Museven ordered to shoot Poachers on Sight

Due to very many reports from the Uganda wildlife authority and the complaints from Uganda’s Karamoja State Minister Babra Nekesa Oudo who indicated that poaching is still a key problem accounting to the loss of very many animals and affecting Uganda’s national parks including kidepo.

The president of Uganda Yoweri Kaguta Museven who looked aggravated, gave authority to the Uganda people’s defense force (UPDF) and the Uganda wildlife authority a go ahead to short poachers on sight if found in a national park, all these was said when Kidepo national park was making 50 years of experience and the park was recently voted by the Cable News Network as Africa’s third wilderness park last year.

As he was speaking he said that how can some one fail to respect another person’s home? Most of the poachers come from neighboring countries such as south Sudan (the Topossa) and from Kenya (the Turkans) who are still armed disturbing and kill our people and raid our wildlife. ‘

’He added that any body who enters the country with a gun should be shot, he said if they can’t he will come and do it him self. The present was so much concerned since he knows that the tourism industry earned Uganda US$1.3 billion last year and had 1.5 million visitors so if poachers continues to kill animals it will count to a lot of loss on Uganda’s foreign earning so a quick response must be done. ‘’Said museveni’’. He gave advice to the people of Karamoja to build more hostels, lodges and also grow more food to tap into the benefits of tourism which is fast growing in the country.
“Spain only receives more than 50million tourists a year and they earn about US$23billion from tourism yet they don’t have all that we have in Uganda we have mountain gorillas in bwindi national park which are rarely seen and many tourist would love to come to Uganda and see these species which are fabulous fan to watch in their natural settings plus, the tree climbing lions only seen in Uganda’s Queen Elizabeth National Park in the ishasha sector of the park plus a number of wildlife found in Uganda’s 10 national parks.

So Uganda has potential to earn more than what Spain earns, indeed Ugandans need to open their eyes and stop poaching,” he added. The President promised to further consolidate peace in the Karamoja region while improving the road networks which are a major challenge to tourism in the area .The disarmament program which created peace in Karamoja region has resulted into an increase in the revenue collected from Kidepo national park from Shs 295million in the year 2010 to Shs 466 in 2012/13 said the executive director Dr Seguya Andrew.

He added that what was collected in 2013 was just 20 percent, more is expected to be collected which means more money and increased revenue for our communities and the country in general hence the need to conserve our wildlife. The executive director also talked about the plans to establish new tourism activities at various identified rocks within kidepo and also develop the hot springs as tourism activity all these will attract more tourists to the park. He also promised to introduce hiking in Morungole hills and transform old structures in Apoka tourism center into modern accommodation facilities. Hence increasing on revenue collected from the park hence increasing on revenue collected from the park