Human-Wildlife Conflict in Murchison Falls National Park, Uganda

Uganda, the pearl of Africa is endowed with rich biodiversity including flora, fauna, avi-fauna, reptiles and insects. People have been happily interacting with wildlife due to low population and limited technology that allowed for largely symbiotic balanced relationship between people and environment. Over the years conflicts between wildlife and people are increasing, making conservation a challenge with many of critically endangered wildlife / habitats disappearing either due to retaliation by communities, in revenge for the damages caused by wildlife to their property, increased human needs and populations. This book equips managers of national parks and other biodiversity conservation hotspots with skills to improve their performance towards the long-standing human-wildlife conflicts and hence harmonize the community–park relations. The investigation confirmed that the extent of wildlife conflicts was dependent on the level of staff performance and recommended managers to employ the need based theory in conflict management, adaptive management in human-wildlife conflict handling and giving first priority to reported cases and foil them before any damages is caused.