An ancient migration route linking Murchison Falls to South Sudan and the Congo Basin is being consumed by commercial farms, oil infrastructure and the absence of legal protection — and the consequences could be irreversible.
In the last week of February, an elephant was killed by armed poachers in a corridor of fragmented land north of Murchison Falls National Park in northern Uganda. The animal was found several miles inside what was once a protected buffer zone — now ungazetted, unguarded and increasingly encircled by the spread of large-scale agriculture and oil-related development.
Uganda Wildlife Authority has launched an investigation. But the elephant is dead, and it is one of an unknown number of animals now navigating a landscape that has gone from protected corridor to open frontier within the span of a generation.
For the conservation teams at Environmental Defenders, who have operated in this corridor for years, the killing was a tragedy they have long seen coming.
“The window of opportunity is closing fast,” said the organisation in a field statement. “Conservation priority has collapsed in this corridor following degazettement, and this means everyone uses their land as they wish, despite the presence of wildlife.”
An Ancient Route Under Modern Pressure
The corridor in question runs north from Murchison Falls National Park through the former Kilak protected area to East Madi Wildlife Reserve and Zoka Forest, then toward the South Sudan border at Nimule and beyond to Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is one of the longest wildlife migration routes in East and Central Africa — used by African elephants, buffalo and dozens of other species for centuries.
Field evidence collected by Environmental Defenders and corroborated by other researchers confirms that elephant migration between Murchison Falls and both Nimule and Garamba is ongoing. These are transboundary movements of extraordinary scale, linking conservation landscapes across three countries into a single functional ecosystem.
The ecological logic is straightforward. Murchison Falls Conservation Area (MFCA) cannot sustain its wildlife populations in isolation. Dispersal, genetic flow and seasonal access to food and water require movement. That movement requires the corridor. And the corridor is disappearing.
The Kilak area, which historically served as the formal protected link between MFCA and East Madi, was degazetted several years ago by the Ugandan government. The legal consequence was immediate: with no formal protected status, the land reverted to private use and no longer falls under state conservation management. Every landowner became free to clear, develop or sell.
Today, Environmental Defenders estimates that more than 40 foreign commercial large-scale farmers are actively cultivating crops inside the corridor. Fields of maize, grown largely for export, have replaced woodland and grassland that elephants and other species once traversed without obstruction.
Photo credit Environmental Defenders
Oil, Infrastructure and the Displacement of Wildlife
The pressure on the corridor does not originate only from outside the park. Inside Murchison Falls National Park itself, the expansion of oil extraction activities and related infrastructure is reshaping animal behaviour and movement.
As roads are built, drilling sites are established and ancillary facilities constructed, growing numbers of elephants and other large mammals are being displaced from their traditional ranges within the park. They move outward, onto private land that begins immediately beyond the park boundary. There, they encounter farms, settlements and, in some cases, armed individuals.
The Ugandan government’s own Murchison Falls Management Plan acknowledges the negative effects of agricultural expansion on ecological connectivity within and around the conservation area. Environmental Defenders’ ground presence has corroborated this in real time, documenting the progressive narrowing of usable habitat and the increasing frequency of human-wildlife conflict.
“The negative effects of agricultural expansion upon connectivity can already be seen in MFCA,” the organisation notes, citing both the management plan and its own field documentation. “These existing impacts, coupled with a chronic lack of food security in the region and recent in-migration from oil development, are predicted to lead to increased clearance and encroachment into protected areas and traditional wildlife corridors.”
A Biodiversity Hotspot at the Edge
The stakes extend far beyond elephants. The corridor traverses the North Albertine Rift, a globally recognised biodiversity hotspot that encompasses the river systems of Aswa, Nyamukino and the broader Pakwach basin on the eastern edge of the Congo Basin drainage.
The region harbours 109 mammal species, including the African elephant and other threatened taxa. Its 476 bird species include seven globally threatened species. Its waterways support rare and endemic fish fauna, among them the Angara, a species found in the White Nile that exists nowhere else on earth.
These ecological values are already under chemical pressure. River-edge farmers within MFCA are heavily dependent on maize production, which has become increasingly vulnerable to fall armyworm and witchweed infestations. The response has been widespread and heavy application of agrochemicals. These chemicals are running off into the White Nile, affecting insect populations, disrupting the food web that bird species depend on and threatening aquatic organisms including the Angara directly.
The ecological picture that emerges is one of cumulative harm: displacement of large mammals by oil infrastructure, fragmentation of migration corridors by commercial agriculture, chemical contamination of river systems and a progressive loss of the legal and institutional frameworks that once held all of this in check.
The African buffalo (Syncerus caffer) is currently listed as Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List, with populations declining in parts of its range due to habitat fragmentation, disease and poaching.
Photo credit Environmental Defenders
The Last Line of Defence
Environmental Defenders has positioned itself on the front line of this crisis, operating directly in the corridor with teams focused on habitat protection, ecological restoration and community engagement.
The organisation’s core strategy involves securing parcels of critical habitat on private land and placing them under permanent conservation agreements with willing landowners. Working with other landowners and Umoja Conservancy, a local initiative designed to unite landowners around shared conservation goals, Environmental Defenders has made some progress. But it has been slow. The majority of landowners in the corridor have not engaged with conservation approaches, and the economics of commercial farming remain a powerful counterweight. Umoja Conservancy is also working to recruit a wider variety of landowners to strengthen the conservation movement.
Large-scale native tree planting programmes are underway, targeting degraded land between isolated forest patches. The goal is to rebuild ecological connectivity at a landscape scale, create corridors that enable wildlife to move safely and plant enough native species to contribute meaningfully to carbon sequestration and climate resilience. The organisation says it has already secured thousands of acres of critical habitat and planted millions of native trees.
On the ground, the work is done by unarmed community rangers and forest guards who monitor the corridor, document threats and respond to encroachment. These defenders operate in difficult and sometimes dangerous conditions with limited resources and no guarantee of institutional backup.
“This work is not easy,” the organisation states. “It requires rangers, it requires logistics, it requires financial support that is readily available to respond to unforeseen threats.”
Photo credit Environmental Defenders
The Killing That Crystallised a Crisis
In some ways, the elephant’s death in the corridor last week serves as a stark reminder of what’s at stake. The animal was not in the park. It was not in any formally designated protected area. It was on land that was once protected and still functions as a migration route, but it now sits in a legal and institutional void.
The investigation by the Uganda Wildlife Authority is ongoing. Poaching in this corridor has been documented before, and the combination of reduced enforcement, reduced habitat, and reduced legal status creates conditions that are almost designed to enable it.
Environmental Defenders has called for concerted and well-resourced efforts to protect the corridor by all available means. The organisation points to the degazettement of the Kilak area as a decision whose conservation consequences are now becoming visible in the most concrete way imaginable: in the body of a dead elephant.
The organisation is also calling for renewed attention to the safety and support of the environmental defenders themselves. Environmental human rights defenders globally face increasing levels of intimidation, criminalisation and lethal threats. Those working in remote corridors like this one, often with no legal authority and no institutional protection, are among the most exposed.
A Narrowing Window
The statistics that frame this work are sobering. The latest IUCN Red List assessment covers more than 96,000 species, of which 27,514, approximately 26 percent, are threatened with extinction. The main drivers include habitat loss, climate change and human activity. Deforestation and habitat destruction alone are responsible for roughly 25 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
In the Murchison Falls corridor, all of these drivers are present and interacting. They are doing so in one of the most biologically important landscapes on the continent, in a region where conservation infrastructure has been weakened precisely when it is needed most.
Environmental Defenders operates not only in Uganda but also in the Democratic Republic of Congo, focusing on landscapes that include the Lendu Plateau, Bili-Uele, Kolwezi-Katanga and Ituri-Epulu-Aru within the broader Congo Basin. Across these landscapes, the same dynamics repeat: expanding human pressure, retreating wildlife, and small organisations with limited resources trying to hold the line.
“Species are returning, habitat is improving,” the organisation says of areas where its work has taken hold. “We are transforming threatened landscapes, directly countering the effects of deforestation and habitat fragmentation.”
But transformation requires resources, and resources require attention. On World Wildlife Day, Environmental Defenders is asking for both.
The corridor between Murchison Falls, East Madi and Zoka Forest has carried elephants between the savannas of Uganda and the forests of Central Africa for longer than any country on this map has existed. Whether it will still be carrying them a generation from now depends on decisions being made today.
An elephant died last week to remind us how close we are to the edge.
Environmental Defenders (ED) is an environmental conservation and human rights organisation dedicated to protecting biodiversity and the rights of Indigenous Peoples. ED works across Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, focusing on critical landscapes in the Albertine Rift and the Congo Basin. To learn more or support the work, visit our programme page https://watetezi.org/biodiversity-and-climate/
For media inquiries or partnership discussions, contact Environmental Defenders.
