On a cloudy morning in September, conservation biologist Tutilo Mudumba, several of his colleagues, and 17 staffers with the Uganda Wildlife Authority climbed into three four-wheel-drive vehicles. They were on a mission: to find and remove snares—wire traps intended to kill wildlife—in northwestern Uganda’s Murchison Falls National Park. A recent paper suggests poachers set more illegal snares per square mile in this park than anywhere else in the world. (Read how the pandemic has led to a surge of poaching in Uganda.)

Most poachers here target antelope, buffalo, or warthogs for meat, but elephants, giraffes, and other animals also stumble into the traps. Villages north of the park are among the poorest in Uganda, and many