Uganda Safari News

UWA (Uganda Wildlife Authority) offered a holiday trip to the five winners of the Easter wildlife road trip competition. The trip was the first of the holiday packages UWA will be offering on different public holidays. Moses Mapesa, the UWA executive director said the move was aimed at boosting Uganda’s tourism sector. He noted that Ugandans have a misconception that tourism trips are for foreigners only. He also said that Ugandans should enjoy these privileges before foreigners.

The trip budgeted at sh23m was co-sponsored by USAID-STAR and Power FM. Over 200 people participated in the competition. The winners were Prudence Sekoma, a front desk manager at Crested Towers, Oliver Kasita, an IT student at Makerere University, Nicholas Owori, also a student at Makerere, Allan Mugisha and Angel Semakula. They left the following day for a 4 days trip to Lake Mburo, Kibale and Queen Elizabeth National Parks.

The Uganda Wildlife Authority has started habituating another group of gorillas in a bid to enlarge tourism in the southern part of the Bwindi National Park in south-western Uganda. Sam Mwandha, the director of conservation told The New Vision on Monday that habituation of the Bikingi gorilla group begun recently.

He said that it is too early to say when they will be able to accept human presence and plans to establish this in the next few months. Bikingi is the 8th group to be habituated out of the 34 found in Bwindi Forest in 20 years. Lately, Nsongi, another gorilla group in the southern part of Bwindi, was habituated. Bitukura, Mubare, Habinyanja, Nkuringo, Rushegura and Kyaguriro are the other habituated groups.

Mwandha said after Bikingi, no more gorillas will be habituated until 2012. More than half the 760 gorillas in the world are found in Bwindi. Gorilla tracking contributes between 40% and 50% of the tourism revenue.

The Uganda Tourism Board is leading a team of 18 companies to Madrid, Spain to take part in the 30th edition of Fitur. Fitur is an international tourism trade fair slated for January 20 to 24, which will give specific attention to sustainability in the hotel industry. It is a gathering point for tourism advertising agencies, operators, hoteliers, travel agencies, consultants and experts in international tourism management and development.

“We are aware that Spain is a big tourism market. We want to win over their tour agencies as well as show Spaniards Uganda’s unique tourism sites”, said the UTB marketing and public relations manager, Mr Edwin Muzahura. UTB has also booked a press meeting where they will brief the Spanish media about the tourism industry in Uganda and Mr Serapio Rukundo will address this press meeting.

Another rhino was born on the night of January 2, at the Nakasongola Rhino Sanctuary. 2 others were born last year. This brings the total number of rhinos at the sanctuary to 9

“We have started the New Year with another birth and are excited about the birth and the prospects it will bring to the sanctuary” said Angie Genade, who heads the Rhino Fund Uganda. She said that there are 3 adult males and 3 females as well as 2 baby males born last year. Accoding to Angie Genade, it is too early to establish the gender of the new baby because the mother is very protective and keeping away from the larger group.  Kori, one of the four rhinos who moved from Solio ranch in Kenya to the sanctuary four years ago, mothered the new baby. Angie said the business community would be involved in naming the baby in a bid to fundraise for the sanctuary.

Rhinos are categorized as endangered species. They are mostly hunted for their horns, which are used to make expensive daggers and aphrodisiacs in the Middle East. In the last 20 years, global conservation efforts have contributed to the increase in the population of rhinos.

This year’s International Virgin Holidays Awards for responsible tourism has been won by The Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary, for its effort to promote wildlife and environmental preservation through ecotourism. The imperative awards are in collaboration with the UK international travel directory www.responsibletravel.com, the UK’s Telegraph newspaper, Geographical Magazine as well as the World Travel Market. The awards were introduced to recognize individuals, companies and organizations in the travel industry that are committed to biodiversity management.

The chimp sanctuary won in the category of “Best for Conservation and Wildlife Habitat” and competed alongside 140 other tourism companies nominated from all over the world. The European Union (EU) head of delegation in Uganda, Vincent de Visscher, presented the award to Lily Ajarova, the managing director of Chimpanzee Sanctuary & Wildlife Conservation Trust, the NGO that manages Ngamba. He said the chimp sanctuary could be emulated in Uganda in environmental protection and ecotourism which has created jobs for Ugandans. The ceremony was held at the Ngamba Island in Mukono and was attended by representatives from Japan as well as the EU member states of France and Germany.

The chimp sanctuary was founded in 1998 and now has 44 orphaned chimpanzees which were found either injured in the wild or were recovered from animal traffickers. It is also a member of the Pan African Sanctuaries Alliance (PASA), an association of primate sanctuaries in African countries. An estimated 200,000 chimps remain in 21 African countries, of which about 5,000 are found in Uganda’s forests as well as on private land mainly in western Uganda.

The Uganda Wildlife Authority has called upon firms that are interested in developing and managing balloon tourism in the Lake Mburo National Park. The National Park occupies 260 sq km and is positioned in the Southeast part of Uganda, along the main road between Masaka and Mbarara. It has both animal life and natural lakes. It is famed for both a huge number of animals including hippos, crocodile, antelopes, abundant bird species and, unusual fauna and flora. Balloon tourism will be relatively new in Uganda being that it already exists in both Kenya and Tanzania. This activity will represent an innovation on the part of UWA to bring in more tourists to the country’s underexploited natural resources.