KASESE – A stray elephant from Queen Elizabeth national park in Kasese has spent two weeks in the community, paralysing farmer’s agricultural works and traffic along Kasese-Mbarara high way.
Farmers said that the elephant has consumed maize, soya beans simsim sorghum which is their livelihood
Miss Lydia Massika, a farmer in Kikorongo Village said they have spent two weeks without accessing their gardens in fear for loss of lives claiming that the elephant has been chasing people from their gardens and nearly killed one of the farmers whom it intercepted in the garden.
While accessing the gardens, farmers walk in fear of their lives trailing behind the footmarks of the elephant to ascertain it’s movement and then sneak in their farms.
Many female farmers inorder to be on safe side often seek for company from their husbands and hunters to access their farms.
The LC1 Chairman Kikorongo Village, Rodviko said that he reported to Uganda Wild Authority but with response from the authority to have the elephant back to the national park.
This community is prone to elephants crossings every season but farmer’s destroyed property is hardly compensated whenever they register losses of their crops to the hands of these illusive elephants that always escape from the protected grounds of Queen Elizabeth National Park.
Last year, UWA installed electrical fence to deter animals like elephants from crossing to community settlement areas to avoid animal- human life conflict, but the fence has not solved the problem.
Elephants that are the cunning animals sense the electric powered fence sense and trace their way out at locations that are not yet fenced which remains a challenge to UWA.
