FISHING GEAR

Traditional fishing gear excluded women from fishing because it was expensive, too heavy and neccessitated fishing at night. Strings and baits helped to overcome these challenges. Strings with baits attached are hanged in between mangrove trees close to homes. Women cast them early morning and collect their catch next day early morning.

Mangroves have a high accumulation of micro-organisms, phytoplankton and other life forms that constitute the diet of different species of fish. Mangroves receive high concentration of nutrients from rivers and adjacent riparian ecosystems. Mangroves also provide shelter against predators and allows long-time fishing and safe breeding.  Other enabling factors: provision of security against theft and destruction by livestock, cooperation and commitment from spouses, sound management of toxic waste and market mechanisms.

We have learnt the following lessons: changes in power relations that can be brought about is important, the mangrove forest must be of the size that is adequate for all in order to avoid conflicts over the right of fishing in a particular area, the focus should not be only on fishing but on other social, economic and ecological issues as well e.g. waste management, financial management and marketing, broader protection of the environment, nutrition and health, gender equality, human rights, etc.

Huawei Cloud AI and Tools

Our AI model for chainsaw detections are modified and strengthened with support through our partnership with Huawei, and all data collected in our Huawei-sponsored projects is stored on the Huawei Cloud. Huawei has cooperated with RFCx to develop more accurate intelligent algorithm models based on Huawei's advanced artificial intelligence service (Huawei Cloud AI) and tools (ModelArts) to achieve more accurate identification of illegal forest activity (the sounds of chainsaws, vehicles etc.). In addition, Huawei is helping RFCx build intelligent models that detect and analyze the sounds of fauna, providing information about their habitat, threats, and even life habits, helping local partners protect endangered species.

RFCx's partnership with Huawei, including being granted usage of the Huawei Cloud for data storage and analysis, has enabled us to expand and refine our offerings like never before. Huawei and RFCx have worked together to develop innovative platforms that include equipment collection, storage services, and intelligent analytics.

 

Pursuing strong corporate partnerships, like Huawei, allows us to more efficiently tackle challenges through their support and tools. Huawei has enabled high precision models,which will significantly reduces the rate of alert false positives.

 

Conservation Gains Will Only Come through Partnerships

Conserving nature requires the involvement of many players, each having different goals, thus advances can only be made through partnerships. Here we have formed a very successful partnership between the provision of health care and conservation. This involves partnerships between the Uganda Wildlife Authority, the Ministry of Health, local government, Makerere University, Wilson Center, George Washington University, McGill University, Wildlife Conservation Society, and international donors.

Colin Chapman has worked in Uganda for 32+ years, trained 58 advanced degree students (many are now in position of authority in Uganda), worked with the Uganda Wildlife Authority since its inception, and is well respected by the local community.

Forming meaningful partnerships, where the goals of all partners can be met, is the only way to produce meaningful conservation advances.

Bushmeat Hunting and Resource Extraction are a Constant Threat to Biodiversity

The bushmeat trade is a large industry that is decimating many wildlife populations, even those in protected areas. It is estimated that up to 4 million tonnes of bushmeat are extracted each year from Central Africa alone ( the weight of ~5.7 million cattle).  For the people’s perspective the resources from parks allow them to feed their families and raise money to send children to school.

We have been greatly aided by the Uganda Wildlife Authority that protects the part, monitors illegal encroachment and engages in revenue sharing and outreach to help local people. The mission statement of the Uganda Wildlife Authority is to “To conserve, economically develop and sustainably manage the wildlife and protected areas of Uganda in partnership with neighboring communities and other stakeholders for the benefit of the people of Uganda and the global community.”

Through the hard work of a Ugandan Wildlife Authority, we have been able to analyze data on the poaching level and understand the economic pressures causing increased activities and which conservation actions are effective at decreasing these activities. We have learned that our joint efforts have led to forest recovery the growth of wildlife populations in the park

Health Care is a Pressing Need That Can be Affordably Provided to Many Around Parks

In the case of tropical health, most suffering is NOT caused by a lack of effective drugs or technology, rather it is due to the simple but critical lack of accessibility to health knowledge and services. In Uganda alone, 30% of all deaths among children between the ages of 2 and 4 are caused by malaria, a disease that could be easily treated or prevented, and 26% of children under the age of 5 are malnourished. These trends are most severe in remote regions where health services and education are extremely limited. Remote areas are also often home to protected areas for wildlife.  Through local clinics or mobile clinics, it is possible to provide critical health services to many people at a small cost per individual.  The number of people receiving benefits  are many times greater than other types of revenue sharing, such as ecotourism.

The Uganda Wildlife Authority, manage national parks, and they have enabled our outreach by providing a ranger to talk to the communities whenever the mobile clinic is in actions.  They have also provided the driver.  The Ministry of Health has provided us up to 3 local nurses to accompany the mobile clinic.  Furthermore, the Ministry provides many drugs for free, including medicine for HIV, deworming, and vaccinations.  The vaccinations will be particularly important this coming year to beat back COVID.

Through the hard work of a Ugandan student, we demonstrated that by providing health care through our mobile clinic, we can improve how the local people perceive the park - improving parks-people relationships.  Long-term monitoring of wildlife populations show that this corresponds to increases in wildlife populations.

Education, awareness, and traditional knowledge documentation

Over the past 10 years, we have focused on assessing the conservation status of endemic species and their rehabilitation in the wild. We have made a great effort to preserve it and plan for its sustainability. The most important thing that my team and I reached is that the surrounding community, users of resources, researchers, and decision-makers, whether in the site or in the government away from the place, the private sector, and students even the public can destroy everything we built during the previous years as a result of their ignorance of what we work and its importance to us and them. Dissemination of information is an external protection shield to ensure the sustainability of activities on the site. Continuous training and awareness activities should be in the target area and throughout the country in order to avoid destruction due to ignorance. Also, not documenting the traditional knowledge inherited by the local community is extremely dangerous and its loss is a waste of wealth that will cost the state and the world huge sums to discover again.

Education, awareness, and documentation, could reduce the current and future pressures and reduce the impact and the cost of recovery.

The most important factor for the success of training and awareness programs is the appropriate choice of the recipient, who preferably has contact, whether from close or from afar, with the natural resource.

 

Involving the community in planning and implementing conservation programs and agreeing on the sustainability and conservation of the natural resource consolidates the principle of partnership and trust and facilitates the process of documenting their knowledge.

Share with the community all your next steps and challenges and hear from them their opinions and suggestions, even if they are simple from your point of view.

Teach children in the region to understand the next generation.

Follow-up and engagement of trainees after training and awareness is very useful and works to establish and implant information within them.

Educate stakeholders about the importance of your role for their future and share the decision with them.

Solar lightning kits

Combines solar solution to provide ligth and access to power and charge phones 

Solar kits 

Financial resources 

Logistics 

Improve life in rural commnities 

 

Niassa biogas project

Build partnership to implement projects in biogas in niassa reserve and other reserves in Mozambique

Finance

Logistic 

Capacity building 

Sustainable development 

Alternative conservation-linked livelihoods

Developing working, alternative conservation-linked livelihoods is the lifeline of conservation initiatives that incur financial burdens. 

The idea of initiating ecotourism as an alternate livelihood emerged while conducting biodiversity surveys. We observed that the communities especially the hunters and the youth had a keen eye to spot wildlife as well as good understanding of the forest in general. That's when the youth were trained in documentation of flora and fauna by experts. Sightings were recorded in field registers and this created a community of conservationists among the youth. By documenting unique, rare or special fauna, these surveys acted as a catalyst to attract ecotourists from far and wide.

Thus, the youth, along with the hunters dependent on hunting for subsistence from the three pilot villages, were targeted and trained as nature guides with other trainings in association with Air BnB and Titli Trust on hygiene and environment care in homestays, safety and security, housekeeping service, and food and beverage service, maximizing sales and managing money, and low cost marketing.

Through website and advertisements on bird and butterfly enthusiast groups in India, biodiversity meet's were organised to bring in ecotourists and promote ecotoursim.

Livelihood option in form on Ecotourism was successful to an extent. Not only did the presence of the visitors aided in boosting nature-based ecotourism, but also the biodiversity assessments further added to the knowledge of the faunal biodiversity. The visitors participated in the biodiversity surveys, stayed in local homestays in the villages of Sukhai and Khivikhu, tasted sumptuous local cuisine, watched the traditional Sema dances and engaged with the local community to understand their activities to conserve their natural resources.  

The training of youth in biodiversity assessments and sustainable use of natural resources, as well as the training and capacity building of local community members as nature guides for ecotourism, has resulted in enhanced livelihood opportunities with the steady flow of tourists that are visiting this area to spot ‘bird and butterfly specials’. Now the communities take pride in actively conserving the local biodiversity and overall landscape. Many of the species that were rare to sight have made a comeback as communities continue to patrol and conserve their CCA.

However, these are very remote landscapes with very poor road connectivity and hence depsite having tremendous biodiversity and artisitc homestays, very few ecotourists rather the only hardcore bird watchers or butterfly enthusiasts have shown interest to visit these areas. In future, if the road connectivity is improved then it may lead to better opportunities of earning and promoting ecotourism for the local communities. This has further motivated the communities, including those from neighboring villages, to take up conservation and protect their natural resources

Governance assessment under the IUCN Green List Process

Governance assessment processes led by the site engaged local stakeholders and developed action plans on key governance principles on participation, accountability and benefit-sharing. 

This is an ongoing initiative to support inclusive decision making in the long term.

Van Long commits to work further to keep and improve the good governance.