Chimpanzee population on the rise in Rwanda’s Gishwati Forest

Des Moines, Iowa – August 2 2010 – Rwanda’s Forest of Hope is living up to its name. Scientists working at a research field station in the Gishwati National Conservation Park report that a young adult female chimpanzee is the latest addition to a small population of apes living in a tiny pocket of rain forest in Rwanda’s Western Province. The chimpanzee is estimated to be 8-10 years old and brings the number of apes in the 3,018-acre (1,222 hectare) Gishwati Forest to 16. That’s a population increase of 23-percent since the Gishwati Area Conservation Program (GACP) began its chimpanzee field studies and forest restoration initiative 2 ½ years ago.

“Our field team has been in the forest 6 days a week for two years and had not seen this female. It’s hard to imagine that she has been evading them all this time, but even harder to imagine that she immigrated from elsewhere – the forest known to have chimpanzees that is nearest Gishwati is 30 miles away,” said Dr. Benjamin Beck, director of conservation at Great Ape Trust – an organization that developed GACP. “Whatever her origin, the reproductive potential of one young female in a small group is crucial to the group’s survival.”

In addition to the identification of this new female, Beck said two successful chimpanzee births have been recorded in the Gishwati National Conservation Park in the past 18 months.

REFORESTATION EFFORTS IN 2010

Efforts will begin this year to expand the Gishwati National Conservation Park in Rwanda by 21 percent and begin the development of a 30-mile (50 km) forest corridor to Nyungwe National Park for the group of 16 chimpanzees. Organizers of the Gishwati Area Conservation Program say that in 2010 they will fund reforestation of 647 acres (262 hectares) in the Kinyenkanda area of Rutsiro District in Rwanda’s Western Province.

Those efforts will increase the size of the Gishwati National Conservation Park from 3,018 acres (1,222 hectares) to 3,665 acres (1,484 hectares) and stabilize steep hillsides in an area that has been plagued by landslides and severe erosion into the Sebeya River

GACP BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Gishwati Area Conservation Program began in late 2007 when H.E. President Paul Kagame and Great Ape Trust and Earthpark Founder Ted Townsend pledged at the Clinton Global Initiative meeting to found a “national conservation park” in Rwanda to benefit climate, biodiversity and the welfare of the Rwandan people. Great Ape Trust is a scientific research center in Des Moines, Iowa and Earthpark is a proposed national center for science-based ecological literacy and immersive learning for students, educators and visitors.

The Gishwati Forest Reserve’s history of deforestation extends over 50 years, in part because of ill-advised large-scale cattle ranching projects, resettlement of refugees after the genocide, inefficient small-plot farming and the establishment of plantations of non-native trees.  As a result, the area has been plagued with catastrophic flooding, erosion, landslides, decreased soil fertility, decreased water quality and heavy river siltation – all of which aggravate a cycle of poverty.