By Godwin Abedican

Arua

On 11^th December 2008 Arua district local government together with Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Uganda Wildlife Safaris, a private developer for the facilitation of a sustainable management and utilization of wild life at Ajai wildlife reserve through enhancement of good practices of wild life management, ensuring that the local community is developed and also improving on the livelihood of the people around the reserve.

The MOU signed on 11^th December 2008 was supposed run for twenty (20) years until the 10^th of December 2028, but fifteen (15) years later, Arua district local government together with UWA have been forced to call an end to the MOU due to failure by Uganda Wildlife safaris to implement the activities in the agreement.As part of the agreement, the performance of the memorandum was to be reviewed after every five years, and during the third review on 31^st of March 2023, there was a call for an immediate cease of the MOU which took immediate effect.  
 
Alfred Okuonzi, the district chairperson Arua admits that there were loopholes in execution of the memorandum hence affecting the outcome of the targets set. “As the chairman of the district, I felt it very important that this MOU must be terminated because I don’t see it being effectively executed with the partner, the best is to terminate the partnership,” Okuonzi said.

Ismail Drabe Adris the district chairperson Madi Okollo expressed hope that Ajai Wildlife reserve can still be restored if the right practices are brought on board. “The issue of Ajai Wildlife reserve has been haunting us for long since we obtained district status but we didn’t know what best to do because the then agreement was between Arua district and UWA. When we started operating as a district we wanted to know what was taking place in Ajai but we had no answers. Now that we have dissolved this agreement, I am happy because Uganda Wildlife Safaris did not do anything in the last 15 years at Ajai Wildlife Reserve. We have been looking for them. I know this time together with UWA we shall do all it takes to bring a new life to Ajai Wildlife Reserve,” Drabe Explained.   

However the operations manager for Uganda Wildlife Safaris, Isaac Mubiru, while responding to the blames over failure to live up to the terms of the MOU, attributes the failure of the program to lack of cooperation from other partners in the agreement. He says as Uganda Wildlife Safaris, they did their part and were not being supported. “We chose Ajia Wildlife reserve because it has a history of Rhinos and for a lot of reasons, they got poached and eventually they were no more. We took it as a potential area because it had ever accommodated wild life with a vision that we should translocate more wildlife. Conservation needs time.

UWA was tasked with the job of trans-locating more Wildlife in the area as we protect what is already there, that has not happened for a very long time” Mubiru explained. He says continuing with the implementation of the MOU eventually became non-viable since they would not make any gains. “Our vision was to reintroduce white Rhinos which is a very expensive venture, it is I the billions of shillings. We were about to do that and we laid out challenges that we want to reintroduce Rhinos. We have local challenges, there are roads that are crisscrossing the game reserve. The reason why those white rhinos actually got poached and got extinct from Ajai is because they were poached. We don’t want to run the same risk. We asked UWA and Ministry of Tourism for the roads to be blocked, so that we can then invest in a fence to make sure that we reintroduce Rhinos with security and protection that was also a mission which never happened because the amount of money you would spend, you cannot accept to have roads crossing through the reserve. And over time you realize that you are conserving but you are only conserving and the rest of the partners are not helping,” he explained.

According to him the developers who will be handed over the management still have a number of challenges to encounter including dealing with encroachments. “I want to say that, it is the same challenges that whoever will takeover will face. The roads crossing in the reserve need to be done with. By the time we took over five hundred and after 5 years  communities there were around five hundred people who had encroached and right now  I can trust, I tell you, it is over a thousand that there are there and getting them out will be another big issue,” Mubiru narrated.

Pamela Anying, the manager community benefits and wildlife enterprises Uganda wildlife authority distances herself from blaming the community for the entire failure of the program. “I wouldn’t say really that the community played a big role in the down fall, it was really something that was so natural that happened because we signed this agreement for the purpose of benefiting the community. UWA is working closely with all the partners around to make sure the partners benefit, the communities also benefit and eventually when they benefit it also benefits conservation. At the time of signing this memorandum, at that time the population of wildlife in the area was low and we anticipated that maybe with more efforts the population would increase which would determine the benefits but it didn’t really work out like we anticipated so we had to halt this collaborative management agreement and at other strategies,” Anying said.

According to her the alternative of tourism can be the next option where the reserve has to be restocked and the community brought fully onboard to avert some of the challenges the previous management faced from the communities since the hunting is not viable anymore.

John Makombo (Standing), the Director Conservation UWA

John Makombo, the Director Conservation Uganda Wildlife Authority says the terms of termination of the agreement were neutral enough since Uganda wildlife safaris did not meet the targets stipulated in the MOU. “Uganda Wildlife Safaris informed us that the wildlife population is small and yet that was one of the responsibilities that it was supposed to deliver, introducing new wildlife in to the reserve. Because of this and other challenges they stated like the Coovid19 effect, inability to manage the requirements internationally and nationally for the reintroduction of species like Rhinos as well as the challenge of continued occupation of the area by communities, it became inevitable for the partners in the agreement to continue with the memorandum, Makombo narrated.

Located in the former Arua district, before the operationalization of the current Madi Okollo district that was curved out of Arua district, Ajai Wildlife Reserve is a conservation protected area which was gazetted in 1965 and currently covers 166 square kilometers. 

COVER PHOTO: The leaders in agroup photo By Godwin Abedican