The Murchison Falls National Park lies at the northern end of the Albertine Rift Valley, where the bulky Bunyoro escarpment merges into the vast plains of Acholiland. The park is one of Uganda’s oldest conservation areas, it was initially gazetted as a game reserve in 1926 to protect a savanna that Winston Churchill described in 1907 as ‘Kew Gardens and the zoo combined on an unlimited scale’.
Murchison Falls has received many notable foreign visitors. In 1907, Winston Churchill hiked, boated and bicycled up the Nile corridor to the Falls. He was followed by Theodore Roosevelt in 1909 during a hunting safari that cost, by today’s prices, a phenomenal US$1.8m! Several other British royals including Theodore Roosevelt, and Ernest Hemingway visited the Murchison Falls National Park and were amazed by the spectacular scenery of the park, covered by lash savannas, untamed wilderness and savannas, split through the middle by the dramatic river Nile.
Sleeping sickness decimated the inhabitants of an area of approximately 13,000Km2 during the period of 1907 and 1912. This paved way for the establishment of the Bunyoro Game Reserve in 1910, which is now part of the National Park in Masindi District. With time, the boundaries were extended into Gulu district, north of the river, and the resulting protected area became known as the Bunyoro-Gulu Game Reserve in 1928.
Established in 1932, Budongo Forest Reserve became the first commercial logging concession in Uganda and is one of the most intensively studied “working” Forest in the world to date.
The frontiers of this forest continued to expand over the next thirty years until their reached the current size of 825Km2. As the locals continued to lose hand, a lot of animosity was created as people never quite knew where the boundaries ended due to the frequent changes. Because of the reduction of hunting in the Bunyoro-Gulu Game Reserve, the animal population increased, which justified upgrading the reserve to Murchison Falls national Park. In 1952, the British administration established the National Parks Act of Uganda. By the mid 1960’s, Murchison Falls had become the prime safari destination in all of East Africa, with well over 60,000 visitors annually.
In 1951, the Falls provided a backdrop for Humphrey Bogart in John Huston’s famous movie, The African Queen which was filmed on location along the Murchison Nile and on Lake Albert. British royals have also visited Murchison, the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) in 1930 and the Queen Mother in 1959. The least happy celebrity visitor was Ernest Hemingway in 1 954 who literally dropped in. His intention was simply to overfly the waterfall but his plane clipped an old telegraph wire strung across the gorge and cartwheeled into the riverine forest. Hemingway and his wife were rescued and taken to Butiaba where their rescue plane crashed on takeoff.The park is bisected by the Victoria Nile which first races down 80km of whitewater rapids before plunging 40m over the remnant rift valley wall at Murchison Falls, the centerpiece of the park.
When the sleeping sickness outbreak was put into check, people began to populate the areas around the new park. It was deemed prudent to establish a buffer zone of controlled-use lands around the park, to mitigate encroachment and poaching pressures. In 1963, the Karuma and Bugungu Controlled Hunting Areas, which were later upgraded to game Reserves, were established. Karuma was upgraded in 1964 while Bugungu in 1968. The establishment if the National parks Act led to the forced eviction of come of the villages and new moratoriums on hunting.
From the late 1970s to the mid 1980s, the increasing number of mammals came to an abrupt end as Amin and later Milton Obote’s armies started shooting animals either for target practice or for food. There was great extinction of wildlife in Murchison Falls National Park in the 1970’s as a result of poaching that was a result of bad governance during Idi Amin regime. A combination of political mayhem and decreasing numbers of animals in the 1970’s and 80s, led to a sharp decline in the number of visitors. The park, which is famed of all the Big Five including elephants, Buffaloes, lion, leopard, Rhinos so the Rhinos completely extinguished as a result of poaching.
But the numbers are now steadily increasing due to political stability. Murchison falls is a park, which is surrounded by lands that are not suitable for farming, which has availed less chances of converting the protected area to farmland except in the Karuma Wild Reserve. This gives it a unique position. Since the population around here is still low, a pro-active and inclusive approach can be devised to involve the locals in wildlife management.
The park is a viable breeding population of many rare mammals and bird species which will continue to draw tourists and yet the populations are still well below the carrying capacity of the land. There has been a period of over 20 years of very low impact by animals on the ecosystem due to political mayhem. This means that the park will grow and at the same time create an excellent laboratory to study the resilience of faunal species after a rapid decline, as well as vegetation succession patterns.
This is necessary because almost no ecological research is being done in the conservation area currently.
- The Rhino breeding has since been resumed and are being conserved at Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary in Nakasongora en route to Murchison Falls National park, and will be re-introduced in the park once there is a good number of Rhinos bred.
- Wildlife population in Murchison which include Giraffe, Elephants, Buffalos, lion, leopard, bushbuck, among others have now largely recovered and the population increased.
- Apart from the big five, there are also primates in the park including Chimpanzee, baboons, Vervet monkeys among others. These are found in the Budongo Forest, which is in the southern part of the park.
- The Murchison Falls National park also has the rare bird species including the Shoe Bill which is found on the Albert Nile and can best be seen by taking a boat cruise down to the Nile.