Master Of Science In Wildlife Health And Management

. Currently, the relevant custodians of Uganda’s Wildlife: the Ministry of Trade, Tourism, Wildlife and  Antiquities and Uganda Wildlife Authority plus donor agencies have embarked on programmes to restore wild animal populations, ecosystem health and the tourism industry. These are very critical activities for the restoration of Uganda’s Wildlife Heritage and Tourism Industry.As the wild animal populations continues to dwindle, the human population growth has taken the reverse pattern of exponential growth  putting pressure on the natural resources in order to meet its growing needs. The excessive human exploitation has resulted in the disruption of the ecological systems bringing:

1. about excessive stress on the habitats and the animals
2. increased disease incidences among wild animals
3. emerging zoonotic diseases involving animals
4. accumulation of pollutants in the environment
5. introduction and invasion of alien and exotic species to human and wildlife habitats.

This therefore calls for a double-pronged strategic approach to deal with these health related issues in both humans and wild animal populations. This is due to increased human –wildlife interactions leading to transmission of diseases between the two groups of animals. This is due to dwindling  habitats to wild animals which has led to a need to  intensively sustainably  manage wild animals like  in farms and ranches. Managing wild animals in  intensive form requires  acquiring proper skills for husbandry, handling, managing and  controlling diseases associated with such production systems. There is also a need to promote a professionals gap with  inter-disciplinary skills to  link the ecosystems, animals and diseases in agricultural-wildlife interfaces and wild animal production systems. This therefore makes this proposal for training wildlife health and management personnel unique and vital to address these issues spelt above.To achieve most management objectives, there is need to enhance the existing capacity of Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA and other stakeholders in wild animals like  veterinary extension staff,   animal handlers,  tourism sector, private sector, wildlife   managers, researchers  and ecologists.  From previous wildlife policy workshops, UWA gave the mandate for both research, training of the Wild Animal Health professionals and managers to Makerere University, School of Veterinary Medicine (see Appendix I). It was  against this background that a postgraduate Diploma in Wildlife Health and management in 1998 was developed which was upgraded to  a Master in Wildlife Health and Management in 2001.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       Eligibility:Applicants should posses a good Bachelor's degree from a recognised university or institution in the following disciplines: veterinary medicine, zoology, forestry,Agriculture and any other natural science.