The beauty of Gishwati
Saturday, September 26, 2009 at 3:14pm

One hundred years ago, Gishwati was Rwanda’s second largest indigenous forest. It extended 1,000 square kilometers or approximately a quarter million acres (100,000 hectares). The Gishwati Forest was reduced to about one fourth that size by the late 1980s due to human encroachment, deforestation and small-scale farming. The aftermath of the civil war and genocide in the mid-90s resulted in the resettlement of refugees to the area and further encroachment. Today, Gishwati has about 2,500 acres of forest and a small population of 14 chimpanzees.

But throughout it all, Gishwati's beauty has remained.