History of Murchison Falls National Park
History of Murchison Falls National Park / Facts About Murchison Falls National Park / Uganda Safaris : Murchison Falls Conservation Area is the oldest and largest protected area ‘’PA’’ in Uganda. It is consisting of many Uganda’s tourist’s places that is Murchison Falls National Park, Bugungu Wildlife Refuge and Karuma Wildlife Refuge. More fact, Murchison Falls National Park encompasses 3,893 square kilometers. Bugungu Wildlife Refuge ‘’501 square kilometers’’ and Karuma Wildlife Refuge ‘’678 sq.km’’ are adjacent and act as buffer zones for the park. Additionally, Budongo Forest Reserve overlaps parts of both wildlife reserves and covers an additional 591 square kilometers- the park is rich in diversity of wildlife just as other park in Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania.
Thus making a total of 5,663 square kilometer of space that is under some level of protection through controlled use. Murchison Falls National Park and two wildlife reserves are managed by the Uganda Wildlife Authority ‘’UWA’’ as the Murchison Falls Conservation Area ‘’MFCA’’ and the Budongo Forest Reserve is under protected by the National Forestry Association except where it expends with UWA ‘’managed lands’’.
Between the years of 1907 and 1912, the inhabitants of an area of about 13,000 square kilometers were evacuated due to sleeping sickness spread by tsetse flies. This made the way for the appraisal of the Bunyoro Game Reserve in 1910, which encompassed roughly the area south of the Nile River which is now park of the park in Masindi district. In 1928 the boundaries were extended into Gulu district north of the river and the result became known as the Bunyoro –Gulu Game Reserve.
Due to the human population that has already been evacuated because of the sleeping sickness, it was possible to create this game reserve without displacing any of the local people for the sake of the park. In 1932, the Budongo Forest Reserve was created in the area. It became the first commercial logging concession in Uganda, and today is one of the most intensively studied working forests in the world. The boundaries of this forest continued to spread over the next thirty years till they accessed the current size of about 825square kilometer. For that case, much animosity was generated by this process as locals lost land and never quite due to the frequent changes that happened in the area.
Later, in 1952 the British administration established the National Parks Act of Uganda. After forty years of reduced hunting in the Bunyoro Gulu Game Reserve, the animal’s populations had expanded to an extent that improved on the reserve, thus becoming Murchison Falls National Park, one of the first two game parks along with Queen Elizabeth National Park.
By the mid 1960’s, Murchison Falls had become the premier safari destination in all of East Africa, with over million visitors per year.
Things to do in Murchison Falls National Park
They include; Bird watching, Game drives, cultural encounter, boat cruise on the Victoria Nile, Sport fishing among others.
Bird watching
Murchison Falls National Park is known as a perfect destination for birders, hosting more than 451 bird species and some of them to see on your Uganda Birding Tour or Uganda Safari include; rare shoe bill, Abyssinian ground hornbill, Denham’s bustard, Long-toed lapwing, Black –billed barbet, Yellow –fronted tinker bird, Black –headed lapwing among many.
Game drives
Game drive is one of the major way you can explore the beauty of the park and it can be done during morning, evening and night game drive. All game drive sessions in Murchison Falls National Park are rewarding. As you get a great chance 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 cruises
This is an exciting life experience on the Victoria Nile that takes about 4 hours and gives a breath taking moment of individual and a great opportunity of sight-seeing numerous water species like Nile crocodiles, hippos and other animals like elephant, buffalos, waterbucks can be adventured along the water shores as well as various water birds can be spotted like rare shoebill, cormorant, kingfisher, cattle egrets among others.
The time is now! Just get started.
