Crest cranes: the missing national bird of Uganda

With its distinctive gold crown, the red throat bag and the thin black legs, the crane with the crest is loved in Uganda, which occurs in the flag and the shield of weapons of the nation of East Africa.

All national sports teams in the country are also nicknamed after the iconic bird, but in recent years it has entered decline and conservationists say that it can face extinction if it is not done more to protect it.

The bird is protected by law: it stipulates a life imprisonment and/or a fine of 20 billion Chelines Uganda ($ 5 million; £ 4 million) for those who are killing one.

Re -receding centuries, the local cultural superstition of Buganda also protected the elegant birds, which was seen as a symbol of wealth, good fortune and longevity.

It was believed that if one killed a crane, his kit and his relatives went to the murderer’s house, they would keep vigil and collectively cryed a horn until the person became angry or even died.

“Such stories infused fear, and the cranes would be respected and venerated and not killed,” said Jimmy Muheebwa, a senior conservation of Nature Uganda, a non -governmental local organization (NGOs), to the BBC.

But for farmers in western Uganda, where cranes spend mostly, that fear has dissipated and, often, it is only conservationists who seem to know about the prohibition of killing them.

“I really do not see any value in these birds because all they do is attack our plantations and eat our crops. We are worried about food security in this area,” Tom Mucunguzi, a corn farmer from a town near the city of Mbarara In western region, he told the BBC.

Another farmer near Mbarara, Fausita Aritua, agreed, saying that when he goes to his corn plot, he spends all day chasing the cranes, and if he cannot get there, he tries to make another person stored.

“We no longer reap so much as we used to do because these birds eat everything,” he told the BBC.

Also known as gray crowned cranes, birds are predominantly in Uganda, but are also found in Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe.

They are not migratory, but they make local and seasonal movements depending on food resources, the availability of the nest site and the climate.

Standing at approximately 1 m (3.2 feet) high, aquatic birds live mainly in wetland areas (banks, around open dams and meadows, where they reproduce and feed on grass seeds, small toads, frogs, insects and insects and Other invertebrates.

But with the growing human population, the high demand for food is pushing farmers to cultivate in wetlands, leaving cranes with an crest with decreasing areas for calling home.

“In East Africa, the population has decreased terribly by more than 80% in the last 25 years,” Adalbert Ainomucunguzi told BBC, who directs the Crane International Foundation (ICF) in East Africa.

In the 1970s, Uganda boasted of a population of more than 100,000 cranes with a crest, but today that number has decreased to only 10,000, according to Nature Uganda.

This decrease saw the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) put the crane with a crest In his red list of species of birds in danger of extinction in 2012.

“Despite its serenity, beauty and popularity, the bird faces a serious threat. It means that if urgent measures are not taken to reverse this trend, we could see that the cranes press the extinction,” said Dan Sseruge, a BBC Ugandes ornithologist.

Around Mbarara we discovered that it was difficult to track the birds, and we only saw them early in the morning just after dawn.

Conservationists say they used to be much easier to find in the landscape that surrounds Mbarara.

Dozens of cranes have been found in recent years after they were poisoned by rice and corn farmers in the district of Lwengo, in the center-south of Uganda.

“One of the greatest threats against cranes is the poisoning of farmers. This is because birds are causing a lot of damage to crops,” said Gilbert Tayebwa, a ICF conservation officer, to the BBC.

Tayebwa said he has been involving farmers to use different deterrent methods such as scarecrow to protect their invading cranes crops.

Farmers such as Philip NTARE, from Lwengo, said the cranes were sometimes poisoned by error after eating crops sprayed with agrochemicals and other pesticides.

“He simply pursues them, because I grew up knowing that the crane is not supposed to be killed. But the government should consider compensating farmers for crop damage,” he told the BBC.

However, John Makombo, conservation director of the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) said this was not possible.

“It is one of those beautiful species that is free to go anywhere and, therefore, unfortunately the government is not responsible for any damage done by cranes,” he told the BBC.

Sarah Kugonza, a conservationist from ICF, said that cranes also face a large number of other threats, not just farmers. Without the protective cover of the wetlands, it is more likely that their chicks will be captured by the eagles.

The cranes are finding every day they live in an increasingly hostile environment.

“Sometimes, the reproduction areas are flooded and today some cranes are killed by electricity lines when flying,” Mrs. Kugonza said to the BBC.

Their exceptional beauty has also put them at risk as people capture them more and more to be pets, according to Mr. Ainomucunguzi.

But cracks with ridge, which can live for just over two decades, almost never reproduce in captivity, since birds are famous.

“It is a highly monogamous bird, since it is combined once, for life. This means that if one of them is killed or domesticated, the probability of finding a new mating couple is almost zero,” said Muheebwa.

They attract a couple dancing, bowing and jumping, they are often seen walking as couples or families. A couple will define their own territory and can be very aggressive to defend it.

Scientifically called Balearic Gibbericeps rulesThe cranes also have unique nesting patterns, since they generally return to the same location annually, often placing between two and five eggs that are incubated by both sexes for 28 and 31 days.

Any destruction to these nesting areas impacts these reproduction patterns.

His monogamy has also attracted the haunting attention of local traditional healers, who claim that the parts of the crane with the crest can bring fidelity to a couple, or good luck.

“Some people have been caught hunting cranes to take some of the parts of your body to witch doctors in the belief that they will be enriched. Or, if you are a woman, your husband will never leave it,” said Mr. Tayebwa of ICF.

This is also something that conservationists are trying to counteract, as well as alert people about the law that protects cranes.

And in an effort to reverse the decrease in numbers, the Uganda government and conservation groups are now gathering communities to restore wetlands.

President Yoweri Museveni, who comes from the western region, has been urging invaders to vacate the wetland areas and, according to local media, has declared 2025 a year of wetland conservation.

The ICF has also recruited the custodians to monitor and make sure that the racks of the cranes are protected.

Mr. Muheebwa of Nature Uganda said that these efforts were slowly helping the situation stabilize, but the number of cranes remained “very low.”

For Mr. Makombo, the future emphasis of the UWA will be to give an example when it comes to the law.

“We will arrest and process those who poison the cranes,” he said.