As he looked across to the Ugandan side of the border with Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Biryahwaho Byamukama (BB) imagined the time, not so long ago, when rainforest stretched across the landscape, interspersed with abundant waterways and marsh lands. Now one of the most densely populated places in Africa, BB absorbed the reality that nearly all of the forest and wetlands had been cleared for agriculture. Of the hundreds of wetlands that once occupied this area, only the Rushebeya-Kanyabaha remained relatively intact. The Rushebeya-Kanyabaha wetland – the object of his concerted attention in recent years. BB contemplated its global habitat value to numerous species of birds, many of them threatened.
Equally important, in his estimation, is the marshland’s provision of immeasurable benefits for people living in the area. Mud fishing, for example, where people pick fish from the muck underfoot with their bare hands. And the numerous raw materials that the wetland provides for craft-making, like the baskets that women weave for tourists and the mats that they make and sell for use in local houses. BB considered how vitally important these activities are which enable women to derive income from the wetland, one of the only reliable sources available to many of them.
BB reflected, too, on the critical importance of the wetland in providing water and electric power for use at Kisiisi Hospital, downstream. Such a vital institution - the only health care facility within hundreds of kilometers - servicing people of the wetland and beyond, and its electricity derived entirely from hydropower generated from this source. He wondered about the feasibility of the planned upgrading of the hydro-system to provide power to communities beyond the hospital, given the threats to the wetland ecosystem. If the wetland could no longer provide clean water free of silt, as many feared might happen, this essential electrical system was more likely to be shut down than expanded!
From his lofty vantage point in the Kigezi Highlands, BB confronted the visual reminder of growing pressures to convert the wetland to other uses. Persistent poverty and large family sizes in the area made the need for food a priority, which on one hand seemed to justify the relentless encroachment of agriculture into the wetland. Vegetation around the edges and inside the wetland was regularly cleared, also, for cattle grazing and hunting. BB recognized the contributions of this activity to the severe soil erosion which was so evident to him today, and which he knew would accelerate during the rainy seasons. It is no wonder, he thought, that the siltation that threatens the viability of the hydropower system is a powerful indicator, too, of the multiple threats to the viability of the entire wetland ecosystem and the people who depend upon it.
As BB began making his way back down the steep footpath to his vehicle and driver waiting on the narrow, windy road below, he fortified his resolve to learn all that he could to enable Nature Harness Initiative, the organization he had founded and currently directs, to succeed in its mission to reverse the dynamics in the Rushebaya-Kanyebaha wetland and surrounding landscape that threaten its sustainability.