Queen Elizabeth National Park

This is Ugandas’ most popular and visited National Park. It is located in western Uganda, covering the districts of Kasese, Kamwenge, Rubirizi and Rukungiri. It has an area of 1,978 km2.

Established in 1952 and called Kazinga Channel National Park. It was changed to Queen Elizabeth National Park in 1954, just to remember the visit of Queen Elizabeth the second. There is also a structure known as the Queens’ Pavilion in this Park. The park has abundant wildlife it’s nicknamed the Medley of wonders. The popular attraction in this park is the Mweya Peninsula together with Kazinga Channel.

Kazinga Channel is 40-kilometre long and eight to 12 metre deep. It connects Lake Edward and Lake George in Uganda. It is found in the second largest national park (Queen Elizabeth NP), after Murchison Falls NP. A number of activities are carried out to explore the 1,978 square kilometre National Park.

While there, a number of activities such as nature walks, birding, lion and leopard tracking, chimp tracking, mangoose tracking and scenery viewing could be opted for a two-hour boat cruise on the Kazinga Channel is very popular. The channel is home to many schools of hippos, herds of buffalos and families of elephants.

It is also a bird sanctuary, home to aquatic species and a few savanna birds can be seen on the shores. King fishers that entirely survive on fish, cattle egrets that rest on the backs of buffalos, yellow billed stoke and water thick-knees, are some of the birds you will find there.
Along the channel, the animal lifestyle is very interesting because, buffalos live harmoniously with hippos thus exhibit a symbiotic type of relationship. Buffaloes go to the channel to drink water for a primary purpose of quenching thirst and cooling their bodies. “When the mud dries on their skin, the ticks fall off.
There are instances where crocodiles want to attack the buffalos but the hippos chase away the crocodiles. At night, all hippos come out of water on to land to graze. When lions try to chase buffalos, hippos protect them,”
Lions mostly kill losers or rejected buffaloes that tend to isolate themselves.
Losers are aged male buffalos that at a certain age serve no security purpose, are unable to defend their herd against predators. Energetic females chase them away and become herd protectors.
The losers live a solitary life, go to the shores to cool themselves, drink water along the channel and end up being ambushed by lions. Other buffalo predators could be hyenas. Buffaloes exist in different colours. Some look brown, while others are dark black or grey.

Forest buffalos are dark black and cape buffalos of South African origin are grey. When cape and dark black buffalos breed, they give birth to brown buffalos called savanna drailers. The biggest predators wouldn’t be lions but also crocodiles that sometimes weigh about 300 kilograms.

Apart from buffaloes, there are also few waterbucks on the channel. These are least liked and rarely hunted by lions. Hence are starvation foods. When chased by lions or any predator, waterbucks secrete a hormone that has a lot of citric acid, which changes the taste of their meat. The lions will then look out for offals because the meat is too bitter and leave it for hyenas. Thus the waterbucks have a philosophy of kill me but you will not eat me.

“When there is a newly born male among hippos, the dominant male kills it’”. They are territorial and the dominant takes care of the rest. In most cases, females shy away to hide the young males. Hippos are perfect swimmers and trotters that can walk underneath water. On land, they run at a speed of 40km/hr.

“Hippos hardly come out of water during the day because they are bare skinned. When exposed to ultraviolent rays, the rays strike their skin and get sun burn. Very few graze on the channel banks because they have a hypothalamus membrane that stimulates a hormone that shields them from getting sun burns. The hormone is not active throughout the day; it is just for a short time when sunbathing,”

Kazinga channel is also home to crocodiles. These reptiles live for between 100 to 200 years. Those with shiny yellow and black are females while males are darkish greenish. Sexes hatched out of crocodile eggs are determined by the temperatures of the day. In hotter temperatures, males are hatched and with a slight reduction in the temperature of the day by one degree, the eggs start to turn from male to female.