Between February and June 2019, the project has facilitated negotiation meetings between UWA and the Batwa. Four resource user rights meetings were conducted in Bwindi Southern Sector and Buhoma. UWA agreed to the request to give Batwa resources from the park. Batwa identified 26 species that they needed from Bwindi forest. This was through community meetings where preference ranking exercises were conducted to scale to the most desired resources.
We also wrote to Rubuguri Town Council Local Government requesting for land for the nursery bed and a community pocket forest where to plant the acquired resources and also undertake cultural exhibitions outside the National Park. The Batwa collected resource wildlings and seedlings and have already propagated them in the allocated space for the nursery bed at Rubuguri Town Council.
The resources include; medicinal plant seedlings, wild food and other potential resource needs. The acquisition of land (Kobutsina/Kabahimbi pocket forest) freely given by Local Government was a good sustainability strategy and another great achievement of the project. This has given the Batwa a lot of hope in improving their livelihoods since they will sell medicine, do reserach, get honey and other buildings materials and also generating income from tourists who will visit their botanical gardens in the pocket forest.
This effort has also promoted conservation support for Bwindi Impenetrable National Park as manifested in the key messages the Batwa give at different fora.
