Breaking News: As Kabale Residents Focus on Politics, Echuya Forest Being Destroyed...Please Save Echuya. By Goodluck Musinguzi NFA staffs clear off Echuya forest (Orugano) for potato growing! According to the 2013 statistical abstract compiled by Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS), showing a statistical summary on various socio-economic indicators for Uganda, woodlands cover declined by about 26 percent between 1990 and 2005. Total forest cover declined by 27 percent between 1990 and 2005 while the annual percentage change of forest cover was indicated as negative 1.8 percent. Such figures show that Uganda is heading for an environmental catastrophe if nothing is done in the immediate future. Despite government’s effort to encourage tree planting through projects such as Sawlog Production Grant Scheme (SPGS), Farm Income Enhancement and Forest Conservation (FIEFOC), National Forestry Authority (NFA) re-planting in forest reserves and among communities, a lot of uncontrolled deforestation is being done countrywide. The paradox is that most times, the body responsible for sound forest management in this country is responsible for degradation of highly critical ecosystems under natural forest cover. A case in point is the Echuya Central Forest Reserve on the Kabale-Kisoro border that has been gravely run down by NFA staff under the guise of establishing of tree seed stands/trials. The once healthy thick forest with high altitude bamboo has been turned into potato gardens by its managers. After cutting down all the bamboo under licence, agricultural encroachment has been permitted contrary to main purpose and principles of managing natural forests. NFA staff in their wisdom have cut down natural forest cover despite its myriad ecosystem services and have scattered pine trees in the now turned massive potato production zone in Kigezi region. The run down Echuya forest is a source of water for communities and their livestock in addition to being a potential ecotourism site because of its strategic location as a gate way to the gorilla tourism region and the rarity of both animal and plant species that inhabit this alpine habitat. The custodians of our forests have turned against their existence which will in the long run affect us when the water dries up, rains disappear and the bamboo is nowhere. Hunger and poverty will finish the communities who have depended on the forest for ages while the NFA managers will have made a fortune out of a national natural resource. This impunity must stop and someone has to be brought to book to account for the “intentional mistakes” not backed by sound reasoning that are massively degrading of our prized Echuya forest. Has NFA’s mandate changed from forest management to potato production? Who will control agricultural encroachment in our forests when the forest managers and their patrolmen are practicing agriculture in the middle of virgin natural forests? The communities will follow suit and our forests will be long gone in a twinkling of an eye. Someone has to be patriotic and practice professionalism when entrusted with a national resource like Echuya forest. Let the powers that be save our forests now.
Posted on: Mon, 03 Nov 2014 14:52:13 +0000
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