The Roles of Game Wardens in the Development of Tourism Industry in Uganda

ABSTRACT It would not be right to suggest that Uganda has effectively protected her wildlife through the resent decades. Like many tourism countries in Africa, the country has suffered a great loss of wildlife species due to insecurity/wars and encroachers in protected areas. The destruction of wildlife species in Uganda mostly carried out by hungry encroachers for domestic use and commercial use as well as for those reasons and among others; the tourism industry lost its glory. The establishment of Uganda Tourist Board (UTB) today has helped tourism to pick up once again and flourish. The aim of this research was to examine the role of game wardens in the development of tourism industry in Uganda. Game wardens who are employed to manage game reserves have positive roles in the development of tourism industry. In this study a number of game wardens in national parks in Uganda were interviewed about their roles, activities, impact and also to identify problems they face in their roles and possible solutions they take and other solutions provided by some organizations in their career. Most of the information were gathered by use of questionnaires, observation and secondary data was obtained from Libraries like Makerere Main Library, Department of Geography by using text books, journals and newspapers and the primary information were got from the game wardens which gave effective recommendations to over come negative impact of communities around protected areas to prosper the roles of game wardens in protected areas in Uganda.