Today’s Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants will be presented in Luganda, with subtitles in Arabic, Aulacese (Vietnamese), Chinese, English, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, (Luganda), Malay, Mongolian, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Thai.

Warm greetings, loving viewers and welcome to Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants. Today we visit the vibrant Uganda Wildlife Education Centre.

Established in 1952, it has become one of the most respected biodiversity conservation education institutions in Africa. Located near the famed Lake Victoria, the Centre informs Ugandans and the rest of the world about the precious wildlife heritage of Uganda as well as rescues and rehabilitates injured, orphaned, and illegally trafficked animals. James Musinguzi, executive director of the Centre is responsible for guiding the organization.

It is very important that we teach about the conservation of the biodiversity in Uganda because of the various uses and aspects that biodiversity helps us with. For example, you know that biodiversity acts as food, medicine for animals and plants. Biodiversity gives us livelihoods. For example, when you talk about tourism, it is an industry that is fast-growing in Uganda. And it is biodiversity-based tourism.

Therefore it is very important for us to preserve biodiversity in order to help the people with their livelihoods and to continue and maintain the balance of the ecosystem so that we can prevent problems like global warming, climate change. So we need to preserve the biodiversity in order to preserve and maintain a stable ecosystem and environment.

The Centre realizes the importance of reaching out to the young generation as they are the leaders of tomorrow and the future protectors of the environment.

We work as a practical center in Uganda where children come from all schools in the country to learn about what we do. What they learn in class is theory, so they come here to acquire the practical aspect. And we also of course run most on-site programs here at the Centre and also go out through what we call Schools and Community Conservation Educational Program, through an outreach program.

So we do our programs here and we also go out and educate the schools and the communities because some communities and schools are not able to come here because of financial problems. So we go and take the message out there with conservation materials, documentaries, videos, and even live animals.

The Centre is unique in that it has all the major ecosystems found in Uganda.

We have recreated the five ecosystems of Uganda. We have the savanna. We have the forest. We have the wetland. We have the lake. And all this you can get here. We even have the mountain in the forest.

The savannah covers the largest part of this refuge and features such animals as giraffes, zebras, and elands. Wetlands make up approximately 13% of Uganda’s total area and wetland inhabitants found at the Centre include Shoebill storks, Monitor lizards, and Mud fish. Some of the forest-dwellers at the Centre are baboons, chimpanzees and Vervet monkeys. Animals are not caged and are allowed to live as if they were in the wild.

We try to make sure that the animals are within a natural environment. What we have tried is to mimic what is in the wild, what is in the national park. So when you come here you won’t see cages, you’ll see animals free ranging in their natural environment. And that gives us a plus and a distinction. When we are treating animals here, we take a lot of care of them; we want them to mimic and live life that is in the wild, so that they don’t have to be isolated and in a captive environment.

The Centre takes good care of its animal residents and has the necessary equipment and services to ensure they are healthy and happy.

We have quite a number of facilities as you have seen. We have a lot of exhibits where we keep our animals. In addition to exhibits, we have what we call holding areas where we keep our animals especially at night. And then as you’ll see we have got an animal hospital where we have a lot of machinery in terms of x-ray machines, machines that we use to operate on our animals. It’s a fully-fledged animal hospital with a lot of drugs.

We have a food store there as you’ve seen. We have a cold room where we keep our animals’ food. We have a workshop there where we fabricate our own materials in terms of animal crates and animal feeding troughs. Then we have accommodation within the Centre where our keepers and animal caregivers stay onsite because this is a 24-hour job.

I work as a vet in the Uganda Wildlife Education Center. If an animal is not extremely hurt, we register them in our books, then after that, we go take their weight. After taking their weight, we do an examination, a thorough examination. Then we put them here at the vet unit for quarantine. But usually for a bad (case), for example, a chimpanzee comes in with fractured arm or limb, then immediately we intervene and give fluids and other emergency drugs and stabilize the animal.

I’m Nanduiu Jennifer, working as an animal caregiver. I love animals, actually all animals. I just like wild animals, yeah. And I feel so happy that I’m working with them right now. I accomplished my dream of working with wild animals.

With the chimps, they’re, 98% like human beings. So they’re intelligent. They can understand what you’re doing and they can understand what you’re telling them to do.

We are now entering the quarantine section of the veterinary hospital. So you're welcome. So behind me you can see we have two baby chimps. They were rescued from some island in Kalangala. They've been here since last year in October. This is Mr. Tim, and Mr. Kasumba. So they are the lovely animals we have here; they're very interesting animals.

And the main problem with chimpanzees is people are capturing them to use them for medicinal purposes. They’re using them to eat meat. They're also using them in their hotel facility. They think they will get visitors. But it is all banned; they don't have permission to do that. They don't have licenses. So they are doing everything illegally. If we learn of such a scenario, we rescue the animal.

They are around two years old, and they're doing fine. You can see they're playing, they're happy. So we'll keep them here for a while before we can integrate them to the big group, which is out there on the island. They are very intelligent. They're very playful also. And we love them.

On top of what we do, we bring about awareness that these animals are very important for our environment. These animals are very important, and we have to protect them. Let's not eat them. Let's not kill them. Chimpanzees always live in a group in a big family. So in order to get a baby, you must have done something bad to the mom and dad. So in the process, you get the baby. That's how bad it is.

This is the Marabou Stork, the Crested Crane, which is the national crane. They’re injured sometimes. Sometimes they’re hit by vehicles. If they are brought here, we take them in for small surgery. They do the surgery, then we release them. They can’t go back outside now, because they can’t fly, these three. So we look after them.

So here we have another bird. This one had an injury, a serious injury to the bone. It broke. So he was just in the hospital yesterday. He is very wild; he is a Marabou Stork. So they did surgery on him yesterday, and he’s now resting. It was a complete fracture of the femur, so they put a pin inside and some encircling wires and the surgery was successful. We hope after some time he’ll be able to walk, and maybe fly one day and go back. The Marabou Stork is a very special bird in Uganda, because they clear waste. They are very good in maintaining the hygiene of the environment.

The biggest problem here is rescuing animals from people’s farms and homes, because people are doing agriculture in the wetlands, so they have invaded the homes for animals. So the animals don’t have homes anymore.

The snakes, the pythons are the number one rescue animals. So when we bring them here, we rehabilitate them, and after some time, we release them into the national parks. So because of the environmental degradation, the invasion of areas where they are not supposed to do farming, like wetlands and so on, a lot of animals, bats and reptiles are losing their habitat.

We're doing the intervention when we receive them here and we take them back. But in the long term, the education process with our colleagues is to tell people what they shouldn’t be doing. They shouldn't be cutting trees, they shouldn’t be going in wetlands, they shouldn’t be invading lands where they are not supposed to go. They should learn that the animals have the right to live. The animals are good for us.

James Musinguzi and staff at the Uganda Wildlife Education Centre, we are very proud of what you are doing for Uganda’s wildlife and may you continue to save the lives of many more animals and successfully spread the message regarding the importance of biodiversity conservation.

For more details on the Uganda Wildlife Education Centre, please visit www.UWEC.ug Please watch Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants Thursday, June 16 for the conclusion of our two-part program on the Centre.

Humble viewers, we thank you for joining us today on Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants. Up next is Enlightening Entertainment, after Noteworthy News. May our world be filled with compassionate deeds to create Heaven on Earth.