Zebras grazing alongside cattle is a common sighting in the outskirts of Lake Mburo National Park along the Mbarara-Masaka highway. While this is a spectacle for tourists visiting Lake Mburo for the first time or travelers plying this route, the communities around the park have over the years made peace with this species interaction.
There is, however, a new star of the show by the name of ‘Eland Gloria’, who is giving the cattle-zebra coalition, among other less popular coalition-leaning members including Uganda Kobs and Buffaloes, a run for their money.
An Eland, now only 6 months, was born in a cattle community, shortly after which, its mother called it quits with the motherhood responsibilities, leaving the helpless, then unnamed baby eland, in the hands of the herders.
“So, Eland Gloria was then apparently hand raised by community members in hiding (from the Uganda Wildlife Authority -UWA), feeding it on cow milk. She grew alongside calves. However, after about five months, she became so big that members of the community decided to make the case known to UWA, the body in charge of the park and wildlife matters,” narrates Isaiah Jobs Rwanyekiro, CEO Breathtaking Uganda in his chronicles of a recent visit to Lake Mburo National Park.
Rwanyekiro and a team of other travel enthusiasts including rapper The Mith, Producer Magic Washington, Waga Almost Famous DJ, Gloria Haguma, content creator Francis of Absolut Studio, UN Goodwill Anti-narcotics Ambassador Walter Byarugaba had gone to the park for a pre-visit in preparation for the upcoming “Love in the wilderness” tour slated for February 14th-18th.
According to the rangers in Lake Mburo National Park, when the eland, now Eland Gloria – a name she adopted from the community, was brought into the wild, she couldn’t adapt to the new environment or get along with other eland communities.
“Somehow, the act of raising this eland among cows had a domesticating effect on it and she prefers to be in the community of cattle and humans. She is even comfortable being spoon fed or picking food from human palms. So, if you saw a video of Magic Washington and myself feeding an eland, that’s what was going on,” Rwanyekiro said.
He added, “Seeing the long-horned Ankole Cattle graze alongside wildlife is one of the most beautiful things I have ever set my eyes on. I get a lot of joy seeing Zebras, elands, impalas, Uganda Kobs and sometimes buffaloes grazing alongside the world famous long-horned Ankole cattle.”
Lake Mburo’s Upgrades Through the Years & her Unique Tourism Offers
Despite being Uganda’s smallest Savannah National Park (260 square kilometres) Lake Mburo is home to 350 recorded bird species,a sizable number of zebras, impala, eland, buffalo, oribi, Defassa waterbuck, hippo, hyena, topi, giraffes, reedbuck among others.
Once covered by open Savannah, Lake Mburo National Park now contains woodland since there are no elephants to tame the vegetation.
Originally gazetted in 1933 as a controlled hunting area and upgraded to a Game Reserve in 1963, Lake Mburo gained National Park status in 1983.
The decision to gazette the park by then ruling Obote government, was not welcomed by the Banyankole and Bahima herding communities who lost grazing land and never received neither compensation nor financial support from the government to aid their relocation.
Many of the evicted pastoralists would grow a hostile attitude towards the park’s formation. Following the fall of the second Obote government in 1985, previous residents of Lake Mburo re-occupied the Park land, expelling park staff, destroying infrastructure and killing hundreds of animals.
The NRM Government would later, in 1986, re-gazette the Park’s original land.
This action, however, didn’t solve the problem of the evictees and their animals, a matter that would go unresolved until 1995 when part of the Park land was de-gazetted to accommodate survivors and people displaced by the Luwero Triangle War. This was done under the Kanyaryeru Resettlement Scheme.
This degazettement is one of the core reasons for the close interaction between wildlife and the communities. Animals still move past the park boundaries into the cattle grazing fields and over the years, irrespective of its cons, the zebra-cattle relationship has grown, creating a unique sighting for tourists that heed the whispers of Lake Mburo.
The absence of many fierce predators in Lake Mburo National Park avails yet another exciting opportunity for tourists to view wildlife while cycling, walking, and horse riding – the sought-after horseback safaris.