January 8th, 2008
Published by Ben Beck

Rwandan women make baskets near Volcanoes National Park in Musanze (Ruhengeri).

Editor’s note: Today, Great Ape Trust of Iowa Director of Conservation Dr. Benjamin Beck begins a 10-part blog on his recent trip to Rwanda. Beck, along with Great Ape Trust Founder and Chairman Ted Townsend, Communications Director Al Setka and Peter Clay, a senior orangutan caretaker, were in Rwanda from Nov. 28-Dec. 6 to begin the process to establish the Rwanda National Conservation Project with Earthpark and the U.S. Center for Citizen Diplomacy, two other Iowa-based projects supported by Townsend.

In September 2007 at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York City, the Honorable President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Ted Townsend, founder and chairman of Great Ape Trust of Iowa, signed an agreement to create and operate the Rwanda National Conservation Park (RNCP) to benefit the people of Rwanda, promote conservation of biodiversity, and improve climate. President Kagame is one of the few world leaders to truly understand the importance of biodiversity to economic and social progress, and mentions it in many of his public speeches. The people of Rwanda endured indescribable conflict and genocide in the 1990s, but are on a course of reconciliation and recovery that is unique in world history.

Rwanda is growing into a modern, peaceful, example of cooperation and restorative living. Rwanda has three national parks. All have been encroached as a result of armed conflict and resettlement of refugees. The country is one of the 10 poorest in the world, with 60 percent of its people living in poverty. About 90 percent are engaged in small-scale, labor-intensive agriculture, and live without electricity and running water. But the Volcanoes National Park has about 100 mountain gorillas which, in combination with adjoining populations in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda, is almost self-sustaining. Mountain gorilla ecotourism is the largest source of foreign exchange for the country, and largely supports operation of the three national parks. Nyungwe National Park has about 200 chimpanzees which, in combination with and adjoining population in Burundi, is self-sustaining. There are more than a dozen species of monkeys in these parks, as well as countless endemic birds.

But where could we locate a new national conservation park, and what did that mean, anyway (there is no such designation in Rwanda)? I was fortunate enough to be chosen to join The Trust’s initiative and help develop this plan.

Three of us had previously been to Rwanda. Ted visited in 1996, Peter worked intermittently with mountain gorillas in Rwanda in the 1980s and 1990s, and I had first visited Rwanda in 1972 on a survey of primate habitats and made a few more trips there as an ecotour leader in the 1980s and 1990s. Along with our communications expert, Al, we worked well as a team, complementing each other’s knowledge and experience.

Next: Hope and optimism prevail in Rwanda