To better protect wildlife which is one of the leading avenues for Uganda’s foreign earnings, the government has launched a new task force to curb down poaching, which has claimed lives of a number of wild animals. It will be the National Wide Crime Coordination Task Force.
The wildlife Conservation Society will be in charge of financing the task force as it seeks to bridge the gap between enforcement bodies by promoting cooperation and coordination, through communication and also building links for operation, and sharing progress on poaching and any ongoing prosecutions.
According to the Wildlife Conservation Society Country Director, Dr. Simon Nampindo, wildlife in Uganda is being threatened despite various efforts from different organizations to protect them. He also added that wildlife crime will be efficiently prevented once every stake holder or institution offers their networks and technical support. The Wildlife Conservation Society has a global network since it’s an international organization. The Country Director said they will put good use of the network to track the movement of ivory across the continent.
Development will be realized when the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species  committee (CITES) is studying the country after it was erased from National Ivory Action Plan (NIAP). CITES was impressed with the way Uganda was handling illegal trading of ivory tusks, and this is a good sign for the country was blacklisted for illegal trading of this product.
The tourism sector contributes a lot to Uganda’s Gross Development Product, for example in 2018, tourism contributed 8.3 trillion, which is 7.7% of the Country’s GDP. And on top of that the sector has provided employment for 670,000 people. This statistics is for the year 2018. The minister for this very reason, concluded by saying that we have to jealously protect our animals.
Since the task force will be working with all most of the government bodies, that is the army, police, Uganda Revenue Authority, Uganda Forest Authority, Directorate of Public Prosecution, Uganda Wildlife Authority, among others, it will bring them together for a common goal.
