Community Conservation Around Murchison Falls National Park
The elephants and lions get the attention, but the future of Murchison Falls National Park is being decided in the villages just outside the boundary. Hundreds of thousands of people farm, fish and gather firewood within a few kilometres of the park, and their choices — to protect wildlife or to snare it — shape what survives inside. Conservation here is not something done to communities; increasingly it is something done by them.
This guide looks at how frontline communities around Murchison actually take part in protecting the park: the revenue-sharing money that flows back from your gate fee, the wildlife scouts and reformed poachers keeping watch, the trenches and beehive fences holding back crop-raiding elephants, and the beekeeping, crafts and tourism jobs that make a living wildebeest worth more alive than dead.
Why Community Buy-In Matters
Murchison is ringed by six districts — Nwoya, Kiryandongo, Buliisa, Pakwach, Masindi and Oyam — where most families depend on subsistence farming and fishing. When crops fail, the park becomes the fallback economy, and its wildlife pays the price.
The scale of the problem is sobering. Murchison has been assessed as having the highest density of wire snares of any protected area in sub-Saharan Africa, and a single park survey found snaring injuries on 52 lions and 135 giraffes. Snares set for bushmeat are indiscriminate — they maim the threatened Rothschild’s giraffe and lion as readily as an antelope. No fence or ranger patrol can hold a boundary this long unless the people living along it want the animals to stay.
Your Gate Fee Comes Back: Revenue Sharing
Under Uganda’s Wildlife Act, the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) is legally obliged to return 20% of park entry fees to the local governments bordering the park. It is a direct thread between the ticket you buy at the gate and a classroom or borehole in a village down the road.
The sums are real. In one recent handover UWA disbursed about Shs 2.9 billion to Murchison’s neighbouring districts, and a later financial year saw Shs 3.15 billion shared out; between 2003 and the early 2020s roughly Shs 14–15 billion had reached these communities. Districts keep 5% for administration and pass 95% on to the sub-counties, and — importantly — only villages that actually share a boundary with the park qualify, because they bear the heaviest costs of living with wildlife.
The money funds community-chosen projects: school buildings, health centres, water sources and income schemes such as piggeries, tree planting and beekeeping. The principle is simple but powerful — when a family can point to the school their children attend and say the park paid for it, wildlife stops being only a threat.
Living With Elephants: Trenches, Bees and Chilli
The sharpest edge of coexistence is crop-raiding by elephants. With two cropping seasons, communities near Murchison face raids for much of the year, and losses run into hundreds of acres and hundreds of millions of shillings annually. In one grim period the Acholi paramount chief even declared that any elephant straying onto community land should be killed — though the elephant remains the Acholi totem, and the desire to coexist runs deep.
Communities and their partners have tried a spread of defences, most requiring local labour and upkeep. Deep boundary trenches, dug by hand by paid community members, act as a physical barrier. Beehive fences use elephants’ fear of bees to turn them back, while doubling as a honey business. Chilli — grown, dried into bricks and burnt, or hung as a scent-repellent fence — deters raiders cheaply, and has grown into a saleable crop in its own right through “model conservation villages”.
None of it is a silver bullet. Beehives near one ranger post were abandoned when maintenance lapsed, and UWA has since built a 44-kilometre electric fence along the northern boundary, part of a planned 101 kilometres. Bees and chilli work best on baboons and monkeys; fences and trenches on elephants and buffalo. The lasting lesson is that mitigation only holds when the community owns it.
From Poachers to Protectors
Some of the park’s most effective guardians once hunted it. Community wildlife scout programmes recruit local volunteers — trained and equipped — to protect crops and livestock, monitor elephant movements, respond to incursions and report poaching, often through a toll-free hotline. In one village near the southern boundary a group calls itself simply “The Reformed Poachers”, passing rangers word when outsiders slip into the park.
The most striking scheme is Snares to Wares, which employs converted poachers and at-risk youth in Pakwach to turn confiscated wire snares into sculptures of the very animals they used to kill — lions, elephants and giraffes. It builds on the community’s heritage as skilled reed-basket weavers, removes lethal wire from the landscape, and pays a legal wage where few existed. Elsewhere, communities have drafted their own bylaws against poaching, endorsed by district authorities and aligned with the Wildlife Act.
New Livelihoods: Honey, Crafts and Tourism Jobs
Underpinning all of it is a plain economic truth: people poach when they have no alternative. Beekeeping has been adopted by hundreds of households around Murchison, delivering a triple win — income from honey and beeswax, better food security, and elephants kept at bay. Communities have also planted thousands of fruit and woodlot trees, easing pressure on park firewood while forming buffer zones along wildlife corridors.
Tourism itself is the biggest lever. Craft cooperatives, guiding, lodge employment and village visits channel visitor money directly to families — as at the Boomu community near the southern gate, the Acholi north of the Nile and the Alur around Pakwach. Enterprise and savings schemes tied to scout households have measurably lifted daily meals and protein intake within a year. When wildlife funds schools, water and roads, protecting it becomes common sense rather than charity.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Does my park fee really help local communities?
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Yes. By law, 20% of UWA’s park entry fees is returned to the local governments bordering Murchison, funding schools, clinics, water sources and income projects in the villages that share the park boundary. Buying crafts, staying in community bandas and joining village tours adds a further, direct contribution.
- What is being done about crop-raiding elephants?
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A mix of measures: hand-dug boundary trenches, beehive fences, chilli repellents and, most recently, a 44-kilometre electric fence along the northern boundary. Community wildlife scouts also monitor and respond to raids. Each works on different animals, so they are used in combination.
- Can I visit a community project during my safari?
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Absolutely, and it is one of the most rewarding half-days on any Murchison trip. Village walks, craft workshops, beekeeping visits and cultural performances are easily added to a game-drive itinerary, and the money stays local.
Plan Your Safari
A Murchison safari can do more than tick off the Big Four — it can put money and momentum behind the people keeping this landscape wild. We build community visits, craft-cooperative stops and cultural encounters into our Uganda safari packages so your trip supports conservation at the source. Talk to our team about pairing classic game drives and the Nile boat cruise with an afternoon among the communities who share their home ground with Murchison’s wildlife.