Bugoma forest on a death bed

FOREST | WILDLIFE |

Nature-based tourism is in for a fat shock following the decision by the Ugandan High court to allow part of Bugoma Forest cleared in preparation for a sugarcane plantation. 

Birds flutter their wings and tweet in protest, as mammals pull faces and sneer at the people destroying their habitat. The green canopy and cool breeze are no more in some parts.

"This is as bad as logging and poaching to the nature-based tourism industry. Unfortunately, it is being done after being given a go-ahead by the law keepers," lamented the chairperson Association for the Conservation of Bugoma Forest Constatino Tessarin. 

"They will clear 900 hectares (2,223 acres) which have been home to more than 34 different species of mammals," he said adding that, the activity is leaving 225 different species of trees chopped down on which 225 species of birds feed and nest. That action also denies 600 chimpanzees a habitat.

"The shy and rare grey-cheeked mangabey, blue monkeys, black and white colobus, congregate in Bugoma," said Tessarin. "This is a product that has been attracting a growing number of tourists in the recent past."

The land being cleared was leased to Hoima Sugar Company (HSC,) which has a 70% shareholding in Kinyara Sugar Works in neighbouring Masindi district, in 2016 for 99 years by Solomon Iguru Gafabusa, king of the ancient kingdom of Bunyoro-Kitara.

Environmentalists contend that the leased area, be it ancestral land or not part of the protected forest - if cleared will affect the eco-balance.

However, Rajasekaran Ramadoss, the agriculture manager at Hoima Sugar Company, said the proposed sugarcane plantation would improve the standard of living of those people in the area.

"Going by the environmental and social impact assessment report submitted with the application for a sugar plantation," he stressed. 

"The company stated how it would build schools, a hospital, develop an ecotourism project that comprised an eco-lodge, walking trails, a campsite, and replant the degraded area."

But the coordinator of the Forest Governance Learning Group, an informal alliance of 10 African and Asian states that advocate for the protection of forests Onesmus Mugyenyi is of the view that there are investors in ecotourism and conservation whose voices have not been listened to.

"Ecotourism has a broader impact on the livelihood of the people in the area." Said Mugyennyi. "More so because the 41,144 hectares, is the largest remaining block of natural tropical forest along the Albertine Rift Valley and adjacent to Budongo Forest and Semuliki National Park."

Catherine Watson of World Agroforestry says forests like Bugoma play an enormous role in preserving wildlife migratory corridors.

"To destroy Bugoma would be to throw away rain, biodiversity," summed up Cathy Watson. "It is a throwaway of Uganda's reputation on the climate, forest and wildlife front."

Background

The raging storm started last year when a Court of Appeal judge allowed the destruction of 22 Square miles of the disputed Bugoma Central Forest Reserve land to pave way for sugarcane growing.  

Justice Frederick Egonda Ntende dismissed with costs, an application in which the National Forest Authority (NFA) had sought temporary blockage of  implementation of orders of the High Court.

"The applicant (NFA) has failed to demonstrate that there is an imminent threat of alienating, selling, transferring, developing, executing or in any way dealing, interfering with the status quo of the disputed land," Justice Ntende partially ruled.

This was after NFA filed an application requesting a halt to the express orders to the execution of the High Court orders until their appeal was heard and determined. 

Records have it that NFA appealed against dismissal with costs in a case in which it sued the Omukama of Bunyoro-Kitara Kingdom Solomon Iguru Gafabusa over alleged encroachment and degradation on Bugoma Central Forest Reserve.

The Omukama of Bunyoro-Kitara Kingdom was jointly accused with Hoima Sugar Limited and Uganda Land Commission (ULC) over fraudulent concealment when he applied for a freehold title for part of the forest land which was granted by the ULC.

The High Court sitting in Masindi before Justice Wilson Masalu Musene dismissed the NFA case.

Vital facts

- In September 2016, the government cancelled Bunyoro-Kitara Kingdom's land title in Bugoma Forest.

- August 23, 2016, NFA requested the Ministry of Lands, Housing, and Urban Development to cancel land titles issued in Bugoma Central Forest to enable them secure the integrity of natural resources.

There has been ongoing destruction of the forest reserve by locals purporting to be working on directives of the king to claim 8,000 hectares from Bugoma Forest reserve.

The Court temporarily halted the cancellation of the land title held by the king until the land case has been disposed of.

- Justice Masalu took over the case on March 18 hardly three months after Masindi resident Judge Albert Rugadya Atwooki pulled out of the case in December last year when it had been set for judgment.

- Since 2016, the forestry body had sought court declarations that the king's stay and utilization of the natural forest reserve is illegal and amounts to trespass. But the king denied the allegations of encroachment and degrading the forest.