Last week, Uganda Tourism Board (UTB) led by the chief executive officer Lilly Ajarova and members of the media visited Karubuguma I and II villages in Kitagwenda district, the location of the largest cycad in Uganda.
For a first timer, the cycad plants give a beautiful view and freshness of the air and the scent of their fruits can be infectious; the species in Uganda is considered the biggest and most unique. Ajarova explained that this is one of the latest steps by the tourism board to try to incorporate and develop cycad sites as a cluster of what Ugandan tourism will be offering soon.
It is believed when properly developed, the cycad village is a place worth a visit; the ambiance is a stress reliever and a place full of fresh air even as the government gets dollars out of the activity. The cycads in Karubuguma I and II villages grow along the steep slopes into the valley that houses the banks of River Mpanga.
Opportunities
According to Ajarova, UTB is looking at creating a number of packages aimed at promoting the area to tourists. These include nature hikes, camping, canoeing, zip-lining, rock climbing and the cycad trail, among others.
Ajarova envisions that a promotion of tourism in the area would have a trickle-down effect that would see the local population stop the destructive activities on their lands as they would earn a livelihood from tourism. Other than the cycad plants, the area is home to beautiful sceneries, the presence of waterfalls along river Mpanga and the close proximity to Lake George and several national parks.
“Nevertheless, the area still faces a lot of challenges in as far as promotion of tourism is concerned, the biggest of this being infrastructure,” she said.
“The road network leading to the cycad villages is poor, so if visitors are to be encouraged to visit the area, the roads must be improved upon to make them easily passable especially in rainy conditions.”
Also, there are no hotels and recreation facilities in the area; so, visitors would be forced to travel long distances back to nearby towns where such facilities are located. Marketing of the area is also still a challenge, being sandwiched between major tourist attractions including the Rwenzori Mountains, Queen Elizabeth and Kibale national parks, among others.
“If the above challenges are solved, cycad tourism promises to be a million-dollar opportunity for Ugandan tourism; however, the awareness of the touristic potential and availability of cycads in Uganda is still very low,” she said.
History
Although they looked like trees I had seen before, Edward Charlton a cycad expert from the United Kingdom, said cycads are more closely related to ferns than palm trees. Experts believe the cycad plant dates back as far as 320 million years in the age of dinosaurs; in Uganda, some can also be found around Kakira in Jinja district.
“The cycads have males and females (dioecious); differentiated by the size of their cones, the males have smaller ones that have pollen in them while the females have larger cones with cycad fruits containing seeds,” Charlton said.
The fruits are usually eaten by baboons and the seeds scattered for reproduction. Thus planting cycads in the farms also helps protect the other crops that would be otherwise destroyed by the baboons. The cycad has three different species found in different parts of the world including Australia, South Africa, and Uganda, among others.
Cycads do not die easily once they have taken root but conservation efforts are required since human activities are fast-depleting them and may completely vanquish them in the near future.
Conservation strategy
Charlton is in Uganda for three months to help raise cycad awareness and the conservation process. It is believed that communities in areas where the cycads grow usually cut and burn them down while cultivating the land or burning charcoal; therefore, any conservation efforts must involve the integration of local communities who own the land where the cycads grow.
To counter this, Joint Effort to Save the Environment (JESE), a local organization, partnered the cycad conservationists and with the help of PROTOS, a Belgian NGO, and installed a water pump that takes piped water closer to the communities thus eliminating the need for the locals to descend through the cycads, sometimes with their herds, down to the river.
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