The wildlife of Uganda

Uganda

Uganda , officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. Uganda is also known as the "Pearl of Africa". It is bordered on the east by Kenya, on the north by South Sudan, on the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on the southwest by Rwanda, and on the south by...

 is composed of its flora

Flora

Flora is the plant life occurring in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring or indigenous—native plant life. The corresponding term for animals is fauna.-Etymology:...

 and fauna

Fauna

Fauna or faunæ is all of the animal life of any particular region or time. The corresponding term for plants is flora.Zoologists and paleontologists use fauna to refer to a typical collection of animals found in a specific time or place, e.g. the "Sonoran Desert fauna" or the "Burgess shale fauna"...

.
Uganda has 364 species of mammals and 1062 species of birds.

Conservation

WCS

Wildlife Conservation Society

The Wildlife Conservation Society based at the Bronx Zoo was founded in 1895 as the New York Zoological Society and currently manages some of wild places around the world, with over 500 field conservation projects in 60 countries, and 200 scientists on staff...

 began conservation work in Uganda through conducting biological surveys of savanna

Savanna

A savanna, or savannah, is a grassland ecosystem characterized by the trees being sufficiently small or widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to reach the ground to support an unbroken herbaceous layer consisting primarily of C4 grasses.Some...

 parks in 1957. Since then WCS has continued to provide funds for conservation almost every year up to the present despite the era of Idi Amin

Idi Amin

Idi Amin Dada was a military leader and President of Uganda from 1971 to 1979. Amin joined the British colonial regiment, the King's African Rifles in 1946. Eventually he held the rank of Major General in the post-colonial Ugandan Army and became its Commander before seizing power in the military...

 and the civil wars that followed. During the 1970s and 80s, they supported conservation of Kibale Forest, which became a national park in 1993. WCS has supported the building of research and management capacities of Ugandans through aiding student research projects, helping to develop the Institute of Tropical Forest Conservation (ITFC), and more recently providing training to the Uganda Wildlife Authority

Uganda Wildlife Authority

The Ugandan Wildlife Authority is one of the governing bodies that regulates wildlife conservation in Uganda.It was established in August 1996 by the Uganda Wildlife Statute, which merged the Uganda National Parks and the Game Department...

 (UWA) and National Forest Authority (NWA) staff.

The major threats to protected areas include poaching

Poaching

Poaching is the illegal taking of wild plants or animals contrary to local and international conservation and wildlife management laws. Violations of hunting laws and regulations are normally punishable by law and, collectively, such violations are known as poaching.It may be illegal and in...

 for bushmeat, illegal timber

Timber

Timber may refer to:* Timber, a term common in the United Kingdom and Australia for wood materials * Timber, Oregon, an unincorporated community in the U.S...

 harvesting, charcoal

Charcoal

Charcoal is the dark grey residue consisting of carbon, and any remaining ash, obtained by removing water and other volatile constituents from animal and vegetation substances. Charcoal is usually produced by slow pyrolysis, the heating of wood or other substances in the absence of oxygen...

burning and encroachment for farmland. Each of these has degraded protected areas over the past 40 years and led to reduced numbers of wildlife. Better protection in the 1990s has led to a slow but steady increase in many large mammal numbers, but some continue to decline.

WCS is currently supporting projects that build the capacity of Ugandan protected area managers. WCS believes in supporting the national institutions rather than creating parallel ones. Working with the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) over the last two years, they have developed a monitoring and research plan for every national park and wildlife reserve in Uganda. They have led surveys of a complete census of chimpanzees in Uganda and the development of an action plan for their conservation with UWA. A census of the mountain gorilla populations in 2005 have shown increases in the numbers both in Bwindi (320) and the Virungas (380), bringing the total world population to 700. They also conduct surveys in order to develop zoning plans for the forests based on biological criteria.