The first day of the Greater Virunga Landscape Annual Conservation Status information sharing meeting in Cephas Inn, Kabale District of Uganda, focused on vegetation change and invasive species in the protected areas composing the Greater Virunga Landscape shared between the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Republic of Rwanda and the Republic of Uganda.
The overall Objective of this meeting was to discuss conservation status and provide information that will be input on the Annual Conservation Status Report 2024 edition, while the specific objectives were to:
- Present and discuss conservation status including wildlife crime, invasive species, and vegetation cover among others.
- Review the information needed for the annual conservation status report and data that could be available
According to the presentations made by all the respective representatives of the Protected areas, it was noted that the Protected areas are under the threat of the invasive species. These species are mainly the dichronostactys cinea commonly known as Kalimanjojo, eucalyptus, Alnus incana, terminalis Superba, Avocado, mountain papaya, Solanum aculeastrum, cyprus, ... Not all these species are found at the same time in all the protected areas and the control measures used to get rid of them are diffrent according to the protected areas.
The control measures are mainly manual methods, but the main challenge is the lack of insufficient funds. It was recommended that a thorough study be undertaken on the invasive species in the Greater Virunga Landscape to understand better this issue, which some think the origin is humans while others think about climate change.
It is important to note that also in some cases, wildlife contributes to the spread of some invasive species, like the case of elephants from DRC spreading solanum aculeastrum and mountain papaya in Volcanoes National Park.
The Transboundary management of invasive species is also required, where in Rwanda, Alnus incana is considered an agroforestry tree while this same tree is causing headaches to the Mgahinga Gorilla National Park managers, who have to manually remove these trees from the Park where they are considered as invasive and exotic trees.
In general, the recently launched system of Forest Viewer developed by SarVision company under the Conserving Greater Virunga Landscape programme funded by the Kingdom of the Netherlands was appreciated positively by the participants as this system accurately helps them to monitor the landcover and vegetation change and quantify precisely the loss in terms of hectares deforested and or degraded.
Dr. Ismael Ochen Ochen, the GVTC Program Coordinator assisted by Prof. Bitariho Robert facilitated this important meeting which brought together the ecological monitoring and research, the law enforcement and the community Conservation wardens from the Protected Areas forming the Greater Virunga Landscape Protected Areas network.
Report by:
Juvenal Mukeshimana
GVTC Program Assistant
