On May 7, 2024, USAID/CWC Activity officially handed over the upgraded Online Wildlife Offenders Database (OWODAT) to Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) in a meeting officiated by the UWA Executive Director, Mr. Sam Mwandha, and attended by members of UWA’s senior management team.
In handing over the system, Mr. Geofrey Mwedde, the USAID/Uganda CWC Activity Chief of Party appealed to UWA to train more data entrants and widen data entry at UWA field sites. He requested UWA management to integrate maintenance of the system into their budgets and plans and to utilize the data to track offenders and monitor trends of wildlife crime countrywide. He added that through the Activity, WCS supported the training of 158 UWA staff (124 males and 34 females) from 10 National parks and two wildlife reserves in the use of the system and that a total of 2,621 records of cases involving 4,767 suspects were migrated to the new system by November 2023. He expressed his gratitude to UWA for embracing the system, alluding to the 3,401 cases involving 5,982 suspects that UWA had already captured in the system by January 2024.
In his remarks, Mr. Sam Mwandha, the UWA Executive Director, appreciated the American people for supporting UWA through the Wildlife Conservation Society. He called upon the UWA staff to go beyond data collection and analysis to implement more robust interventions based on trends in wildlife crime. He promised to integrate the budgetary gaps into UWA’s annual financial plans, including expediting the procurement of servers to host the database and more staff capacity development to manage the system.
One of the senior managers present informed the WCS team that as part of the new standing order to all Chief Wardens and Wardens in Charge of protected areas and reserves, all field reports on law enforcement activities to the headquarters must be generated from the system, noting that this would ensure effective data entry and utilization. UWA now uses data generated from the system to share regular updates with the Office of the Director of Public Prosecution (ODPP) in addition to the management of case files.
The Activity provided nine laptop computers to support wildlife crime data capture in UWA’s conservation areas countrywide. This intervention is generously supported by the American People, through the USAID/Uganda Combating Wildlife Crime Activity.