Uganda's National Parks

Abstract

The Uganda Government has long been subject to much adverse criticism for its apparent reluctance to fulfil its share of the obligations towards wild life which were agreed upon by Great Britain in 1933, at the international conference held in London for the better protection of the African fauna. The world however was then in the throes of a disastrous financial depression, from which recovery was slow, and it was scarcely the time for the small Uganda Protectorate, with its limited resources, to embark on a costly scheme for creating national parks. Moreover, ever since the proclamation of the Protectorate in 1894 Uganda has suffered more severely from rinderpest, that terrible scourge of cattle, than any other British territory in Africa. The direct loss in livestock has been appalling, but the indirect loss, which can be assessed as the measure of the preventive effort on the part of the Veterinary Department, has been positively staggering. Rinderpest has for long been endemic in the regions of Ethiopia to the north-east and never a year has passed without the dread disease appearing on Uganda's northern and eastern frontiers. The wild ungulates introduced, harboured and transmitted the disease—the cattle could be controlled, not so the wild animals except possibly by the repugnant method of destruction. Outside the limits of Uganda few have realized the grim and costly struggle which continued relentlessly year by year, and still fewer have ever appreciated that little Uganda with its gallant band of veterinary workers has again and again staved off disaster from reaching the territories lying to the south and south-west. Rinderpest was no respecter of game reserves in which the disease-stricken ungulates suffered as heavily as anywhere else and therefore there were economic factors of considerable gravity involved in the question of alienation of relatively large areas as national parks. It seemed preferable and wiser to endeavour to free Uganda from the ravages of rinderpest, before setting aside as national parks areas which could function as reservoirs of the disease.