History of Murchison Falls National Park
Information About Murchison Falls National Park / Uganda Safaris Older and biggest protected area “PA” in Uganda is Murchison Falls Conservation Area. It consists of several Murchison Falls National Park, Bugungu Wildlife Refuge, and Karuma Wildlife Refuge sites from Uganda. Actually, Murchison Falls National Park covers 3,893 square kilometers. Adjacent and serving as buffer areas for the park are Bugungu Wildlife Refuge ” 501 square kilometers” and Karuma Wildlife Refuge “678 sq.km”. Apart from covering an extra 591 square kilometers, Budongo Forest Reserve encompasses areas of both wildlife reserves. The park boasts great diversity of species, much as other parks in Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania.
This results in 5,663 square kilometers of total area under some degree of protection by controlled use. The Uganda Wildlife Authority “UWA” manages Murchison Falls National Park and two wildlife reserves; the Budongo Forest Reserve is under protection by the National Forestry Association except from where it spends with UWA “managed lands.”
Sleeping disease transmitted by tsetse flies caused the residents of an area around 13,000 square kilometers to be evacuated between 1907 and 1912. This prepared the ground for the 1910 Bunyoro Game Reserve assessment, which covered roughly the territory south of the Nile River and is today Masindi district park. The limits were expanded into the Gulu district north of the river in 1928, and the outcome was the Bunyoro – Gulu Game Reserve.
For the benefit of the park, it was feasible to establish this wildlife reserve without uprooting any of the local inhabitants considering the human population previously fled due to the sleeping sickness. The Budongo Forest Reserve came into being nearby in 1932. Originally the first commercial logging concession in Uganda, today’s working forest is among the most extensively researched ones worldwide. Up until they reached the present size of roughly 825 square kilometer, the limits of this forest kept expanding over the next thirty years. Under such circumstances, this practice caused great resentment among the residents as they lost land and never quite due to the regular changes in the area.
Later, in 1952, the British government passed Uganda’s National Parks Act. Following forty years of declining hunting in the Bunyoro Gulu Game Reserve, the animal population had grown to a level that enhanced the reserve, thereby transforming Murchison Falls National Park, one of the first two game parks with Queen Elizabeth National Park.
With around a million visitors annually, Murchison Falls had evolved by the middle of the 1960s as the top safari spot in all of East Africa.
Activities Inside Murchison Falls National Park
Among these are cultural encounters, boat cruises on the Victoria Nile, sport fishing, bird watching, game drives.
Bird watching
With more than 451 bird species to see on your Uganda Birding Tour or Uganda Safari, Murchison Falls National Park is regarded as the ideal location for birders; rare shoe bill, Abyssinian ground hornbill, Denham’s bustard, Long-toed lapwing, Black –billed barbet, Yellow –fronted tinker bird, Black –headed lapwing among many.
Drives for games
Murchison Falls National Park: History and Wildlife
One of the main ways you may appreciate the park’s grandeur is by game drive, which can be done morning, evening, or late at night. Every wildlife drive session at Murchison Falls National Park is worthwhile. As you get a fantastic opportunity to explore plenty of wildlife species “big fours and others like lions, buffaloes, herds of elephant, leopard and others include hartebeests, Oribis, waterbucks, warthogs, hyenas, Uganda kobs, Bushbucks, giraffes among others.”
Boat tours
This is an amazing life experience on the Victoria Nile that lasts roughly four hours and offers a breath-taking moment of individual and great opportunity of sight-seeing many water species including Nile crocodiles, hippos and other animals like elephant, buffalos, waterbucks can be adventured along the water shores as well as various water birds like rare shoebill, cormorant, kingfisher, cattle egrets among others.
Now is the time! Simply begin.