About Lake Mburo National Park
Lake Mburo National Park is Uganda’s smallest national park and the closest park to both Kampala and Entebbe. If you are planning for wildlife safaris in Uganda, birding safaris or want to enjoy game viewing then Lake Mburo National Park should be a possible destination for you. Most of our Uganda safaris/tour packages / Uganda tours prepared by our professional tour operators have this national park as part of the itinerary, especially for guests who would really love to carry out birding safaris in Uganda. Lake Mburo National Park is located approximately 240 kilometres from Kampala and only 30 Kilometers from Mbarara – the biggest town in Western Uganda.
From Entebbe airport to lake Mburo national park, is approximately 290km. The national park is neighboured by 4 big districts of Uganda which include Mbarara town, Lyantonde, Isingiro North and Kiruhura. Lake Mburo national park also happens to be the nearest national park in Uganda that is close to the President’s Home town in the Kiruhura district. From lake Mburo, one can drive for about 2 hours a distance of about 99km to reach the president’s home in Nyabushozi-kiruhura district.
The park is easily accessible by road in about a 3-hour’ or 3 hours and a half drive for those who want to do lake Mburo safaris/Uganda safaris/Uganda tours from Kampala or Entebbe respectively. The coordinates are 00 36S, 30 57E (Latitude: 0.6000; Longitude: 30.9500). It covers an area of 260 square kilometres but is still the smallest of Uganda‘s Savannah national parks and is underlined by ancient Precambrian metamorphic rocks which date back.
What is currently Lake Mburo National Park was first gazetted in 1933 as a controlled hunting area and later upgraded to a game reserve in 1963. The area was dominantly occupied by the Banyankore pastoralists (commonly known as Bahima) who continued to herd their cattle and other livestock in the reserve until it was granted a National park status in 1983 by the Obote regime. The decision to upgrade Lake Mburo reserve to a National park status was in one part targeted to punish the Banyankore who were believed to be supporting the anti-Obote rebels. The evicted pastoralists were not given any compensation for the lost grazing land and neither were they helped with the resettlement and many of them thus protested the park’s formation. This was during the time of Operation Bonanza massacre of 300,000 and as a result, the rangeland outside the park was divided into small pieces and subsistence plots.
