Dr Rosie Trevelyan of the Tropical Biology Association together with the Kabale University project team and the Team from the Jane Goodall Institute tour some of the forest regeneration sites managed by the Jane Goodall Institute. As part of a Cambridge-Africa ALBORADA Research Fund award of £10,000, Kabale University is engaged in a project to develop landscape restoration capability along the Albertine Rift. The project goal is to contribute to the development of local capacity for landscape restoration in Uganda, and the purpose is to identify the critical technical knowledge and skills gaps hindering ecosystem restoration at the landscape scale in the Albertine Rift portion and how to fill them through collaboration between Kabale University and Cambridge Conservation Initiative.
The team visited sites that were formally degraded through human activity of encroachment for economic purposes. This included charcoal burning, agriculture animal rearing, and lumbering. These highly degraded areas are key areas for flora and fauna in the districts. As Peter Apell the Director at the Jane Goodall Institute explained. A lot of efforts were undertaken to ensure that these areas are further managed and restored to their former tropical forest status. These forests are central to ensuring the ecological balance is restored. This would in the long run ensure that the forests could again become the habitat to the wildlife. Additionally, the community would appreciate better the importance of the forests and their roles.
This project shall involve the creation of long-lasting intervention through the engagement of all relevant stakeholders in policy, conservation, and the University. Dr Fiona Mutekanga of the Faculty of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences is the Principal Investigator for this one-year project. To kick off this project a weeklong stakeholder workshop is being held in Kagadi district. Several issues of conservational importance are being discussed.