Uganda’s government has scrapped plans to convert thousands of hectares of rainforest into a palm oil plantation. The government said it could not license Kenyan company Bidco to plant palm for biofuels in what is now a protected forest on Bugala island in Lake Victoria. Days earlier, the Ugandan government suspended for further study a separate proposal to give 7,000 ha of mainland Mabira forest reserve to a sugar grower. The Mabira victory was huge as the bulldozers were ready, and it is expected further study will kill the project.
These two major rainforest conservation victories were made possible by an unprecedented national protest campaign to protect Uganda’s dwindling forest reserves, buttressed by international protest facilitated exclusively by Ecological Internet. Over the past year President Yoweri Museveni has faced intense opposition, including peaceful protests sadly turned violent, over proposals to give private firms the right to bulldoze protected forests to create plantations. Ecological Internet alone generated some 1.8 million protest emails to the Ugandan parliament and Forest Authority.