Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary is a place with a powerful story: it is the only place in Uganda where you can once again see rhinos in the wild. Wild rhinos died out in the country in the eighties, victims of poaching and war; at Ziwa, a conservation project has brought them back, breeding them and protecting them day and night in a large fenced reserve on the way to Murchison Falls.
The star experience is rhino tracking on foot: with rangers who have already located the animals, you walk quietly through the savannah until you get close, at a safe distance, to these giants weighing more than a tonne. Seeing a white rhino up close, perhaps with its calf, walking freely through the grass is a thrill that is hard to match, and a living lesson in what it means to bring back a lost species.
This guide explains how to visit Ziwa: what rhino tracking is and how it works, what other activities the sanctuary offers (the shoebill by canoe, birds, walks), how it fits in on the way to Murchison Falls and why your entrance fee directly helps fund the protection of these animals. A short but intense stop, and one of Uganda's most hopeful conservation stories.
Rhinos disappeared from Uganda around 1983, wiped out by poaching and the chaos of the wars of the seventies and eighties. To bring them back, the organisation Rhino Fund Uganda, founded in 1997, partnered with a rancher who gave up his ranch in Nakasongola, and in 2005-2006 Ziwa Sanctuary was born. Six southern white rhinos were brought in (four from Kenya and two from a park in the United States) to start a breeding programme under strict protection. From those six, the population has grown to more than thirty animals born and raised at Ziwa. The long-term goal is to reintroduce them into the national parks. The full story is told on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The heart of Buganda: Kampala grew up on the hills where the kabakas once reigned, home to the Kasubi Tombs (a World Heritage Site), just a short hop from Lake Victoria and Entebbe.
Read the history of Kampala and the centre →If you only have one day, take a guided tour on the first one: it sets up the rest of your trip and saves you a lot of walking. We look ours up on Civitatis: guided in Spanish and booked online with no fuss. They have 5 activities in Kampala. And there are free tours here: you book without paying and tip the guide whatever you think at the end, so trying one costs you nothing. Have a look below: tap any of them to see them all.
They depart from Kampala, 135 km away. If you book from this link we earn a commission and you pay no more.
No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Until the mid-20th century, Uganda was home to two species of rhinoceros. The north of the country was home to the northern white rhino, a subspecies that is now practically extinct worldwide, while the black rhino lived in other areas. They were a natural part of the Ugandan savannah's wildlife, alongside elephants, lions and buffalo, and were among the big animals that made Uganda a renowned safari destination, nicknamed 'the pearl of Africa' by Winston Churchill.
At mid-century, rhino populations were still significant, but from the 1960s and 1970s onwards they began to collapse. Poaching, fuelled by international demand for rhino horn, used in traditional Asian medicine and for dagger handles in the Middle East, decimated these slow-breeding animals across Africa. In Uganda, things were made worse by the breakdown of order under Idi Amin's dictatorship and the wars that followed.
Amid the political chaos, park protection collapsed and poachers acted with impunity. Rhinos, being large and slow and carrying extremely valuable horns, were an easy target. By around 1983, Uganda's last wild rhino had disappeared: the country had completely lost one of its flagship species. For more than two decades, there was not a single rhino living in the wild anywhere in Uganda.
As stability returned after the wars, it eventually became possible to think about bringing back some of the wildlife Uganda had lost. In 1997, Rhino Fund Uganda was founded, a non-profit organisation dedicated specifically to planning and making possible the reintroduction of rhinos to the country. The task was huge: it needed animals, a safe area, funding and, above all, protection strong enough to stop the history of poaching from repeating itself.
The question of space was solved through a partnership. A rancher and captain who owned a large ranch in Nakasongola, in the north-central part of the country, made his land available for the project. That ranch, covering dozens of square kilometres of savannah and wetlands, was turned into a fenced and guarded sanctuary able to house and protect the rhinos 24 hours a day. That is how the Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary was born.
The strategy was pragmatic: instead of trying to reintroduce the animals straight into the large national parks, where they would be hard to protect, the plan was to breed them first in a safe, enclosed space, let the population grow, and only later move individuals to the parks. Ziwa would be a kind of 'mother reserve' for rebuilding the population from scratch.
The Ziwa Sanctuary was established in 2005-2006, when the first rhinos arrived. The southern white rhino was chosen, a subspecies that has recovered well in other parts of Africa and is the most viable for a breeding programme. The six founding animals came from two very different places: four came from the Solio reserve in Kenya, and two were donated by Disney's Animal Kingdom, a park in Florida, in the United States.
This mix of origins led to a famous anecdote. The first rhino born at Ziwa, in 2009, had an American mother and a Kenyan father, so the keepers named him 'Obama', after the then US president, who was himself born to a Kenyan father and an American mother. The name became famous and captured the spirit of the project well: an international collaboration to give Uganda back a species it had lost.
Since then, the population has grown birth by birth, all under the close watch of the ranger teams, who patrol the sanctuary day and night to protect the animals from poaching and monitor their health and breeding. Each calf is a small triumph in a slow process (rhinos have pregnancies of around 16 months and breed slowly), but a steady one.
Ziwa's model combines strict conservation with responsible tourism. Protecting the rhinos is the top priority: ranger teams watch over the animals 24 hours a day, each rhino is tracked individually, and the reserve is fenced and patrolled to keep poachers out. This constant protection is expensive, and that is where tourism comes in: the fees visitors pay for rhino tracking and other activities directly fund the care and protection of the animals.
Rhino tracking on foot, the star activity, has made Ziwa an almost obligatory stop on the way to Murchison Falls National Park, since it lies halfway there from Kampala. Being able to walk through the savannah and approach a white rhino and its calf on foot, with rangers, is a unique experience in Uganda and a powerful argument for conservation: visitors see with their own eyes why these animals are worth protecting, and their visit helps pay for that protection.
The sanctuary has expanded its offer with other experiences, such as shoebill tracking by canoe in the Lugogo swamp, birding and night walks, and accommodation, which let visitors stay longer and get to know the ecosystem better. All with the same philosophy: tourism should support conservation, and the community and the country should benefit from having rhinos once again.
Almost two decades after it was founded, Ziwa is one of Uganda's most hopeful conservation stories. From the six founding rhinos, the population has grown to more than thirty animals born and raised in the sanctuary, all southern white rhinos. Each birth brings the project a little closer to its final goal: for the sanctuary to reach a population large and stable enough to start moving rhinos back to the country's national parks, where they would once again live fully in the wild.
That goal, however, depends on security conditions allowing it: reintroducing rhinos into open parks means making sure they will not become easy prey for poachers again, a huge challenge given the extremely high value horn still has on illegal markets. In the meantime, Ziwa remains the only place in the country where you can see rhinos, and a 'safety reserve' for the species.
For travellers, visiting Ziwa is much more than ticking an animal off the list: it is a look at a project that, against all odds, managed to give Uganda back a species it had completely lost. From the last rhino killed around 1983 to the herd grazing in Nakasongola today, Ziwa's story shows that, with determination, resources and constant protection, some losses can be reversed. Every calf born in the sanctuary is a promise that, one day, rhinos will once again roam freely across the savannahs of the 'pearl of Africa'.
