At least 60 elephants have crossed back into Uganda’s side of Mount Elgon National Park — territory they largely abandoned more than 40 years ago. Tracked by collar monitoring and confirmed by drone footage, the herd made the crossing from Kenya sometime in 2024 C.E. and, according to the Uganda Wildlife Authority, had not returned to Kenya as of late 2025 C.E. Wildlife officials say the return signals that forest restoration efforts on the mountain are beginning to work.
At a glance
- Elephant return: At least 60 elephants crossed the Suam River from Kenya into Uganda’s Mount Elgon National Park — their first sustained presence on the Ugandan side since the 1970s C.E.
- Collar tracking: The Mount Elgon Foundation began documenting cross-border movement in 2022 C.E., when scouts first recorded four elephants crossing into Uganda, with the larger herd following in subsequent years.
- Habitat restoration: The Uganda Wildlife Authority credits natural forest regeneration, supplemented by tree-planting programs, for making the Ugandan side habitable again after years of degradation.
Why elephants left — and what brought them back
Mount Elgon is a vast extinct volcano straddling the Uganda-Kenya border, rising to 4,321 meters and hosting montane forests, moorlands, and cave systems unlike anywhere else in East Africa. The mountain is a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve on both sides of the border.
Elephants disappeared from the Ugandan side during the late 1970s C.E. and 1980s C.E. — a period defined by two overlapping catastrophes. First, Uganda’s civil conflict brought armed groups into protected areas, and ivory poaching became entangled with the violence. Second, communities living near and inside the park cleared large areas of forest, stripping the habitat that elephants needed.
Chris Powles, chair of the Mount Elgon Foundation, told Mongabay that the reasons for the current return are hard to pin down with certainty. He points to a growing elephant population on the Kenyan side, increasing human pressure there, and the relative safety of Uganda’s side — which is entirely national park land. He also raised a striking possibility: that the elephants alive during the poaching era have now died of old age, and with them the learned fear of Uganda may have faded from the herd’s memory.
Restoration doing its work
Caroline Asiimwe, who oversees research and ecological monitoring at the Uganda Wildlife Authority, describes the crossings as evidence of recovery. “Mount Elgon used to historically host elephants, but then they disappeared when the habitat was degraded,” she told Mongabay. “With the restoration progress that Uganda Wildlife Authority is making, we have seen elephants return.”
The park is largely regenerating on its own, though UWA has supplemented that process by planting trees including cypress and eucalyptus. Community elder Samuel Ngirio from Saptet village in Bukwo district told Mongabay he has watched the park fill back in over the years and noticed elephants moving into the newly wooded areas.
Mount Elgon is also a critical water catchment for the region. Its forests regulate streams and rivers that communities on both sides of the border depend on — making the health of its ecosystem a matter of human welfare as much as wildlife conservation.
Beyond elephants, the park supports more than 300 bird species including the endangered lammergeyer (Gypaetus barbatus), as well as leopards and the small antelope known as oribi (Ourebia ourebi). The elephants themselves are known to dig into the mountain’s caves searching for sodium-rich minerals, carving curved shapes into the walls over generations. When Powles visited the Ugandan side of the mountain in February 2026 C.E., he found old tusking marks and the same distinctive cave formations — physical evidence of the long history now being resumed.
Living alongside the herd
The return has not been without friction. In 2025 C.E., elephants caused significant damage to maize and banana fields in Bukwo district. Ngirio described crops destroyed on farms belonging to his neighbors. Residents have called on UWA for compensation and for physical barriers like electric fencing and trenches.
So far in 2026 C.E., UWA rangers deployed to the area have successfully driven elephants away from farmland before serious damage occurs. The authority is also developing a plan to help farmers shift toward crops that elephants are less likely to eat.
Araptison Moses Malinga, chairperson of the Leaders Conservation Peace Initiative — a community elder group created to ease tensions between residents and UWA — described local sentiment as a complicated mix. “The surrounding communities accepted the return and presence of the elephants; it’s generally a mix of pride, economic optimism, significant anxiety regarding safety and livelihood losses,” he told Mongabay. His group continues to push for stronger protective measures and better compensation systems.
UWA’s executive director James Musinguzi says the authority is working on wildlife corridors, habitat restoration, and community involvement in eco-tourism as part of a long-term coexistence strategy. Malinga sees tourism potential in the herd’s return. “Elephants are among the biggest attractions for wildlife tourism and could generate revenue, create jobs such as tour guides and rangers and support conservation funding,” he said.
The challenge of balancing genuine conservation gains against real costs to farming communities is not yet resolved. Compensation frameworks remain inadequate by most accounts, and fencing proposals are still under discussion. The elephants’ return is a milestone — but sustaining it will require Uganda to answer hard questions about who bears the burden of coexistence and who shares in its benefits.
What is clear is that four decades after poaching and habitat loss pushed these animals across a border, Mount Elgon’s forests are recovering — and the elephants know it.
Read more
For more on this story, see: Mongabay
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
- Uganda reintroduces rhinos to the wild in Kidepo
- Renewables now make up at least 49% of global power capacity
- The Good News for Humankind archive on Uganda
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