“Making Bush Meat Poachers Willingly Surrender Using Integrated Poachers Awareness Programme: A Case of Murchison Falls National Park, Uganda”.

S S. Kato, J O Okumu.

Abstract

This paper is an interesting analysis of a unique case in MFPA, one of the East African National Parks in Uganda, where wild animal poachers are targeted in an intensive integrated education and awareness programme that makes them publicly surrender with their tools. The paper brings out yet another important approach that emphasizes that for sustainable management of a protected area to be attained, involvement of local community is very important as opposed to the traditional approach of law enforcement, a practice prominent in the last century with limited success. MFPA was one of the most tourists’ destinations in the 1960s only to be devastated during Uganda’s civil unrest of 1970s and 1980s owing to the lack of awareness by the local communities that the resources in the PA are important to them too.

As the wildlife population is steadily increasing in MFPA, any approach such as the above that has demonstrated a positive move towards sustainable management is welcome. It is a strategy, which can be tried in other protected areas especially in the tropics.

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