Scientists studying Uganda’s declining wildlife and policymakers protecting it operated separately. They used different journals, met in different places and relied on different data. This week, however, marked a historic moment as these two groups finally came together.
The inaugural National Biodiversity and Conservation Research Symposium, jointly convened by the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) and the Uganda Wildlife Research and Training College (UWRTC), brought together an unprecedented assembly of field researchers, conservation biologists, ecologists, policymakers and government officials under the theme “Biodiversity Under Threat: Science, Innovation and Collaborative Responses.”
Their shared mission: to confront a mounting biodiversity emergency with a single weapon, empirical evidence.
“There are many threats afflicting our biodiversity and our wildlife,” said Dr. James Musinguzi, Executive Director of UWA, addressing delegates at the opening of the symposium. “These threats and gaps must be closed by using empirical data and evidence picked from research, not assumptions, not politics. Science.”
Robert Baluku, Principal of UWRTC, struck a similar note in his welcome remarks, describing Uganda’s biodiversity as increasingly under pressure from climate change, habitat degradation, invasive species, illegal resource extraction, human-wildlife conflict and rapid land-use change. These pressures, he said, threaten not only wildlife and ecosystems but also the livelihoods of millions of Ugandans who depend on natural resources and addressing them “requires more than awareness; it requires evidence-based innovation and collective action.”
The symposium arrives at a moment of acute urgency. Across Uganda’s protected areas, ecosystems that took millennia to evolve are being dismantled by a convergence of forces: climate-driven habitat shifts, invasive species colonising national parks, accelerating human encroachment and a poaching trade that has shown no signs of abating. What has been missing, officials acknowledge is a coherent, data-led national response.
Dr. Musinguzi was blunt about one structural failure compounding the crisis: institutional silos. Government bodies responsible for conservation, research, training and tourism policy have too often worked in isolation, duplicating efforts and wasting scarce resources.
Baluku echoed the diagnosis from UWRTC’s vantage point, noting that institutions frequently duplicate research efforts and limit their own impact by failing to share findings. A centralised, accessible wildlife research database, he argued, would allow researchers, policymakers and practitioners to pool knowledge, avoid fragmentation and accelerate solutions.
The UWA–UWRTC partnership, both bodies operating under the Ministry of Tourism, Wildlife and Antiquities, is a deliberate corrective to that fragmentation.
“We need to work in a coordinated manner as government institutions so that we can use little resources to produce a huge impact,” Dr. Musinguzi said. “This symposium is proof that collaboration and partnership can yield much greater results.”
The research presented at the symposium will not disappear into filing cabinets. UWA has announced the launch of a peer-reviewed research journal to disseminate findings globally, alongside a digital biodiversity data repository, a national knowledge bank that officials say will serve as Uganda’s scientific contribution to the worldwide effort to understand and reverse biodiversity loss.
UWRTC’s Baluku confirmed that the college is working toward the same goal from the research-generation side, announcing plans to establish a Uganda Wildlife Research Journal to provide a credible platform for publishing Ugandan-generated conservation science and a UWRTC Research Ethics Committee to review wildlife studies conducted in the country. He called on partners to support the college in bringing the journal to completion.
Since 2019, following the enactment of the Uganda Wildlife Research and Training College Act of 2016, UWRTC has undertaken wildlife research intended to generate high-quality scientific information to support wildlife management, policy formulation and conservation decision-making.
That mandate was reinforced this year when the institution was transformed from the Uganda Wildlife Resource and Training Institute into a fully-fledged wildlife college under the TVET Act, 2025, a shift Baluku said positions UWRTC as “a centre of excellence for applied wildlife conservation research, addressing real-world challenges facing wildlife and communities.”
He noted the work also aligns with Uganda’s Fourth National Development Plan (NDP IV), which identifies research, science, technology and innovation as critical tools for ecosystem restoration and climate resilience.
Crucially, the initiative carries a revenue dimension. By opening Uganda’s extraordinary biodiversity to structured international research partnerships, UWA aims to attract foreign universities and institutions whose students and scientists pay for research permits and field access. Conservation, in this model, pays for itself.
“We are going to generate funds from research. We are setting up a depository of knowledge, and that knowledge has value.” Dr. Musinguzi confirmed.
