The effects of refugee settlement on wildlife habitats; case study: Pagirinya settlement, Adjumani district

Abstract

The growing burden of the refugee question facing Uganda is enormous, Uganda today has a refugee population of over 1.4 million refugees making Uganda the number one refugee hosting country in Africa and second in the world behind Turkey which hosts 3.5 million refugees (UNHCR 2018). Notwithstanding the diverse causes of the refugee crisis in great lakes region, the refugees have to be settled. Globally, the question of how and where the refugees settle is a pertinent one. With Ugandan government been praised by the international community for having a progressive open door policy to all refugees regardless their country of origin, there still remain questions how this impacts the environment, especially wildlife habitat with majority of the settlements seemly located in and around the game reserves. Against this background, this study qualitatively explored the extent to which refugee settlement has affected wildlife habitat. Using interviews, observation, focus group discussion various data was gathered from purposively sampled population among which included the district environment officer, Uganda wildlife authority officers, local councilors and opinion leaders based on their expertise on the subject. While the study randomly sampled refuges representative, staff of NGO, members from local community with the view of giving all members equal chances for selected to participant in the study. The Government of Uganda and all administrative levels starting from the LC1 to LC5 the results from this study indicate that lack of enough fire wood is the leading factor to the environmental distraction and cutting down of trees in and around the settlement. In addition, the establishment of Pagirinya refuges settlement has effected wildlife habitats in Adjumani District. Farming, hunting, grazing, tree cutting, setting of forest fire and encroachment to protected areas resulted into a decrease in wildlife populations and habitats. All in all, working together as a team without leaving the burden to the government alone on how to rehabilitation the degraded areas, thorough environmental impact assessments. In nutshell involving key stakeholders starting from village level to national level, instead of leaving this activity to conservation to organizations that is; NGOs, UNHCR and central government alone. Further ecological studies should be undertaken in order to understand the importance of maintenance of vegetation cover in the environment. NFA, NEMA and all other agencies by working together to protect the environment and habitat for wildlife.