Background
Musambwa Islands are some of the smallest islands located in Lake Victoria in Rakai District. Despite their size, they support large populations of congregatory breeding birds of the African race like the Grey Headed Gull, Greater Cormorant, Little Egret and the Long-tailed Cormorant among others. Due to the importance to birds of global significance, the islands have been recognized as an Important Bird Area. The islands are known to be the largest breeding site for the African race of the Grey Headed Gulls in Africa.

Being the biggest roosting ground for the Grey headed Gull and being a site of great potential for eco-tourism, Musambwa islands have continued to receive funding support from development partners. The initial funding from UNDP/GEF SGP in Uganda for a 2-year project in 2000 enabled formulation of bye-laws while support from ECOTRUST enabled the construction of an ECOSAN facility to improve sanitation on the island. To scale-up these achievements, NatureUganda sourced about Euros 30,000 from the BirdLife International plus a matched fund from UNDP /GEF Small Grants Programme to particularly focus on ecotourism and livelihood improvement through increased and sustained local incomes.

Conservation Challenges 
The Islands contain a resident fishing community that has continued to expand leading to the destruction of the habitat and disturbance to the breeding colony for birds. Most of the community members are from the neighbouring fish landing sites and are entirely dependent on fishing. This has led to the steady increase of fishermen settling at the islands to access deeper waters of the lake resulting into increased pressure on the already stretched capacity at the landing sites particularly the Islands.
Overfishing is a major problem which is leading to depletion of fish stocks especially in waters immediately surrounding the islands. This, combined with poor post harvest handling of fish as well as limited access to the markets especially by the poor, has led to substantial loss of income and consquently increasing poverty levels. Also increase in fishery related activities, such as opening and clearing the islands vegetation for fish-drying grounds and creating space for make-shift houses and cutting bushes /trees for smoking fish has further increased pressure on the habitat leading to degradation and to a great extent hindering the survival of some key biodiversity such as breeding birds in particular, the breeding colonies of the Grey headed Gull, the Little Egret and Cormorants.

Given the transient nature of the fishermen coupled with inadequate environmental awareness, there is considerable breakdown of the traditional pro-conservation norms and practices such as sustainable harvesting of gull eggs. Traditionally, the practice was to harvest one egg from the nest before incubation period which ensured steady supply to the then small population at the island as well as enabling the successful breeding of birds. However, with increased influx of people of different origins, this practice has been greatly compromised leading to reduced breeding success of bird species. Additionally, the eggs are increasingly attracting higher commercial value on the mainland, and this has affected the bird populations on the islands. 

Again, the local people at both the islands and the fish landing sites located in the mainland require wood for fuel and shelter construction. Yet there is less wood and vegetation resources on the islands since the islands are generally rocky. Despite this, the wood and vegetation resources have become the only source of materials for shelter construction and fish smoking for the fishermen. This coupled with inadequate technical knowledge of community members in habitat management and restoration has resulted into vegetation degradation thus leading to loss of cover for breeding birds, increased predation and post harvest losses.
At the moment, access to and settlement at the islands is largely free and adhoc. The Musambwa islands bye-law that was developed attempted to address this issue but does not provide for explicit enforcement of the provision. The bye-law was approved by the local government but is yet to be gazetted nationally and thus enforcement of its provisions. As a result, there is considerable inadequacy in the bye-law that was developed and will require further strengthening. The result is excessive number of people accessing and / or settling at the islands resulting into increased pressure on the habitat.

The fishermen use canoes for their fishing and transportation activities. A few of them have boat engines to enable them move quickly and access far off waters to enhance their fish catches. However, the boats used are of poor quality and highly unreliable. This greatly hampers easy movement and quick access to markets. This coupled with poor post harvest handling of fish leads to reduced income a situation that forces fishermen to over fish to compensate for the losses. Sustainable fisheries resources management is key for the continued delivery of benefits to the local communities dependant on Musambwa islands for their incomes and livelihoods. However, at the moment, the fishermen do not have appropriate fishing equipment and technologies (including mechanisms for post harvest handling). The resultant is considerable post harvest fish losses and subsequently loss of income.

Negative perception of the locals towards birds has been exacerbated by some problem caused by birds that consume fish especially the small Mukene; Rastrineobola argentus which is spread to dry after capture. The fishermen are dependant on fish for income and food and so when birds begin snatching their fish, there is bound to be some conflict leading to bird persecution. Birds are seen as contributors to loss of income and the locals have tended to persecute the birds in an effort to guard their Mukene fish.
Due to the continued changing composition of the SSGs as a result of migrations, the capacity and skills to work for the conservation of the natural resources and biodiversity continually become eroded. Selling of fish catches at landing sites is by auction (highest bidder takes) and the fish guard or the landing site head (called Gabunga) conducts the exercise. This exercise is highly exploitative to the poor and socially weak individuals, which exacerbate the poverty problem. This coupled with inadequate incentives and some level of negative perception of some community members has led to inability of local communities to work for the conservation of biodiversity and natural resources. Limited alternative sources of livelihood for local communities have greatly led reduced income levels for the community. Consequently, this and the general limited incentives and motivation leads to negative attitudes of the local community towards the management of the environment and natural resources.

Over 80% of the population in the fish landing sites suffer from bilharzias and the entire population lives in make-shift houses (indecent housing shelter), limited access to medical and sanitation facilities and no clean water. Poor health, poor housing and low productivity are all indicators of a poverty stricken community unable to influence decisions regarding socio-economic development and environmental management. This situation determines the underlying causes of the above factors which in effect greatly undermine the integrity of the environment and natural resource base at Musambwa islands.

Project Interventions 
Working towards improving the conservation status of Musambwa islands is expected to greatly enhance the conservation status of the islands, and contribute to improving local people's perceptions of the importance of the islands in their health state. The conservation could be improved by listing the site as Ramsar site and engage the community through the Ramsar wise use principle, a phenomena that encourages sustainable use of wetland resources to foster biodiversity conservation and livelihood improvement together. This in effect would improve the breeding status of birds (the main biodiversity importance of the islands).
Enhancing local community capacity to fish and access markets is extremely critical for ensuring increased income and sustainable livelihood benefits to the local community. This is a real foundation and a necessity for reducing poverty. There is need for increased capacity of SSGs in community mobilization and participate in taking decisions regarding socio-economic development that affect the community day-today living. The SSGs need to be institutionalized and registered with local governments and be empowered to demand their rights from government such as infrastructure development or accessibility (roads) and accessibility to health and sanitation facilities. NatureUganda established a sanitation facility at the Islands but other landing sites do not have. Infestation of disease such as bilharzias is unabated, in addition to malaria and HIV/Aids. The combination of these diseases is devastating resulting in a poor productivity of the community. There is need for sustained campaign against such diseases as HIV and malaria.

Regulating the population increase at Musambwa islands as well as improvement in environmental health conditions especially through the provision of sanitation and medical care to the population will be a big leap in the right direction of reducing pressure on the habitat and the resources therein and in particular resulting in increased breeding area of the bird species at the islands. Reduction in numbers of people at the islands means reduced disturbance on the habitat vegetation cover hence more secure breeding grounds for birds.

A three prolonged approach needs to be employed:
1) improve the transport facilities (good boats) that can travel back and forth from fishing to the mainland.
2) provide training and facilities such as drying kilns for handling fish so that fishermen stay short periods of time at the islands i.e. fish dries better and quickly. A spin-off for this activity would be high quality fish that would attract higher income.
3) Establish other innovative income generating activities to diversity income of the local communities such as vegetable growing and eco-tourism. Sango bay area is being promoted at the national level as a tourist destination and provides an alternative income generating opportunity.
In effect, the principle focus of the proposed project is natural resources management, local community/ SSGs livelihoods and local community institutional capacity building as well as improvement of the general environmental health and sanitation conditions in order to stimulate meaningful and balanced conservation and income generating initiatives. The goal is to ensure that Musambwa islands environment and natural resources are better managed for the benefit of biodiversity and the people.  

Achievements
The number of Grey Headed gulls (GHGs) increased from 58,010 in January 2007 to 98,910 in July 2007 (after the breeding season) from the bi-annual bird counts which indicates a 48.5% increase from Jan 2007. This achievement was due to the tireless effort and monitoring of the Site support groups and changed attitude of 98% of the community members towards biodiversity on the island.The bye-law formulated in the first phase and popularised among the wider community also played a major role in achieving these successes.

The SSGs have been trained in various fields including management skills, planning, book keeping and monitoring of birds and other bio-diversity on the island. Capacity building sessions were also conducted in book keeping, management and planning, saving techniques, customer care, tourism development and marketing which has tremendously shaped their way of life and the way they conduct business. Site Support Groups have been trained in various Income Generating Activities (IGAs) like crafts and sustainable organic farming ,Vegetable farming, training for the Magango women’s group, poultry farming training for the Kasensero SSG, Tree planting for the Musambwa island SSG, Bee keeping for the Dimo SSG.
These activities are seen as an avenue of improving livelihoods of the people. Therefore from the savings made by the Magango women’s group  from crafts, they managed to open up a bank account and purchased two shares in this bank. They managed to save up to 250,000 on their bank account and they have instituted a mandatory 500 shs every week in order to start up other IGAs. This can be attributed to the enhanced group dynamics, trainings, cross exchange visits and brain storming sessions from various meetings during the project.

Improved sanitation on the island has been achieved in that members are constantly using the Ecological sanitation facility (ECOSAN) and now we record 100% usage of it.A weekly mandatory general island cleaning has been instituted, and buckets placed at strategic positions on the island for depositing various non-bio degradable substances especially polythene bags and plastics, a sanitation committee was elected to over see the exercise and bye laws about sanitation instituted. Proper use of the rubbish bin has also been emphasized with proper deposition of degradable and non degradable materials into their compartments.