trappers organization, which sets safety rules
for collection and registers collectors. “God has
blessed Uganda with fertile soil and favorable
environment,” he says, but logging to clear land
for sugarcane and oil palms has destroyed much
bush cricket habitat. And climate change is mak-
ing the rainy seasons unpredictable, affecting
the crickets’ swarming patterns.
“If we just depend on the wild, it may not be
sustainable” for the species’ future, says Geof-
frey Malinga, a senior lecturer at Gulu University,
which has partnered with Makerere Univer-
sity and the University of Copenhagen for the
captive-breeding project’s upcoming field trials.
Cone-headed bush crickets can’t be allowed to
disappear—they’re a crucial protein source forWhen Islam began collecting them in 2017, it
was only for himself and his family. They col-
lected the crickets that were attracted to their
home by a security light.
But the growing market promised a nice
income, and Islam soon set up two commercial
traps. “The nsenene came in big numbers,” says
Islam, a slim man with a deep voice. “We had a
lot of customers who came for them.
“On a good [night] you can get as many as 400
bags,” each weighing up to 110 pounds, “which
we then transport to Kampala and sell,” he says.
But three days on the Harugongo hilltop have
yielded nothing so far.
“The demand for this insect has escalated,”
says Philip Nyeko, an entomologist in the
Department of Forestry, Biodiversity, and Tour-
ism at Makerere University in Kampala. “The
supply, being seasonal, cannot now keep up.”
Nyeko leads a team of researchers developing
a method for farmers to captive-breed the bush
crickets. The goal is to take the pressure off wild
populations, allow for a year-round supply of
nsenene, and provide another source of income
for farmers, whose crops are increasingly at risk
from severe droughts and pests.
But until recently, not much was known about
the biology, ecology, or life cycle of these insects.
The scientists had to start from scratch.
“If you bring them from the wild, under what
conditions do you keep them? Where do you
keep them?” Nyeko says he wondered. What
temperature do they prefer? What foods do they
thrive on? Where will they lay their eggs?
ON A SUNNY MORNING at Katwe, a market in
Kampala, small wooden stalls line a muddy dirt
road that leads to an open playing field. Next to
the stalls are men and women seemingly sitting
idle under large umbrellas.
Then a man appears on foot, carrying a plastic
sack. It’s half-filled with bush crickets. The ven-
dors snap awake and crowd around him. They’re
pulling the bag from all sides, hollering over each
other. How much? Are you bringing more? When?
The man is a bush cricket wholesaler, but he
has little for them today. The half sack is bought
by a middle-age man with a nearby stall. Every-
one else slumps away disappointed, hoping to be
able to afford the next sack—whenever it comes.
The problem is not just overharvesting, says
Hajji Quraish Katongole, head of the Old Masaka
Basenene Association Limited, the national
Namuna Mzee picks
nsenene off a stalk of
corn. Unlike the crick-
ets’ locust cousins—
responsible for
outbreaks across East
Africa that devastate
crops and livelihoods—
these hoppers are not
usually as destructive
in Uganda, where they
create jobs for col-
lectors and vendors.
Climate change has
intensified locust out-
breaks, but it poses
a threat to the bush
cricket, whose life cycle
is closely tied to pre-
dictable rainy seasons.130 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC