About This Project

In western Uganda, hippos move between land and the Kazinga Channel, making them ideal sentinels of ecosystem health. By testing hippo dung and using environmental DNA, we can detect pollutants and pathogens moving through the watershed. Over 60,000 people depend on these waters for food, making this a critical One Health issue. We hypothesize that higher levels of pollutants and pathogens will be detected in hippos, soil and waters near areas of higher human activity.

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

In Uganda’s Queen Elizabeth Protected Area, the boundary between farmland and protected land is thin. Each night, hippos leave the Kazinga Channel to graze in nearby fields, returning to the water by morning. This movement connects people, crops, and wildlife, but it also carries unseen risks. Runoff from farms and settlements brings pesticides, plastics, and pathogens into the same waters where families collect drinking water and fish for food. Studies have shown that agrochemicals and plastic pollution are degrading ecosystems and biodiversity (Andersson & Isgren, 2021; Peña et al., 2023), while new tools like environmental DNA (eDNA) can reveal the hidden presence of contaminants and microbes long before damage becomes visible (Thomsen & Willerslev, 2015). Yet we still know little about how these pollutants move through shared waterways like the Kazinga Channel, or how they affect the wildlife and people who depend on them.

What is the significance of this project?

Pollution and pathogens moving through shared waterways threaten both wildlife and human health, yet we lack baseline data on how contaminants spread between land and water in biodiverse regions like Uganda’s Kazinga Channel. Hippos, which daily connect these environments, provide a unique opportunity to measure this transfer. By using environmental DNA (eDNA) to detect pollutants, viruses, and species presence, this project will deliver the first integrated dataset linking wildlife, water quality, and human risk in this critical watershed. These data are essential for conservation managers and health authorities to act early to protect community and wildlife health.

What are the goals of the project?

The goal of this project is to use hippos as bioindicators to understand how pollution and pathogens move through the Kazinga Channel, a 36 km waterway linking Lake Edward and Lake George in western Uganda. With funds raised, I’ll purchase a used RAV4 to access remote sampling sites safely during both wet and dry seasons. At each site, I’ll collect water and hippo dung samples to test for environmental DNA (eDNA), revealing viruses, mammals, fish, and birds, while ecotoxicology testing will identify pesticide and chemical residues. Samples will be processed with collaborators using standard protocols to ensure scientific rigor. This pilot will establish a biodiversity and pollution baseline to guide Uganda Wildlife Authority management and train local citizen scientists for future monitoring. We’ll sample eight sites in two seasons (wet (Apr–May) and dry (Jul–Aug), collecting approximately 64 water samples and at least 24 hippo fecal samples across both periods.