Queen Elizabeth National Park
by Dave Gibson
Set beneath the imposing 16,762 ft. high Rwenzori Mountains, Queen Elizabeth National Park is Uganda’s most visited tourist destination. Originally home to Basongora pastoralists, when Welsh explorer and journalist Henry Morton Stanley passed through the area in 1889 in search of Dr. David Livingstone, it was largely devoid of people due to the Basongoras’ cattle being raided by neighboring Bunyoro and Buganda tribes. Denied their livelihood, most moved to small fishing villages along Lakes George and Edward but suffered rinderpest and smallpox epidemics. Outbreaks of sleeping sickness caused by tsetse fly plagued them until the mid 1930s. To the benefit of wild game and carnivores, due to the absence of humans, the yet to be named national park’s lands reverted to their natural state of rolling savanna, wetland, and tropical forest.
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