Travel Guide Réserve Sauvage De Kabwoya

This small reserve of eighty-seven square kilometres occupies a superb location on a plain between Lake Albert and the Bunyoro Escarpment, in the heart of the Rift Valley. Until the 1960s, this territory was an important migration corridor for large mammals between Murchison and the Semliki Valley, after which poachers carried out their deadly work. The reserve is very recent, it was created at the turn of the 21st century - to protect the remaining wildlife - and granted to a private actor working in collaboration with the Uganda Wildlife Authority. Nowadays, buffalo, hippos, Ugandan guinea pigs and warthogs are back, as well as monkeys and even, from time to time, a few lions and leopards. Bird lovers will not be disappointed, although it must be said that people still come more for the scenery than for the animals, despite the success of the wildlife restoration policy undertaken over the last fifteen years or so. The reserve is a welcome detour for people travelling to Murchison Falls Park from Fort Portal or Kampala. However, the planned opening of an oil refinery at Kabaale, on the edge of the reserve, and the valves of a pipeline carrying black gold from the shores of Lake Albert to the port of Tanga (Tanzania), linked to the forthcoming exploitation of oil fields in the area bordering Kaiso-Tonya, leaves many ecological, social and economic questions hanging over the future of the reserve.