By Charles Ankunda
After weeks of Ping-Pong between various stakeholders, Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary has been reopened to the general public for tourism effective Thursday, June 10, 2021.
The sanctuary, a home of 33 Rhinos, is located in the central Ugandan district of Nakasongola- 176km (100 miles) north of Kampala (the capital and largest city of Uganda) on the Gulu highway towards Murchison Falls (branch off at Nakitoma Trading centre).
This comes after Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA), and Ziwa Rhino and Wildlife Ranches (ZRWR) agreed to jointly manage the sanctuary which had previously been embroiled in management woes by its stakeholders.
Moving forward, with the departure of alleged trouble causer Rhino Fund Uganda (RFU) that was managing the rhinos, the rhino breeding programme will continue, according to a press statement signed by UWA’s Executive Director Sam Mwandha and Charles Joseph Roy, the managing director ZRWR.
“The current 33 southern white rhinos received from Rhino Fund Uganda are in good health. We assure the public that the sanctuary will continue to be a center of excellence in rhino breeding,” UWA added.
The statement adds: “UWA and ZRWR will coordinate and jointly deploy staff at the sanctuary with UWA taking up the central role of Rhino security, monitoring and provision of veterinary services to the Rhinos.”
ZRWR has also committed to avail land for the breeding and to put in space sound management systems to prevent the occurrence of events that had led to its closure.
The sanctuary had been closed to tourism by UWA in April 2021, after disagreements stemming from management between RFU and Roy, the land owner where sanctuary is established.
This prompted Uganda Wildlife Authority to deploy security at the sanctuary to ensure that the security of the rhinos is not compromised. According to UWA, the misunderstanding necessitated the deployment and closure to appropriately secure the rhinos until the conflict was resolved. The Authority says this was in line with its mandate to protect wildlife resources in Uganda in accordance with the Uganda Wildlife Act, 2019.
GENESIS OF WOES
In 2002, Roy offered his 16,000 acres of land to act as a sanctuary to the rhinos for a period of 30 years. To its effect, Ziwa Ranchers Ltd, a land management company teamed up with the UWA and the Rhino Fund to reintroduce southern white rhinos in Uganda in 2005, an idea that conservationists today call a success story.
The long-term goal of the sanctuary was to build a sustainable rhino population and relocate them into Uganda’s protected areas. The sanctuary started with six animals but now boasts 33 of them. UWA recently completed a feasibility study to guide and relocate the rhinos into the wild. The Sanctuary has been under the management of Rhino Fund Uganda (RFU), a non-government organization. However, about four years ago, a land row broke out between RFU and Wildlife Ranches (ZRWR), the owners of the 16,000 acres of land where rhinos are being kept.
In 2020, after a series of meetings with President Yoweri Museveni and the Ministry of Tourism, the two parties signed a fresh five-year memorandum of understanding for the continuance of the flagship project, the rhino breeding program and safety of rhinos at Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary. The Memorandum of Understanding suffered setbacks in March 2021 when Roy ordered Uganda Wildlife Authority to relocate the rhinos.