Protecting Endangered Mountain Gorillas in Rwanda through Community Engagement

A critical part of our work in Rwanda addresses human needs by providing basic infrastructure, health care, conservation education, food and water security, and livelihood programs. This type of investment is essential in this region, given the significant population density, high poverty level, and lack of any buffer zone between the park and local community. During the past year alone, our community outreach projects have touched the lives of nearly 20,000 Rwandans.

Each year, our primary school education program reaches more than 5,500 students and 60 teachers in the community living around the national park to the importance of the gorillas and the forest to the wellbeing of the local human population. Through our curriculum, we introduce children to concepts such as threats to the park’s animals, the importance of conserving animals, and finally everyday actions that everyone can take to contribute to the conservation of the park and its animals. The ultimate goal is to change young people’s behavior towards the natural world and encourage them to become stewards of the environment.

One project that brings all of these goals together is our support for school nature clubs in Rwanda, now expanded to 15 primary schools that are adjacent to Volcanoes National Park, home to the mountain gorillas. These school nature clubs involve student-led projects that they design and implement themselves, showing that young people can make a positive difference and help in the protection of wildlife. These have included such initiatives such as school gardens, which have provided food for more than 1,700 people, tree nurseries, bird and butterfly studies, and more.

Recently, nature club members from the Buringo primary schools designed and implemented a sheep husbandry project, designed to help provide alternatives to hunting in the park for game animals for food. The project started with 10 sheep—nine females and one male—last year, and is now up to 22 sheep. Last month, six of these sheep were distributed to community members at a special event. The first beneficiaries to receive sheep will pass on their offspring to students and families. This is planned to continue until every student has a sheep in the family. One student commented:

I am happy to be one of the first beneficiaries of this project to receive sheep. I’m going to be responsible and make sure that I will give the offspring to another student. This is a good opportunity for me, and I think very soon I will be able to buy school materials on my own.

By increasing access to these domestic animals, they will help decrease the number of people who depend on wild animals inside the park. Project like these also help teach students that they can make a big impact, motivating them do more for conservation and their communities.

We would like to invest more in our community work by scaling up what has worked well in the past, and designing new projects to address ongoing and developing threats. We believe that if we equip communities with the skills and knowledge they need to share space with gorillas, costs from living near a protected area will decrease and human well-being will improve. We will do this by increasing access to natural resources outside of the park, providing necessary training and support for communities to adopt alternative livelihoods (such as sustainable agriculture, animal husbandry, and mushroom cultivation, bamboo propagation, and wool production), piloting improved land use practices on our new Karisoke campus, and by working with existing co-operatives to mitigate human-wildlife conflict. Coupled with our conservation education program that aims to increase the conservation awareness of youth, local leaders, and communities neighboring the park, we will be able to further encourage support of conservation.

The total cost of our operations at the Karisoke Research Center for 2021 is $1,771,455; the community engagement and education program costs approximately $150,000. A grant of $5,000 from the Dougherty Foundation would make a tremendous impact toward these goals.