leaves in the lower canopy you see everywhere the signs of disease. Arthropods abound
in the leaf litter on the ground, up every tree stem and into the canopy. In the case of
larger trees, woodpeckers and other birds feed on insects under bark and make holes in
trees, thereby damaging them by allowing bacteria and other disease-bearing organisms
to enter. Trees themselves compete for light and soil nutrients, so that many fail to thrive
and remain static at an early stage of development before dying. And when a large tree
finally dies and falls, it brings several healthy neighbours down with it.
Many trees have uses as timber, notably of course the mahoganies Khayaand
Entandrophragmabut also MiliciaandMaesopsis, which are used for furniture and
house construction,Cynometra, the ironwood tree which was used for flooring,Cordia,
which has a long history of being used for dugout canoe construction, and so on. Kityo
and Plumptre (1997) have described the uses and qualities of many forest tree species.
All these species have at various times been removed from the forest by man, with con-
sequent damage at the felling sites and the skid routes into and out of the forest from and
to the sawmills. Today, as more than a decade ago (Reynolds 1993), the removal of
Budongo’s mahoganies continues sporadically,^1 illegally, as teams of pitsawyers, often
working by night, continue to cream off the most valuable trees in the forest, even in the
Nature Reserves where such activity is truly criminal and damages the forest scientifi-
cally as well as commercially and physically. But the biggest single change to the
composition and dynamics of the forest was the widespread use of arboricides, already
discussed.
Despite (and to some extent because of) the depredations of man, Budongo continues
to be a healthy forest. Here and there we can find a hole in the canopy that has not filled
in after logging. Babweteera (1997, 1998; Babweteera et al. 2000) made studies of gaps
in the forest resulting from felling operations (pitsawing) and found that the forest can
regenerate well if a single tree is removed and the gap formed is less than 400 m^2 and
the canopy is not opened by more than 25%. However, if two or more adjacent trees are
removed and the gap is greater than 400 m^2 or the canopy is more than 25% opened, the
amount of disturbance is too great for the forest to recover naturally with saplings push-
ing up to fill the gap in the canopy. What happens is that we get a tangle of climbers such
asMomordica foetidaand other ground vegetation leading to a bushy undergrowth that
is too thick and too shady for seedlings to penetrate. Such places can easily be found in
Budongo, where several trees have been removed close by one another. But the forest
has been fortunate: the mahoganies that were sought for timber (and indeed other timber
species) mostly grow well spaced out one from another, so timber extractions have been,
and continue to be, selective, i.e. for single trees at any one logging location, with
consequent recovery of the forest. Rukondo (1997) studied changes in tree diversity in
relation to canopy opening at Budongo, and Mwima et al. (2001) found that regenera-
tion of mahoganies (Khaya anthotheca) was poorer in gaps left after removal of parent
trees than in the surrounding forest and suggest that this is due to absence of seed rain
The forest today 19(^1) For example, see the New Visionarticle published on Thursday 24 April 2003 entitled ‘Budongo Plunder’
which concerns illegal logging of mahoganies in Budongo Forest’s Strict Nature Reserves.