Mbale — When a young Patrick Ochan Kaboi started working with the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) at Mt. Elgon National Park in 2004, he told friends and family that his new job would help him realise his dream of going back to school.

After toiling to achieve this goal for nine years, Mr Kaboi's dream suddenly came to a halt on September 6 when a gang of machete-wielding encroachers waylaid him at Zesui village, Sironko District. The encroachers beat him up, slaughtering him like an animal as a warning to the other warders to refrain from stopping their occupation of what they refer to as their 'cradle land'.

"Many of us are homeless, we have become squatters on our own cradle land," says Ms Anna Namanzeyi of Buwabwala, one of the encroachers.

Mr Kaboi is just the latest victim of the encroachers' scare tactics. In the last year alone, four other UWA warders in the park - Mathew Kundu, Apollo Makayi, Fred Toskin and Joseph Kapsegeyey - have also fallen victim to the encroachers' brutality.

The Mt. Elgon National Park Chief Warden, Mr Adonia Bintorwa, says the total number of people who have been maimed and incapacitated is eleven.

Mr Bintorwa says the cause of the murders is that while the government allowed locals to stay within the park boundary in 1993, some of the locals have gone ahead to encroach on the gazetted land, which they settled on and started cultivating.

He says they have recovered about 2052Ha of the park land which had been taken over by the encroachers. According to Mr Bintorwa, the government started negotiations with the encroachers to get them out of the park, nothing positive has come out of the talks.

"UWA through the local leaders has been leading the campaign to negotiate with the encroachers about possible re-location to areas outside the park but the encroachers have failed to cooperate," said Mr Bintorwa.

But a local human rights body early this month turned the heat on the government, claiming that UWA has this year retaliated with use of violence to relocate encroachers.

According to the Human Rights Network of Uganda (Hurinet), UPDF soldiers under the command of UWA have this year tortured at least 13 people in the Mt. Elgon area, some to death while carrying out evictions.

Releasing evidence implicating UWA warders, the national coordinator of Hurinet, Mr Mohammed Ndifuna, told journalists last week; "Park rangers have been destroying houses and crops of people they suspect to be trespassing on park land," he said, adding: " In January, 17 acres of crops were destroyed in Bumbo and Manafwa District while three houses were destroyed in Sekululu and Namunyu."

In order to counteract hostility from the community, UWA deployed UPDF in the area to protect the forest reserve against encroachers.

Mr Ndifuna, who said they were handing over their report to Parliament for further investigation, says the pictures that Hurinet presented as evidence of torture of locals are actually those of UWA officials who were ambushed by the encroachers.

However, Mr Bintorwa says the pictures that Hurinet presented as evidence of torture of locals are actually those of UWA officials who were ambushed by the encroachers.

He cited an example of Mr Nuru Mugenyi whose picture was published in this paper a few months ago as clear evidence that encroachers are the problem.

The counter-accusations, however, point to the fact that there is a lot of population pressure on the land in the area, which is forcing people to encroach on gazetted lands.

Since the start of the year, warders attached to the National Forestry Authority (NFA) have suffered similar misfortunes as their counterparts at UWA. In January, two NFA warders - Alfred Ezaaki and Emmanuel Asiimwe - were hacked to death in Jubia Forest Reserve, Masaka District. Also on June 22, NFA's Patrick Kamugere and his family were killed in Buikwe, Mukono District by encroachers whose activities he had tried to restrain.

Like the old adage, when two lions fight it's the grass that suffers, in this case the environment in the area has been the victim.

A report released by UWA recently noted that the massive encroachment on Mt. Elgon National Park is leading to desertification. It further warns that water from rivers that flow from Elgon - some of which are drying up - is now unsafe for consumption.

Mr Bintorwa says there is very high bio-chemical accumulation in the water due to massive encroachment, farming and settlement which also poses great danger to the entire eco-system.

The State of the Environment Report for 2008, which was released by the National Environmental Management Authority in June, indicates that Uganda lost 30 per cent of its forest cover between 1990 and 2005. It further warns that the country could lose all its forest cover over the next 41 years if no immediate action is taken to save it.

Speaking at the launch of the State of the Environment Report, Water and Environment Minister Maria Mutagamba said, "It is the duty of every Ugandan to participate in implementing issues that deal with the environment."

However, people like Kaboi and his four colleagues, who are champions of the cause, have been branded as traitors in their communities.