemic, the number of tourists has significantly increased from 10,000 to 13,000 tourists across the past two years. Today, the most watched animals at the park include buffaloes, lions, leopards, ostriches, and cheetahs. The park’s lions are currently 22, down from 54 five years ago.

“They are kind of stagnated and going on the decreasing trend, but we want to introduce a bunch of lions because lions are key species at Kidepo,” Mr Muhabwe says, adding, “We are looking at rhinos in Kidepo by the end of next year and there we shall be boosting the big five because we already have cheetahs, lions, leopards, elephants, buffaloes, hippos, and crocodiles. So that one will also pull visitors into come and also check the big five.”

Ten rhinos will be introduced after a feasibility study indicated that Kidepo is the best habitat for the rhinos.

Saturday Monitor has also established that the park last year introduced drones to help in surveillance and control of human-wildlife conflicts. The equipment is flown to random airspaces of the park to spot and identify incoming poachers, fire outbreaks and straying animals, according to the park’s authorities.

“So far, the output which we get in pictures and video footage tells us where to deploy and counter the poachers. We can also locate sick animals and human-wildlife conflicts, it shows us animals that have strayed into communities and are damaging crops and homesteads,” Mr Muhabwe says of the surveillance.

Poaching and the law

Poaching of critically endangered species has continued in the park despite the presence of stringent laws. In July of 2019, President Museveni assented to the recent Uganda Wildlife Act 2019. It replaced the 1996 Uganda Wildlife Act 1996. It also established that political interference from the district and community leaders has frustrated UWA’s efforts to combat poaching.

“When we arrest people encroaching into the park borders to poach, we always have that political interference when we arrest them, it is another impact that is letting us not to execute our mandate,” Sgt John Moi Opio, a member of the Law Enforcement Unit at Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA), tells Saturday Monitor.

The highest penalty in the new Act is a maximum fine of Shs20 billion or life imprisonment, or both for an offence related to a wildlife species classified as extinct in the wild, or critically endangered. These include the roan antelope, lion, hunting dog, spotted and striped hyena, greater and lesser kudu, Ssese Island Sitatunga, Cheetah, African elephant, Delany’s mouse, and endangered species such as impala, Rwenzori duiker, Rothschild’s giraffe, mountain gorilla, and the common chimpanzee.

The Act also gives the court powers to fine a first-time offender Shs7 million or to a term of imprisonment, not exceeding 10 years, or both. Second-time or subsequent offenders are required to pay a fine of Shs10 million or serve a maximum jail term of 20 years, or both.

The punishment for the use of weapons, traps, and explosives is a Shs100 million fine, 10 years imprisonment, or both. This also applies to persons who unlawfully prepare land for cultivation, and mining or those who take, destroy, damage or deface any object of geomorphological, archaeological, historical, cultural or scientific value.

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