Bugoma Central Forest Reserve, on the edge of the Albertine Rift, is one of Uganda’s most important biodiversity and carbon reservoirs, home to endangered chimpanzees and a living buffer against climate change. It is also under siege: illegal land titles, encroachment for agriculture, and clear-felling have stripped whole blocks of the reserve bare.
At its quarterly meeting of 27 March 2025, the NWCCTF resolved to act. What followed was a sustained campaign across the Bunyoro sub-region: a regional awareness engagement in Hoima in June 2025, followed by working sessions in Kikuube District through October 2025 that brought together district leaders, law-enforcement officers, prosecutors, judicial officers, conservation organisations, cultural and faith institutions, local communities and private-sector actors.
The resolutions were unambiguous: cancel all illegal land titles within Bugoma Forest; reopen and demarcate forest boundaries; establish a mediation team to engage the Bunyoro-Kitara Kingdom and private-sector actors on sustainable coexistence; deploy UPDF personnel to secure critical forest blocks; and bring the Attorney General’s Chambers, the Ministry of Lands and the Judiciary onto the Task Force as focal institutions.
The campaign has drawn attention at the highest level of government. The Rt. Hon. Prime Minister, Robinah Nabanja, has visited the reserve in person, walking the affected blocks, inspecting sites of illegal charcoal production, and viewing the felled timber and kilns left behind by encroachers. A Prime Minister standing on degraded ground where high forest once stood is a measure of how seriously the restoration of Bugoma is now being treated.
Task Force commanders have since walked the ground with local leadership in the Ngogoli zone, verifying boundaries and assessing restoration needs. The photographs from those visits, degraded hillsides where high forest once stood, explain the urgency better than any statistic.
Bugoma’s recovery will take years. Its protection starts with information: if you witness illegal logging, charcoal burning or encroachment in any central forest reserve, report it, even anonymously.
