Latest news with #UgandaWildlifeAuthority
Leader Live
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Leader Live
Giant Pangolins 'need time to shine' says Chester Zoo
The zoo is taking part in the Big Green Give between April 22 to 29, and all the funds raised will help protect pangolins in Africa. By sheer coincidence, Pangolin: Kulu's Journey also debuts on Netflix this week. The documentary, directed by Pippa Ehrlich, who also directed My Octopus Teacher, tells the story of a trafficked Temminck's pangolin and his path to re-release. Chester Zoo has been working with pangolins in Uganda since 2018 and is now reaching out to members of the public to support this year's Big Give campaign, which focuses on the giant pangolin. Thanks to increased media attention, pangolins are, hopefully, having a 'moment' which, according to Naomi Matthews, Africa Biomonitoring Manager in the zoo's Field Programmes team, is about time. Naomi has been advocating for pangolins since she joined the zoo 12 years ago and now manages the Chester Zoo giant pangolin project, working closely with the Uganda Wildlife Authority. She said: 'I was 21 when I first discovered what a pangolin was, while watching a David Attenborough documentary. 'I couldn't believe I'd never heard of them before, and they quickly became one of my favourite animals. 'Once I learned about the threats they face, I was passionate about making sure the zoo got involved in their conservation.' Pangolins are unique as the only mammals with scales. There are currently eight recognised species of pangolin, all threatened by poaching and habitat loss. Among them, the giant pangolin is one of the least documented and least understood and is also one of the most trafficked animals in the world. Naomi is blending field conservation – coordinating a conservation assessment of the species through camera trapping, behavioural research, and direct pangolin protection – with academic study, as her PhD research forms part of the project. 'I just think they're fascinating,' she said. MORE NEWS 'I've always loved the weird and wonderful mammals—the ones that don't really fit into other categories. 'Our whole team is passionate about pangolins, and it's that passion that keeps us going. 'Studying them is incredibly difficult and often challenging, but that's also what makes it so rewarding. 'We see waves of interest in particular animals. ''I think a lot of it is driven by social media and pop culture. 'First everyone was obsessed with meerkats, then capybaras, and now pygmy hippos are having a moment. I think it's time for pangolins.' Naomi's PhD on the conservation ecology of giant pangolins has been breaking new ground in understanding the species. So little is known about these gentle creatures that much of her work is starting from scratch. 'One of the highlights of researching them is watching them on our camera trap videos,' said Naomi. 'My PhD research set out to answer some of the key questions about giant pangolin, conservation ecology and behaviour. 'But it quickly became clear that to do that, we'd have to first improve our knowledge of where and how to find them—then work on counting them by developing new survey methods.' Naomi added: 'We're often asked: 'If you struggle to find them, how are they being so heavily poached?' 'The answer is that poachers often operate in large groups, sometimes with up to 20 hunting dogs, which sniff out pangolins and other wildlife indiscriminately. 'In contrast, we have to be far more wide-reaching, surveying up to 300 burrows at a time. We must be subtle, non-invasive, and patient.' There is a way to help pangolins have their moment and keep the giant pangolin project rolling. If you donate £5 during the Big Give Green Match Fund, we'll receive £10 – doubling your impact to help save this vulnerable species from extinction. From April 22-29, match-funders at Big Give have pledged to double all donations made to Chester Zoo's pangolin fund. The zoo is aiming to raise more than £16,000, which will go directly towards supporting pangolin conservation efforts in Uganda. Pledge here from noon on April 22 to help save giant pangolins at
The Guardian
04-04-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
Africa's last glaciers: an expedition to map ice loss in the Rwenzori mountains
Mount Speke topped with ice in 2012. The Rwenzori mountains are one of the world's most remote and dramatic landscapes, thought to be the legendary Mountains of the Moon mentioned by ancient Greek geographers such as Ptolemy. By 2024, ice remained on Speke, but not enough to be defined as a glacier. The three highest peaks in the Rwenzori mountains – Speke, Baker and Stanley – have been so eroded by the climate crisis that only Stanley's glacier remains. Alfred Masereka, of the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA), assembles the team before the expedition to map Mount Stanley's glaciers. The expedition was led by the climate charity Project Pressure, together with Unesco and the UWA, to record what was left of the ice, create a 3D model of the glaciers and install equipment to allow local people to monitor change The local Bakonzo community's intimate knowledge of the terrain proved invaluable for the expedition. They have long lived at the base of the mountain range and consider the glaciers sacred. The ice is where the Bakonzo god Kithasamba lives. For centuries, this spiritual connection has influenced how the Bakonzo interact with the environment, reinforcing conservation and sustainable use of natural resources The path to ascend the Rwenzori runs past Lake Bujuku, one of several lakes partly formed and replenished by glacial meltwater. The mountain range is the highest and most permanent source of the River Nile, with a water catchment relied upon by 5 million people, including the Bakonzo A ranger from the Uganda Wildlife Authority waits to start the ascent, which begins in tropical forest Several camping huts dot the mountain ascent. In the distance, Mount Stanley emerges from the clouds. At 5,109 metres, it is the third-highest mountain in Africa. Rwenzori Mountains national park was designated a Unesco world heritage site in 1994 for its beauty, rare species and abundance of flora and fauna The team stop to camp during the trek, which takes 14 days The team makes the rocky approach to Mount Stanley. Project Pressure is using data collected over more than a decade of expeditions to understand how much glacial ice is left on the range, and is now training and equipping local teams to collect data independently Muhindo Rogers, a guide from the Uganda Wildlife Authority, stands in front of Mount Baker, which lost its glacier several years ago Project Pressure's Klaus Thymann, left, with local guides Muhindo Rogers and Kule Jocknus Bwabu Solomon, and Heïdi Sevestre, a glaciologist, on the plateau of Mount Stanley. Thymann devised a process to track glacier retreat using high-resolution drone photogrammetry and comparative analysis from past expeditions. Trimble geospatial technology was used to capture data points, while Sevestre used ground-penetrating radar to capture data on depth Thymann operates the drone with support from Solomon, left, and Rogers. The team combined the drone survey with a survey Project Pressure carried out in 2020 to create a 3D model of the glacial retreat on Mt. Stanley. In four years the surface area has reduced by almost 30%. Rogers observes cloud movement while the drone is flown Mount Stanley holds the last glacial ice in Rwenzori, but the glaciers are fragmenting. This image was taken by Klaus Thymann in 2022 By 2024 the glacier on Mount Stanley has retreated. Project Pressure's data revealed a loss in surface area of 29.5% between 2020 and 2024 Mumbere Johnson, of the Uganda Wildlife Authority, guides Sevestre Solomon first joined a Project Pressure expedition in 2012 and has been on every expedition since – most recently in January 2025 to install and train on time-lapse cameras Solomon walks past a channel carrying water to communities in the foothills of the Rwenzori. Glaciers act as a buffer – feeding rivers during dry seasons and regulating water flow. Their loss increases droughts, floods and even wildfires. Solomon's home was damaged by a mudslide this year The next generation of Bakonzo people will be profoundly impacted by the loss of glaciers. Masereka says: 'I will tell my son it was very beautiful to have snow on the Rwenzori for our livelihood … it will be unfortunate, but I will encourage him to involve himself in conservation-related activities as an alternative to the snow, which was our resource in our time'
Yahoo
26-03-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Uganda's lions in decline, hyenas thriving - new findings from country's biggest ever carnivore count
For nearly 15 years almost no information was available on the population status of Uganda's large carnivores, including those in its largest national park, Murchison Falls. These species represent a critical part of Uganda's growing tourism economy. The country is home to the famed tree-climbing lions, which are much sought after for this unique behaviour. Together, lions and leopards generate tens of thousands of dollars annually from safari viewing and allied activities. Keeping an eye on the proverbial prize could not be more critical for the country. When wildlife isn't monitored rigorously, populations can disappear within just a few years, as tigers did in India's Sariska tiger reserve. But many people working in conservation discourage monitoring. They argue that a 'bean counter' approach to conservation overlooks the funds and actions that save animals. Others simply say that it is a hard thing to do at scale and particularly for animals that are naturally shy, have big home ranges (sometimes over multiple countries), and occur in very low numbers. Even in a comparatively small African country – Uganda ranks 32nd in size out of 54 countries – how does one cover enough ground to see how populations of carnivores are faring? This has been the challenge of our work in Uganda for nearly a decade now, monitoring African lions, leopards and spotted hyenas. Our two recent studies in Murchison Falls and six protected areas across the country sought to address the problem by drawing on a wide range of local and international experts who live and work in Uganda. Working with the Ugandan government's Uganda Wildlife Authority research and monitoring team, we set out to identify and bring together independent scientists, government rangers, university students, lodge owners and conservation managers in the country's major savanna parks. We hoped to cover more ground with people and organisations that wouldn't traditionally work together. Doing so exposed many of these individuals for the first time to the science and field skills needed to build robust, long term monitoring programmes for threatened wildlife. The result is the largest, most comprehensive count of African lions, leopards and spotted hyenas. We found spotted hyenas to be doing far better than we expected. But lions are in worrying decline, indicating where conservation efforts need to be focused. Beyond that, our count proved the value of collaborating when it comes to generating data that could help save animals. Inspired by Kenya's first nationwide, science-based survey of lions and other carnivores in key reserves, the first important step of this study was to secure the collaboration of the Uganda Wildlife Authority's office of research and monitoring. Together, we identified the critical conservation stakeholders in and around six protected areas. These are Pian Upe Wildlife Reserve, Kidepo Valley, Toro Semliki, Lake Mburo, Queen Elizabeth and Murchison Falls. Leopards and hyenas occur in some other parks (such as Mount Elgon and Rwenzori National Park) but resource constraints prevented us from surveying these sites. We had no predisposed notions of who could or would participate in our carnivore surveys, only that we wanted people living closest to these species in the room. We shortlisted lodge owners, government rangers, independent scientists, university students from Kampala, NGO staff and even trophy hunters. All came together for a few days to learn about how to find carnivores in each landscape, build detection histories and analyse data. We delivered five technical workshops showing participants how to search for African lions in the landscapes together with mapping exactly where they drove. We also taught participants: how to identify lions by their whisker spots in high-definition photographs – these are the small spots where a cat's whiskers originate on their cheeks how to determine identity in camera trap images of leopard and spotted hyena body flanks post data collection analysis techniques a technique to estimate population densities and abundance. More than 100 Ugandan and international collaborators joined in the 'all hands on deck' survey, driving over 26,000km and recording 7,516 camera trap nights from 232 locations spanning a year from January 2022 to January 2023. Read more: Our scientific approach focused on how to achieve the best possible counts of carnivores. In the process we identified some of the biggest shortcomings of previous surveys. These included double counting individual animals and failing to incorporate detection probability. Even worse was simply adding all individual sighted animals and not generating any local-level estimates. As expected, our results painted a grim picture in some areas, but marked hope for others. In the majestic Murchison Falls national park, through which the River Nile runs east-west, we estimated that approximately 240 lions still remained across some 3,200km² of sampled area. This is the highest number in Uganda and at least five to 10 times higher than in the Kidepo and Queen Elizabeth parks. In Queen Elizabeth national park, home to the tree-climbing lions, we found a marked decline of over 40% (just 39 individuals left in 2,400km²) since our last survey in 2018. In the country's north, Kidepo Valley, the best estimate is just 12 individual lions across 1,430km², in stark contrast with the previous estimate of 132 lions implemented nearly 15 years ago. In contrast, leopards appeared to continue to occur at high densities in select areas, with Lake Mburo and Murchison Falls exhibiting strong populations. Pian Upe and Queen Elizabeth's Ishasha sector recorded the lowest densities. Spotted hyenas have proven far more resilient. They occur at densities ranging from 6.15 to 45.31 individuals/100km² across surveyed sites. In Queen Elizabeth, their numbers could be rising as lion populations decline, likely due to reduced competition and ongoing poaching pressure targeting lions. These findings underscore the urgent need for targeted conservation interventions, particularly for lions in Uganda's struggling populations. Our approach shared the load of data collection, and gave people an opportunity and skills to engage in wildlife science. For many emerging conservationists in the country, this was their first chance to be authors on a scientific paper (an increasingly important component of postgraduate degree applications). Even if many of the people we worked with disagree on how to save large carnivores in Uganda, they could at least agree on how many there are as they had a hand in collecting the data and scrutinising it. Since we have embraced a fully science-based approach, we recognise that our surveys too should improve over time. Aggrey Rwetsiba, senior manager, research and monitoring at Uganda Wildlife Authority, contributed to the research on which this article is based. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Alexander Richard Braczkowski, Griffith University; Arjun M. Gopalaswamy, Nelson Mandela University, and Duan Biggs, Northern Arizona University Read more: Wealthy Africans often don't pay tax: the answer lies in smarter collection - expert Cameroon's Baka people say they are part of the forest: that's why they look after it Violence in South Sudan is rising again: what's different this time, and how to avoid civil war Duan Biggs receives funding from Northern Arizona University and is a member of the IUCN (World Conservation Union). Alexander Richard Braczkowski and Arjun M. Gopalaswamy do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
