Rwanda official, Great Ape Trust founder sign MOU moving Forest of Hope forward

A memorandum of understanding signed this week by Rwanda’s environmental minister moves the Forest of Hope – Great Ape Trust and Earthpark’s ambitious conservation project benefitting biodiversity, climate and the welfare of Rwandan people living near the degraded Gishwati Forest – a step closer to reality.

Stanislas Kamanzi, Rwanda’s minister of environment and land, signed the MOU Wednesday in a meeting in Kigale with Dr. Benjamin Beck, Great Ape Trust’s director of conservation. Great Ape Trust and Earthpark Founder Ted Townsend had signed the document before Beck left for Rwanda.

The MOU gives management authority for the Forest of Hope, officially the Gishwati National Conservation Park, to Townsend’s Gishwati Area Conservation Program, which has been conducting research with the 15 chimpanzees isolated in the Gishwati Forest. The chimpanzees face certain extinction without the greater travel range that will be afforded by the planned 50-kilometer (31-mile) corridor connecting Gishwati to Nyungwe National Park. Nyungwe has about 400 chimpanzees, and the forest corridor connection will allow the Gishwati chimpanzees to avoid inbreeding.

The Gishwati program, called the Forest of Hope because it is located in an area that had been considered beyond hope, also aims to improve the social and economic livelihoods of the 350,000 agriculturalists living around Gishwati.

The program began in 2007 with an agreement between Rwanda’s president, His Excellency Paul Kagame, and Townsend, and the MOU reaffirms their cooperation and the significant progress that has occurred in the 30-month history of the project. According to the terms of the MOU, Great Ape Trust and Earthpark will support the project over three years and work to raise the money necessary to plant a tree corridor connecting Gishwati and Nyungwe.

Townsend said the document signing continues the extraordinary commitment of President Kagame and his administration to rebuild Rwanda around sustainable principles such as reforestation and educating farmers on the best techniques to protect the environment. “Among many remarkable examples, the Gishwati National Conservation Park epitomizes this unshakable commitment,” Townsend said. “Perhaps more important than saving the heretofore doomed chimpanzees, the people living near this forest have been respected and included, and are taking ownership of their forest’s rebirth as a symbol of their children’s future.”

He said Great Ape Trust and Earthpark are “honored and humbled to have been selected as Rwanda’s chief partner for this inspiring, vital mission”

Since the Forest of Hope’s inception in late 2007, the area of the Gishwati Reserve has grown by 67 percent, and the chimpanzee population has increased to 15 from 13 with the birth of two infants in the past year.

The increase in the chimpanzee numbers, a direct result of Great Ape Trust and the Rwandan government at the national and local levels to restore the forest, is the first in 40 years, during which time Gishwati and its chimpanzees have been reduced by dramatic increases in the human population, ill-advised large-scale ranching projects, inefficient small-plot farming and the establishment of plantations of non-native trees. As a result, the area has been plagued with catastrophic flooding, landslides, erosion, decreased soil fertility, decreased water quality and heavy river siltation – all of which aggravate a cycle of abject poverty.

The United Nations Environmental Programme has chosen Rwanda to host World Environment Day in 2010, citing the Gishwati program as an example of the country’s ambitious commitment to protect biodiversity.