Between a "Rock and Hard Place": Leopards in the Firing Line

Uganda will be joining the “leopard-hunters club,” according to a story carried in The New Vision of 8th June 2007. Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) had submitted a proposal to CITIES, seeking authorisation to lift the ban on commercial hunting of leopards in Uganda’s National Parks and Game Reserves. Leopards are some of the endangered species, not only in Uganda but else where in the world. According to UWA, Uganda is thought to have a paltry 2700 leopards – scattered across ten or so protected areas, and living under a constant threat of poaching and habitat conversion. Regrettably, UWA does not have information on leopards’ biological recruitment trends; neither does it know in empirical terms, the impact that hunting stress would have on the leopards’ reproductive behaviour. In essence, UWA’s proposal to lift hunting restrictions on leopards is not backed by any scientific reasoning.

Basic ecological science reveals that stress inhibits biological recruitment. Uganda has already witnessed such responses with the Mountain Gorilla in the south-west of the country. The unresearched proposal to sport-hunt leopards in Uganda’s protected areas tantamount to professional negligence and abuse of public trust on the part of UWA. There is no merit in the assertion that lifting of the ban will enhance community support for conservation no Ugandan will afford to pay the proposed $50,000 for each leopard killed. The “sport” will most likely be a preserve of wealthy foreign tourists. Rather than enhance community support for conservation, legalising leopard hunting might trigger adverse community backlash. It is doubtful whether UWA will repatriate and share revenues accruing from the “sport-hunting” with local communities. While “sport hunters” will no doubt enjoy themselves, local communities will continue experiencing vermin attacks and violent deprivations from protected area resources. At its extreme end, the proposed “sport hunting” of leopards could trigger increased resentment and poaching from the adjacent communities who might take it that after all, government has sold yet again, another natural resource to foreigners.

Not so long ago, the Government of Uganda made a contestable decision to de-gazette and allocate Mabira tropical high forest (Central Uganda) to a private company, which intended to degrade it into a low grade sugar cane plantation. Before the “chickens had come home to roost,” here was UWA, having the audacity to suggest an equally ecologically detestable action. UWA’s sport-hunting proposal is not what Ugandans expected from an institution entrusted to protect and conserve the county’s endangered species. It is tantamount to betrayal of public trust, and reminiscent of a laying chicken, which devours its own eggs! My appeal is that UWA should rescind its absurd proposal.


Denis Mutabazi
July 2007