UWEC LION BREEDING QUERIES: MPs on Parliament’s Committee on Trade, Tourism and Industry have learnt that there are no guarantees that lionesses will get pregnant under a Shs10bn breeding project by the Uganda Wildlife Education Centre (UWEC) since some lions and lionesses are on family planning.
Acting UWEC Executive Director David Musingo led officials to defend their budget request for the FY2024-2025 before the Committee on Trade, Tourism and Industry, whose chairperson is the youthful Mbarara City South MP Mwine Mpaka.
As human-wildlife conflicts continue to reduce lion populations in the country – from 460 in 2022 to about 320 at the moment – the tourism sector argues that it is important to undertake lion breeding to increase the numbers.
With only 10 lions at UWEC – and the rest at Queen Elizabeth National Park, Kidepo Valley National Park and Murchison Falls National Park – the wildlife education centre requires Shs10bn to conduct lion breeding.
But when Musingo and his fellow UWEC officials appeared before the Committee on Trade, Tourism and Industry, MPs raised questions on the lion breeding project.
The MPs made it clear they did not want to approve a budget figure without a clear understanding of what it would do.
Bwamba County MP Richard Gafabusa Muhumuza tasked Musingo to explain how many cubs the country should expect in one year if taxpayers give UWEC Shs10bn for lion breeding.
“With Shs10bn, how many additional lions do we expect? This [money] is for one financial year. So, if we give you Shs10bn beginning July 2024, by June 2025, how many additional lions [should we expect]?”
The acting UWEC ED talked about the probability of the lionesses getting pregnant.
“The starting stock, we shall get four female [lionesses] and one male [lion]. We shall get eight [lionesses] with two males [lions]. We are going to have like two areas, where we have four lions in each; those are eight females. Now, there is a probability of getting pregnant,” explained Musingo.
To which Committee Chairperson Mwine Mpaka asked, “So, we might invest [the Shs10bn] and they [the lionesses] don’t get pregnant?”
Musingo then hinted on lions being on family planning. “For us they get pregnant. In fact, the lions we have are on family planning.”
Mwine Mpaka then asked UWEC officials to explain how they expect the committee and government to account for taxpayers’ money in cases lions fail to get pregnant. Musingo then explained that “through genetics, you select the viable population.”
He then asked for protection from the committee chairperson, saying some people were plotting to “shoot down this project” but “we are going to defend it.”
He later added, “I hope the journalists aren’t arming the fundamentalists to shoot us.”
But Mwine Mpaka insisted, “You are here for a budget, you have to defend this budget before us and we defend it before Parliament.”
Musingo then explained that there were chances that the lionesses would get pregnant.
“From our experience, once you have lions from a controlled environment, if it is in the wild, other factors are at play, you may have zero probability,” he said.
“But for us we are very sure, once we create the boomers, they are going to produce. The other time we got one female producing five from UWEC. So, on average they are two, that is the assurance we can give you.”
The grilling would not get done until Mwine Mpaka made comparisons with another lion breeder in Uganda.
“This man [of] CTC Conservation Centre in Mpigi, he started with four lions. In a period of one year, he has 26 lions. And those 26 lions are eating one ton every two weeks and we did a rough estimate, he is spending around Shs390m in a year but here we are looking at Shs10bn and we are getting 16 lions,” Mpaka noted.
To which Musingo replied, “I need you to look at how those lions are coming in, maybe you will discover more information.”
And Mwine Mpaka asked, “How do they come in? By a boat? You mean he isn’t breeding?”
The UWEC top official then submitted, “Me all I request is more investigation to be done. UWEC will never do things not according to science: we use systematic methods the way we do things. All documentation is there to show how we do our things.”
Entities under the tourism ministry are defending their budget requests and answering queries on expenditure of the funds for the current and previous financial years. Recently, officials from the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) were grilled over an irregular contract award. (See Details Here).
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