In September 2007, the President of Rwanda, His Excellency Paul Kagame, and Trust/Earthpark Founder and Chair Ted Townsend pledged to found a “national conservation park” (view 2007 Commitment to Action document) in Rwanda to benefit climate, biodiversity and the welfare of the Rwandan people. The Gishwati Forest Reserve in western Rwanda, long recognized as “beyond hope” by conservation NGOs, was chosen as the site of the park-to-be, and the Gishwati Area Conservation Program (GACP) began (view video).
In fewer than three years, the protected area of Gishwati has increased 67 percent from 2,190 acres to 3,665 acres, through demarcation of legal boundaries and annexation of illegally occupied land. The chimpanzee population has grown 46 percent from 13 to 19, probably the first time the population has grown in more than 40 years. People have ceased illegal activities in the core of the forest.
Students and working adults in 14 schools and 10 cooperatives as well as officials of the Rutsiro District government are partnering with GACP to help restore Gishwati. Staff training programs, collaborations with cooperatives, and hosting students from the National University of Rwanda to conduct senior theses have already contributed to local and national capacity building; an emerging collaboration with Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa will provide new opportunities for academic exchanges for Rwandan students and scientists. Two graduate students from the United Kingdom have completed master’s theses in Gishwati. Student groups from Iowa State University and Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa have made work-study visits.
GACP provides secure and meaningful employment to 26 Rwandans, and is an economic engine in the communities surrounding Gishwati. In 2010, the Rwandan Ministry of Lands and Environment entered into a Memorandum of Understanding giving GACP responsibility for managing the protected forest, and endorsing its connection to Nyungwe National Park by a 30-mile-long forest corridor.
The Gishwati Forest covered about 70,000 acres in 1930. The loss of more than 90 percent of the original forest over the following 75 years due to unsuccessful large-scale cattle-raising, resettlement of post-genocide refugees, and unsustainable subsistence agriculture has finally been stopped. The first steps toward recovery have been taken, as promised by President Kagame when he announced in 2008 that “we are determined to reverse this history of human induced environmental abuse [at Gishwati].” The forest beyond hope has become the Forest of Hope (view video).
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Background Information
Great Ape Trust is a scientific research facility in Des Moines, Iowa, dedicated to understanding the origins and future of culture, language, tools and intelligence, and to the preservation of endangered great apes in their natural habitats. Announced in 2002 and receiving its first ape residents in 2004, Great Ape Trust is home to a colony of seven bonobos involved in noninvasive interdisciplinary studies of their cognitive and communicative capabilities, and to two orangutans. To learn more about Great Ape Trust, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization, go to GreatApeTrust.org
