of the Budongo Forest Reserve. This land is being chipped away every day as new
immigrants arrive and search for a place to grow their crops. First they cut down the
trees, then they burn them and the branches, and lastly they clear the undergrowth, hoe
the land, plant their crops and build a house. The NFA has been making strenuous efforts
to stop encroachment of Reserve forest and I hope they are able to do so.
Encroachment is not, of course, specific to Budongo. Forests containing primates are
threatened world-wide by fragmentation (Marsh 2002). In Uganda, because of the
constant, daily need for wood fuel and for building poles, not to mention sawn timber,
forest land outside Protected Areas (and to some extent inside them) is being depleted of
its trees. To the south of Budongo lies the Bugoma Forest where encroachment can be
seen from the road. Many other forests — private, communal and national — have been
encroached or even removed. From 10% of Uganda’s land cover, natural forests were
reduced to 2%–3% in the past (Hamilton 1984; Howard 1991) and this process is con-
tinuing. Often encroachment begins with forest outliers, as we have seen in the case of
Kasokwa Forest Reserve (Chapter 11). Hamilton (1984) already showed such encroach-
ment in his map of the area to the southeast of Budongo, which was based on a special
study of this area (Fig. 12.2).
The modern setting 225Fig. 12.1: Encroachment at the edge of the Budongo Forest (photo: J. Wallis).