Kibale National Park
Description of the Socio-Economic Environment
The region surrounding Kibale National Park is densely populated, primarily by people from the indigenous Batoro and Bakiga ethnic groups. The region's dense population results from high birth rates and immigration from the populous Kabale and Rukungiri districts of southwestern Uganda.
Most people in the region are subsistence agriculturists, growing bananas, ground nuts, sweet potatoes, and sugar cane. Occasionally crops are sold for income. Human pressure on the land is greatest in the north (where tea estates average two acres per family) and least in the east and south. A fallow system of one-to-two years is used to maintain soil fertility, mainly in the agricultural north. Small timber and fuelwood plantations of exotic tree species, especially eucalyptus, are scattered across the area. Other activities include brewing of local beer, working in tea plantations, fishing, and limited livestock production in the southern portion of the Park.
Local communities have relied extensively on the forest in the past for
a wide range of products and services, including logging, hunting, cultivation
of crops, collection of medicinal plants, firewood, poles, crafts materials,
and the harvesting of wild coffee for income. The region's rapidly growing
population, coupled with poor agricultural practices and political instability
during the 1970s and early 1980s, led to illegal settlement in the Park,
especially within the former Kibale Corridor Game Reserve. The settlers
were evicted in 1992.
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