Dr. James Musinguzi is the Executive Director of Uganda Wildlife Conservation Education Centre (UWEC), a fun and exciting place to see and learn about the animals of Uganda and the ecosystems in which they live. It boasts of the longest beach line.
What is the mandate of Uganda Wildlife Conservation Education Centre (UWEC)?
Our mandates include conservation education and this involves environmental education as well as education for sustainable development. This is carried out on site here at the zoo in Entebbe and also during outreaches in communities, schools, corporate organisations and policy makers.
We traverse the county while educating and talking to people about the value of conserving biodiversity, especially linkage to livelihoods. National resources are important in terms of making our economy grow. So, we would like to ask the public to conserve such resources
Another mandate is to rescue and rehabilitate wildlife where we find animals that have been trapped by trafficking and conflicts. We rescue them, bring them here in Entebbe, rehabilitate them then send them back into the world to relive their natural life.
What do you do with animals that are not ready for natural life?
Some animals are rescued when they are in a traumatized situation to the extent that they cannot feed themselves, so we retain them here for education and tourism purposes.
Some have wings broken, legs broken and so on. We also carry out breeding of endangered wildlife species as another mandate. This ensures the population of wildlife.
Please shed light on the educational component of the center…
We carry out edutainment because our education focuses mainly on the children where we educate them through teaching them. We have been able to put up structures, and established exhibits where we keep animals
They have been built based on Uganda’s ecosystems. We have the Savannah ecosystem, so we have exhibits which are savannahs, a wetland ecosystem, forest, mountain, beach line which is the longest in Entebbe.
We use the model of Uganda’s ecosystem to be able to teach all the visitors that come about the ecology and different interactions of humans, animals and the other side other ecological systems to show how each needs the other: plants need animals, animals need plants.
How does UWEC and UWA share synergies and work together?
There is a lot of synergy between UWEC AND UWA. We belong to the same ministry under the same political leadership. We try our best to promote Uganda’s protected areas that UWA is in charge of, for example all the exhibits here have been themed basing on Uganda’s protected areas like Lake Mburo Exhibit, Budongo Exhibit, Queen Elizabeth Exhibit, Murchison Falls National Park Exhibit and the animals that are found in these exhibits are the animals that are found in protected areas and the purpose is for us to be able to promote Uganda’s protected areas here at the centre.
This is because the visitors who come to Uganda either begin here or end here. When they start here, they are able to decide which national park to go to because they have learned a lot about those national parks and their details which we teach from here.
Where are the animals collected from?
We rescue and rehabilitate wildlife. Many animals have been confiscated from the airport and they have been brought here for rehabilitation and we keep some as exhibits for pending court cases.
We also do a lot of animal translocation together. We have relocated giraffes from Murchison Falls National Park and Kidepo Valley National Park. We have also partnered in rescuing animals caught up in conflicts. For example, we have gone to the Bunyoro area and rescued a lot of Chimpanzees and brought them here in the zoo for rehabilitation and eventually, we have taken them back into the wild.
We also work together to mitigate the effects of wildlife trafficking. The center has provided land to the Uganda Wildlife Authority to establish a canine unit using dogs to sniff out illegal wildlife products which are being smuggled at the airport, especially rhino horns, ivory, and hippo teeth.
So those dogs are housed and trained here. We also work together in capacity building of the tour guides. We exchange ideas and promote the quality of tour guides and conservation in our country.
Please talk to us about this year’s Wildlife Day theme: Partnerships for Wildlife Conservation…
The United Nations (UN) theme this year is about partnerships: using and working through partnerships to promote wildlife conservation. In Uganda today and the entire world you can never go through it alone.
When you work together, you put together the little resources and achieve more and that’s what we have been able to do with UWA- putting up a canine facility and the instances of wildlife smuggling have gone so low.
Through working together, we have been able to bring on board other partners like the private sector, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) who have been very instrumental in supporting our work.
What more can be done to strengthen wildlife conservation?
We need to involve the community more because they live near the areas of animals and they are the ones affected when they escape. We need to organise quarterly galas or exhibitions in each national park with music, dance and drama and cook for the communities, involve them in marathons and let them feel part of the conservation.
We can allow non-timber forest products to be harvested by the community through a monitored approach working with the enforcement officers. The communities need to know that their lives depend on wildlife, then they will be able to defend wildlife from poachers.
We need to sensitive communities about wildlife conservation approaches and also empower them about proper economic choices and strategies and programs. We should keep with the policy of UWA of recruiting rangers from the communities. This will create love for the protected areas.
