A private company with a public task
Zulia Conservancy (Uganda) Limited was formed in 2019 by Ugandan and South African partners for one purpose: to bring the Zulia Central Forest Reserve under active management for the first time since it was gazetted in 1942.
Why Zulia
Uganda's forest reserves were drawn by surveyors in the 1930s and 40s and most have been farmed, settled or logged since. Zulia escaped. It sits in the extreme north-eastern corner of the country, hemmed in by the South Sudan border to the north, the Kenyan escarpment to the east and the Kidepo River to the south. For decades it was too remote and too insecure to reach.
The result is 102,893 hectares of intact dry woodland, granite inselbergs and seasonal rivers that still function as the northern range of the Kidepo Valley wildlife. Karamoja is now at peace, the Kitgum–Kidepo road is being built and an international airport has broken ground at Karenga. The window to secure Zulia before it is grazed out or settled is open, and it is short.
Our mandate
In May 2022 the National Forestry Authority granted the company Licence No. 30 under section 41 of the National Forestry and Tree Planting Act 2003: a 50-year licence for the collaborative management of the reserve and the development of ecotourism within it. The land remains the property of the Government of Uganda. We hold responsibilities, not title.
Those responsibilities are specific: a ten-year forest management plan, environmental and social impact assessment, quarterly reporting, maximum local employment and procurement, and working within the dual management of NFA and the Uganda Wildlife Authority where the reserve overlaps Kidepo Valley National Park.
Mission and vision
Mission
To restore and protect the Zulia Central Forest Reserve as a working wilderness: secure for its wildlife, productive for its neighbours, and financed by partners who share in what it produces.
Vision
By 2040, Zulia and Kidepo function as one 2,500 km² landscape in which elephant, buffalo, giraffe and lion move freely across the border hills, the Dodoth and Ik communities earn more from wildlife preservation than from charcoal or raiding, and Uganda has a model for how a private licensee can run a public reserve.
How we are governed
The company is led by its Managing Director, Christoffel Johannes Schutte, who negotiated the licence and has worked in Karamoja since 2019. A Zulia Conservation Trust is being established alongside the company to hold the conservation programme, with seats for the National Forestry Authority, Uganda Wildlife Authority, Kaabong District and the neighbouring communities, so that the money raised for rangers, fire management and community work is governed separately from the commercial concession.
We publish our licence conditions and report against them. Ask us for anything you want to see.