Poor farming activities threaten Rubirizi lake
Lake Kamunzuku in Kasyohakitomi forest, Rubirizi District, is facing silting. PHOTO / FELIX AINEBYOONA
What you need to know:
- Kamunzuku is one of the 32 crater lakes in the district and is also a tourism site.
- Mr Thomas Neema, a resident of Butoha Parish and tour guide, said the forest reserve, which had been acting as a buffer, was destroyed, causing flooding.
Residents and leaders of Rubirizi District have attributed the contamination of Lake Kamunzuku in Kasyohakitomi Central Forest Reserve, Magambo Sub-county, to silting caused by poor farming practices.
Kamunzuku is one of the 32 crater lakes in the district and is also a tourism site.
Mr Thomas Neema, a resident of Butoha Parish and tour guide, said the forest reserve, which had been acting as a buffer, was destroyed, causing flooding.
“The NFA allowed an investor to cut down a forest to plant eucalyptus trees. There is no buffer zone between the agricultural activities and the lake, so when it rains, the floods carry the soil into the lake,” Mr Neema said.
The chairperson of Butoha Parish, Mr Vincent Kakye, who is also the Butoha Conservation and Eco-tourism Association chairperson, said their tourism site is being threatened.
The district environmental officer, Mr Aggrey Agaba, said many people have encroached on the environment to get land for farming.
“Rubirizi is densely populated with about 140,000 people and with fertile soils, so increase in population has reduced land for cultivation and people resort to encroaching on the protected zones,” he said.
Mr Agaba said the district will investigate to find out if the investor, Mr Charles Kiberu Nsubuga, is renting out the forest land to farmers for cultivation instead of planting trees.
“If he delays, then we will give the land to another person but some people apply delay tactics and decide to hire it to other farmers, but I will follow it up,” he said.
However, Mr Kiberu, whom NFA leased 45 hectares of the land in 2003, denied hiring out the land to farmers.
“Whoever is doing agriculture there should be arrested because that is illegal . It seems my manager has been conniving with them (farmers) and I have instructed him to stop those activities,” he said.
He added: “I do not want them because the NFA had instructed me to only plant trees. I am going to plant trees this season since I have the seedlings. I am going to camp there and remove [anything illegal].”
The NFA district supervisor, Mr Amos Tumukunde, said the changing water is due to natural causes.
“The water is slowly turning green so at times it is a natural phenomenon as a result of global warming but it has nothing to do with erosion or farming,” he said.
Mr Tumukunde said NFA leased out the land to create a buffer.
“We wanted to protect the lake to stop the run off of water so we gave it to a private planter for 10 years to plant trees to act as a buffer,” he said.
