Although Mt. Elgon was well known to Arab traders passing along old slaving routes to the East (Kenya), explorer Henry Morton Stanley was the first to write about Mt. Elgon when he presumably saw it while circumnavigating Lake Victoria in 1875.
Joseph Thomson, a British explorer and geographer was the first European to visit Mt. Elgon in 1883. Thomson referred to the mountain as “Masawa” or “Elgon” and generated curiosity among other explorers.
In 1890, with a 400 men caravan, Fredrick Jackson of the Imperial British Exploration Association was the first European to visit the caldera and to climb any of the major peaks. Ironically, Jackson climbed Sudek Peak from the south and probably never even saw Masaba Peak, which was later named Jackson’s Summit after him.
Mt. Elgon has been called a “Mountain of Illusion” partly because of the number of hiking parties lost on its slopes in the past and also because no one could determine its highest point. Sudek and Koitobos Peaks (Kenya) were both proclaimed ” the top of Elgon” at different times. Wagagai, the highest peak (4321m), does not protrude markedly above the caldera rim and conceals its height well. In fact, Wagagai Peak was overlooked by explorers until the early 20th century.
Formerly a forest reserve since 1938, Mt. Elgon was promoted to national park status in October 1993, making it one of Uganda’s three youngest national parks managed under the Uganda Wildlife Authority. The key decision behind upgrading Mt. Elgon’s protection status was to meet an increasing demand to conserve the mountain’s valuable resources in their most natural state. Mt. Elgon provides a vital source of good quality water to several million people in eastern Uganda and western Kenya, and acts as a major water catchment area for the Lakes Kyoga, Turkana, Victoria, and eventually the Nile River. In addition, the mountain provides essential forest products such as fresh bamboo shoots, honey, and medicinal plants. Over 110,000 hectares of this 1154 sq km national park is heavily forested, thus presenting an important timber resource for local communities and the nation as a whole.
Mount Elgon has been controlled by the Forest Department since 1929. It became Mount Elgon Crown Forest in 1940, and became a Forest Reserve in 1951. The main objective of the working plan for 1968-1978 (Synott, 1968) was to protect the forest, with secondary objectives in the extraction of timber. Since the restoration of civil stability in Uganda, the government has been increasingly aware of conservation issues, and in 1988, a forest rehabilitation project was initiated on Mount Elgon.
The upper reaches of Mount Elgon received the protected status of a National Park in 1992. Prior to this, the area had been a Forest Reserve (gazetted in 1951) with objectives in forest protection and timber extraction (Synnott, 1968). The Mount Elgon Conservation and Development Project has been assisting the National Park authorities with forest and community issues since 1987. The current aim of the project is to “promote community development and conserve Mount Elgon’s ecosystem for present and future use” using a “community based resource management approach” involving the participation and empowerment of local communities in the development process (MECDP, 1995).
Working in conjunction with MENP, park regulations have been formulated with reference to the needs of local people and their resource use levels, and enforced in conjunction with a comprehensive extension programme. Collaborative management has been piloted in two parishes, with the aim of extending it to all forest-adjacent parishes before the project ends in 2000.
IUCN have commissioned a number of resource inventories and assessments. Katende et al. (1990) carried out a biodiversity inventory for woody perennials and birds. A Land Mapping and Biodiversity Survey of Mount Elgon National Park was carried out in 1993 to assist the development of a long term management plan (van Heist, 1994). The survey described numerous aspects of the mountain with an emphasis on plant biodiversity. A “resource use assessment” was commissioned for the same purpose detailing resource use by people groups across the mountain through a series of semi-structured interviews and group discussions (Scott, 1994).