Planting trees to restore the future of Uganda’s mountains

Daniel Misaki lives in Western Uganda between Queen Elizabeth National Park and the Rwenzori Mountains National Park, two beautiful, mountainous but deeply degraded landscapes. Daniel shared with ITF his journey from poacher to environmentalist

Daniel is from a family of poachers in Uganda. His parents, friends and community went into the parks illegally. Some to poach animals, others to cut down wood to make charcoal. For many, poaching wasn’t a choice, it was the only way to earn a living. It’s Illegal and dangerous and some of his friend’s lost their lives resisting arrest by armed wildlife rangers.

But the loss to the community goes even deeper. “With the decreasing forest cover here we are now experiencing landslides because our area is mountainous,” says Daniel. “Rainy season is now described by landslides and floods. Homes are being blown down too, including mine. Without the trees wind travels with a very high speed, clearing everything that comes across its way. Every year we are burying people.”

A generation ago, farmers could grow and sell enough food, like beans and maize, to provide for their family and pay their children’s school fees. But now, crops are failing. When he was growing up “we used to be forced to eat our food because it was plentiful, but today we are forcing our children to stop eating.”

Depend on trees

“The whole water cycle depends on the trees,” Daniel says. “They help form the rain, store it in the soil and push it back to the atmosphere. Because we don’t run irrigation-based farming, we are depending totally on rain and without rain everything is failing. Then the high impact is on livelihoods. We're a farming community.

“With the deteriorating forest, we are now starving. Farmers cannot actually afford to pay fees for their children and the school dropout rate is increasing. In our African continent, especially in the Ugandan culture, it’s the men responsible for providing food, the standard of living. Because some men cannot afford the daily food for their homes, they are tortured and men are taking their lives. For example, in Karambi where I live, two people die by suicide every year.”

The deteriorating forest also puts women’s lives at risk. Traditionally, women would go into community forest land to collect firewood for cooking and heating. “Now the community forests have been depleted, they are going into Queen Elizabeth National Park. But it’s illegal to go there,” says Daniel. So criminals target and follow them into the park, where the women are sexually assaulted. But “she can’t come back to the community and report she was raped, because she would be jailed for illegally entering the park,” even if her violator were prosecuted. 

As a child aged ten, Daniel was already cutting wood and making charcoal, which he would sell for 4,000 Ugandan shillings a sack. Demand was weak then, because wood was so plentiful, but today, because of population increase and diminished resources, one sack of charcoal costs 40,000 shillings, a ten-fold increase.

Changing mindsets

While still a teenager, Daniel started learning about environmentalism and his whole life changed. He knew he wanted to be a conservationist. He started a wildlife club at school to mobilise other students. Then he went to a college that specialised in wildlife and natural resource management.

Now twelve years later, at just 29 years old, he has founded and leads Ihandiro Youth Advocates for Nature (IYAN) - an organisation dedicated to promoting the sustainable use of natural resources and turning the tide on the degradation and poaching in his community.

“Our mission is to promote the sustainable utilisation of the natural resources in the Rwenzori region, says Daniel. How, he asks, can IYAN ensure there are sufficient resources for the next generation to use? “We have three objectives. First is restoring these degraded landscapes. Number two, we are working around clean energy, going into the production of ecostoves.”

He notes that even a fast-growing tree that reaches maturity in five years will only last one family a week without an ecostove. But an ecostove uses just a third the wood of a regular stove meaning “you can cut the wood consumption”. Ecostoves allow much more efficient production of heat for cooking and anyone can be shown how to construct them, out of waste materials such as bricks, car parts, machinery and roofing.

His third objective is championing the promotion of sustainable livelihoods. This means finding ways to incentivise people not to go to the park to cut wood and sell it for food. And crucially, by discouraging poaching and illegal wood collection, IYAN will be saving lives and radically reducing the risk of women being assaulted in the park.

Daniel believes that change starts with educating the children. By teaching children about the delicate balance of our planet, not only will a new generation grow up respecting trees and promoting the environment, they will go home and tell their parents, helping to transform the mindset of the whole community.

With support from ITF, Daniel and IYAN have planted over 6,000 trees within 10 schools in Nyakihumbu with a population of over 7,000 students. They have also helped to install over 200 eco stoves, which are given to community families via the students. Trees that provide shade for students to sit under, stop dust, clean the air, provide fruit and valuable teaching opportunities, from potting, planting, tree maintenance and helping to expand the tree nursery. “We are concentrating on changing the mindset of these children,” says Daniel. “We're creating that feeling where someone says, the environment belongs to me.”

One success story is a student called Mbusa Seiz, who was so inspired by Daniel’s work at his school he went on to get his Bachelor of Science in Agriculture. He is now working to help mitigate the worst impacts of climate change on agriculture.

'We need trees'

Daniel is seeing the change in the wider community too. “Now with scarce rains, people can see there is rain in the national park, where there are trees. But it doesn’t touch the community land. So people have seen it practically that where there are trees there will be rain. “We have now started to plant trees in the homes of these children because the parents were like, ‘we need the trees, you're telling us not to go to the park, but we need the trees so that we can have the branches from these trees’. In the March to June planting, we planted 15,500 trees.”

People are coming to understand that when, for example, the Prunus africana or African cherry — Daniel’s favourite tree — is lost, a vital source of medicine is gone. “This is a herbal tree indigenous to this region that is protecting the lives of our sisters. Also for overcoming conditions like prostate cancer, infertility. I have it in my garden. I take it on my birthday and I take for tea when I have stomach problems. I’m one of the conservationists who value the traditional knowledge, because in my experience it 100% works. But it is endangered because it has been invaluable for its quality charcoal.”

Daniel is especially keen to build local capacity by bringing community leaders on board and understand the need for climate action. These are locals elected to positions of leadership through the trust of the community, which gives them a powerful platform from which to influence hearts and minds for the better.

Daniel’s family love trees as much as he does. He has a wife and two children, a boy and a girl. “They have been part of my journey and they have seen how someone can transform from a poaching family background to international conservation.” They are proud that he was awarded one of the top five WWF Africa Youth Conservation Champions awards and participated as a youth delegate at the Africa Wildlife Summit among other impressive qualifications.

Turning invasive species into energy

For the future, his vision is for IYAN as a youth-led organisation, with a focus on his clean energy programme. He wants to promote commercial briquette production and “utilise invasive species that are in the our national parks and then turn them into energy”. This serves two purposes. First it creates space for wildlife to browse in their own territories rather then entering the communities for food. Second, “we can create affordable energy for these homes that are using a wood every day, so this one of my big dreams. So we are expanding the integration of sustainable livelihoods within landscape restoration.”

The main invasive species in the Queen Elizabeth National Park are the sicklebush (Dichrostachys cinerea) and the candelabra tree (Euphorbia candelabrum). “So these two species are not edible. They are alien and they have conquered the whole grazing area for animals and especially the big herbivores like the elephants do not have an area to graze,” so they forage in the community. “More than 50% of the park is occupied now by these invasive species and you know they have a tendency to adapt to the drought that is currently happening and to kill the other native species.”

The authorities have tried to dig out these two species with tractors, but it’s not commercially viable. So Daniel’s plan is to turn these invasive plants into briquettes for use as cooking fuel commercially. And the removal of these species and use for fuel will restore grazing land for local fauna. At the same time, “once we have an alternative source of wood, all the trees that we are planting in the communities will survive because now they're being cut for wood. So it's about giving the community a substitute and then we let our trees grow in the community.”

Daniel fervently believes that once all his strategies are in place his community will be transformed. “Nyakihumbu will be a peaceful community where we shall not have gunshots,” he says. “When we hear gunshots, it's not a war, it's just another poacher that has whose life has vanished in a struggle for livelihood.

“It's my dream that once we do this, we have a community live in harmony with nature and our children start to really understand that conservation is not a threat. Conservation is meant for all of us — the balance between conservation and livelihood by provision of alternative, I believe our children will inherit a world that is exactly our grandparents left it to our fathers, which they were not able to protect,” because they had no alternative.

Daniel’s conviction is that his vision is both viable, sustainable and critical to the future of human and animal life in this part of Africa.

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When trees are recklessly cut down, ecosystems are destroyed and crisis takes over. But it’s not too late. Planting trees now can reverse the damage, restore balance and protect the future for people and planet. Join Daniel in conserving Uganda’s precious mountains with a donation today.