Uganda is a country both marked by natural beauty and still scarred by civil war. One needn’t travel far to see evidence of both, particularly in the northern stretches of the country. Palm trees dot stretches of wideopen grassland, while people who decades ago fled the terror of the Lord’s Resistance Army now battle to keep elephants off their farmland.
Chilies may be an unlikely way to promote biodiversity conservation, but under the USAID/Uganda Biodiversity Programme, AWF and Uganda Wildlife Authority have used it to raise community incomes and minimise human-elephant conflict.
Credit: Brian McBrearity
It is in this context that AWF has been implementing the US Agency for International Development (USAID)/ Uganda Biodiversity Programme for the past four years. The programme works to achieve sustainable biodiversity conservation around five protected areas – three national parks and two forest reserves – while also promoting local economic growth in one of the poorest countries in the world. The projects range from building wildlife authority capacity in ecological monitoring to implementing livelihood projects for communities living around the protected areas, which include Murchison Falls, Kidepo Valley and Lake Mburo National Parks, and Kalinzu and Budongo Central Forest Reserves.