“The fall of water was snow-white, which had a superb effect as it contrasted with the dark cliffs that walled the river, while the graceful palms of the tropics and the wild plantains perfected the beauty of the view. This was the greatest waterfall of the Nile, and in honor of the distinguished President of the Royal Geographical Society I named it the Murchison Falls, as the most important object throughout the entire course of the river.” Samuel Baker

In 1863 the hunter-turned-explorer Samuel Baker and his wife Florence set off from Khartoum with three boats, 96 men, 21 donkeys, four camels and four horses in search of the sources of the Nile. This question had plagued the minds of empires and sailors and prompted a series of previous searches into the African interior. As explorers, the couple did not fit the typical 19th Century description; Samuel sought his fortunes as a personal hunting guide and farm-owner while Florence was an orphan raised in a harem in the Ottoman Empire. Their journey along the Nile was rife with hardship as they encountered marauding slavers who dominated the ivory trade. A modern-day explorer equipped with satellite phones, 4x4 vehicle and current medicines would struggle to appreciate how Baker’s caravan moved, suffered and ‘discovered’. The Bakers laid claim to the Falls and gave it a name that would be adopted in 1952 when it became Murchison Falls National Park. Although Baker is credited with discovering Murchison Falls and Lake Albert, one must remember the lineages of those who inhabited the area before the arrival of the white man. Many migrations have moved through that landscape, and the kingdoms that thrived on the natural resources gave birth to today’s border communities.

Early Peoples

At a site called Puvungu, just northwest of the park boundary, is the place where the Lwo peoples
split. It is said that in the 1500s there were three Lwo brothers; Gypir; Labongo; and Teffil. After an argument elaborated in oral histories as ’the story of the bead and the spear’, the group began to disperse. The Labongo followers went east, the Gypir followers stayed north and the Teffil followers moved west. Today there are five different Lwo speaking groups who live around the park, north and east of the Nile. Many of the places in the park landscape are names only intelligible to the Lwo-speaking peoples. One is at the northern gate of Wangwar, meaning ‘red eyes’. This place is remembered as a battle site in which the sides fought so fiercely that their eyes turned red from the bloodshed. There are many histories woven into the fabric of the landscape, and for the Lwo peoples it is mostly related to the land north of the Nile.

The southern part of this area is the traditional homeland of the present-day Banyoro. The Abachwezi, Ababito and Abatembuzi dynasties spawned today’s Bunyoro-Kitara kingdom. The Bachwezi are a mysterious clan who are said to have inhabited the park area and gained wealth from the iron-rich deposits found in veins throughout the region. Remembered as prosperous blacksmiths who harvested the wild coffee in Budongo Forest, the Bachwezi kingdom suddenly disappeared in the sixteenth century. There have been only a few archaeological excavations done in this area, meaning that the story of why the Bachwezi disappeared and where they went still could be unearthed.

Sub-heading

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the ivory trade dominated the region. Traders in slaves and ivory would come from the north and east to harvest these commodities. Tippu Tip, the famous Zanzibari trader ruled the land in today’s Democratic Republic of Congo, just west of the Nile and Lake Albert. One hundred and fifty men could, in a prosperous season, arrive in Khartoum with up to twenty thousand pounds (lbs) of ivory.

Despite the fact that the slave trade was outlawed in the British Empire in 1807, the thirst for ivory continued. As colonial powers sought to assert their dominance on the region they looked to revenues from ivory to cover the costs of administration. Regulations restricted hunting but the first conservation minded organisation did not come to fruition until 1925 with the Elephant Control Department. At that time it was still legal to hunt elephant and even rhino. On occasion the newly established Game Department authorised the controlled removal of populations from Budongo Forest. However, in terms of scale, such operations seem insignificant if compared to the culling in Murchison Falls National Park in the 1960s. Culling is the process of selectively slaughtering a
population of wild animals. Between April 1965 and May 1967 a team, lead by Ian Parker, removed two thousand elephants from the fourteen thousand who inhabited the park. This project yielded some of the most comprehensive data on the species. At that time the populations were so large that they were destroying their own habitat and devastating the landscape for other species. Reports regularly noted herds of between two and three hundred, with the odd herd surpassing five hundred. One would be
lucky to see groups of elephants of that size today.

So what happened?

Decades of civil conflict and the introduction of simple, lightweight automatic weapons devastated the wildlife of Murchison Falls National Park. In 1973 Idi Amin briefly closed the gates to the park and renamed it Kabalega Falls National Park, after the Bunyoro King who fought Samuel Baker in the 1870s. In the mid-to- late 1970s Amin’s right-hand man Bob Astles orchestrated poaching by the army. But it was not the renaming of the park that led to the slaughter of so much wildlife. When Amin fell, chaos descended on the park as his troops retreated to their homelands in the West Nile region. As they moved through the protected area they exploited the wild game, looted and traded weapons for safety. The Tanzanian army who prompted the retreat all the way to Lake Albert armed many civilians to aid their cause. As a result, the process of poaching shifted from using traditional weapons to heavy artillery. Dr. Iain Douglas Hamilton of Save the Elephants recalls from his 1980 post-Amin survey, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more intense slaughter of elephants than in Uganda in the late 70s”. At that time there were less than two hundred elephants remaining in the park. But it wasn’t only the elephants that suffered. During that time the black and white rhinos were on the brink of extinction. The Lords Resistance Army continued to destabilise the northern region and contributed to the insecurity that rendered these species extinct.

So what now?

History shows us times of abundance and of devastation. Times when Murchison Falls was the most visited park on the African continent in the 1960s, and a time when foreign visitors were scarce and school groups were attacked by vicious rebels. The role that humans play in the stability of wildlife cannot be underestimated. As the elephants regain their numbers today, communities once displaced are returning home along the northern boundary.

The work of Soft Power Education

The permanence of wildlife is only ever as strong as its neighbouring communities’ commitment to maintain it. At present there are seven different ethnic groups who live within six districts on the boundaries of Murchison Falls Conservation Area. Uganda-based NGO Soft Power Education (SPE) is currently working in Buliisa District, situated south of the Nile and west of the park boundary. Buliisa is one of Uganda’s forgotten rural districts, known only by most as being dry, hot and dusty. Its harsh rural climate does not stop the annual pilgrimage of students from Leeds University, UK who come to volunteer with SPE and build schools. To date more than 20 classrooms have been built.

Under the SPE conceived and run Conservation Education and Community Outreach Programme (CECOP), seven committed Ugandans equipped with a vehicle and an endless supply of passion have taken up the conservation cause. Using their intimate knowledge of their home district, these employees are piloting a project aimed at fostering communitybased environmental conservation initiatives. These are not the “conservation for conservation’s sake” ideas that have failed time and time again both in Uganda and elsewhere, but instead the approach is one that translates to local communities, focusing on people’s livelihoods. In understanding current issues and traditional ways of sustainable living, the SPE team is hoping to encourage viable, community initiated alternatives to poaching, overfishing and deforestation. Another way SPE has cultivated an alternative mode of development is through its museum exhibition. Launched at the Uganda Museum in April, this educational exhibition seeks to link history, culture and conservation. By displaying some of the details described above the visitor can explore the glamour and heartache experienced in one conservation area.