By Perry Beeman
Des Moines Register
December 20, 2009
Kinihira, Rwanda-Near this east-central African village, an impassioned collection of people with Iowa ties works to save the shrunken Gishwati Forest and the nearly doomed chimpanzees that live there.
But their Gishwati Area Conservation Program has as much to do with saving the lives of villagers — by sparing them from deadly mudslides and providing them jobs — as it does restoring a once-mighty forest, said Benjamin Beck, conservation director at Des Moines-based Great Ape Trust, which co-founded the program.
Foreigners know of rain forest-bejeweled Rwanda mainly for two reasons. One: It's the home of many of the world's remaining mountain gorillas, the tourist-drawing apes made famous by primatologist Dian Fossey and "Gorillas in the Mist."
Two: It's the site of a 1994 genocide, one of the worst in world history, that led to the deaths of nearly 1 million Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
One of the poorest places on the planet, Rwanda is making a new name for itself by attempting a daunting task: Transform from a nation dominated by poor farmers to a robust economy that is steadfastly eco-friendly.
Why grow a green movement here? Because Rwanda has limited resources, because foreign investors demand it, and because it's the right thing to do, officials say.
Iowa plays a big part in that mission. Africa traveler, conservationist and Des Moines busi nessman Ted Townsend and his two organizations, Great Ape Trust and Earthpark, joined with the federal and local Rwandan governments two years ago to launch the Gishwati Area Conservation Program.
The centerpiece of its work: one of the largest reforestation projects in Africa, an audacious plan to plant a 31-mile swath of forest between Gishwati, home to 14 isolated apes, and Nyungwe National Park, home to hundreds of chimps. Program backers call the new corridor "Forest of Hope."
Deforestation dating back a century ramped up when refugees, some of them gone for decades, began returning after the genocide. With government approval or nonchalance, the returnees chopped the landscape into tiny plots to grow bananas, beans, potatoes and corn.
In the remnant of forest, 14 chimps munch bamboo, climb trees, steal honey and eat monkeys, unaware they are biologically stranded, their survival threatened without help.
The Gishwati apes need more feeding grounds, and especially, more mates, Beck said. One piece of ensuring ape populations' survival is to reconnect forest fragments.
But the vision of President Paul Kagame and the people from far-off Des Moines, a place surrounded by fields, not rain forest, extends far beyond saving one small group of chimps and rebuilding one forest.
They want to prevent the deadly landslides that have killed 119 people in the past two years. They want to fight climate change by planting trees that can sweep heat-trapping carbon from the air. And they want to find a way for some of the world's poorest people to feed themselves without washing away the country's majestic hills.
The Gishwati Area Conservation Program plans to improve local schools, water supplies and power sources. People with a better quality of life are more likely to save and expand the forest, said Beck, a key player in the Rwanda project.
Already, authorities have enlarged the forest boundary. That, along with a government land donation, increased the forest acreage by 67 percent, to 3,667 acres. Clumps of trees intersperse with cleared ground. Large-scale planting is under way and will ramp up next year.
The program is still raising the $5million to $10 million needed for the reforestation and other work. For now, it is chugging along on $200,000-plus a year with the support of co-founder Townsend, the Rwandan government and private donations.
Forest project stirs conflict
Some experts in and out of Rwanda doubt it's possible to pull off the project.
This reforestation plan by its nature triggers conflict: An estimated 5,000 families may have to move off their land, possibly to still-smaller plots, if available, to make way for the trees. They will need to shift to new jobs generated by an eco-friendly economy, as tree planters, forest guards, tour guides and workers in modern, more efficient farming operations.
The Rwandan government plans to compensate anyone who has to move to make way for the corridor, but locals already have complained so loudly about the terms that President Kagame ordered his staff to reconsider the offers.
"Expanding the forest lands would mean moving the people out of villages, away from their neighbors," explained Karagire Bernadette, 63, as she hoed beans in the middle of Kinihira.
Rwanda needs the forest, she said, but "we have nowhere else to go."
Nzabonimpa Joseph, 69, said he can't feed his family with the 2.5 acres of land he now works, growing sweet potatoes, corn and beans. He's afraid of losing it and fears the government won't find replacement land.
"Even if I had the money to buy land, money without land to buy is nothing," Nzabonimpa said. "If you want the forest, you have to give alternatives."
Kagame's administration has stood by the belief that there's no future in families farming ever-smaller parcels of depleted land.
"You start by showing that where they are is not safe," said Rose Mukankomeje, director general of the Rwanda Environment Management Authority. "They are producing nothing. Some people say we aren't respecting their rights. You don't have a right to die and be poor."
Intensifying the competition for land: Rwanda is still resettling refugees returning after the genocide. Steve McDonald, consulting director of the Africa program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., predicts Kagame will have a tough time expanding Gishwati — or any other forest — when Rwanda is bursting with returning refugees and newborns.
Then there's the question of whether to spend so much money and energy on this particular forest fragment, with only 14 chimps.
George Strunden, vice president of Africa programs for the Jane Goodall Institute in Arlington, Va., said the project will make sense only if communities gain water supplies and other perks from the work.
"This looks like a very big effort for 14 chimps," Strunden said. "The political price seems very high."
Beck said the project, besides saving chimps, promotes craft and crop cooperatives to improve incomes. And it provides conservation education to help ensure the new livelihoods last.
National University of Rwanda biology professor Gasogo Anastasie is a Burundian who wants to steer clear of Rwandan politics. Still, she wonders whether eco-tourism, now the country's top source of foreign cash, will continue to grow.
"Government has to talk to people and get less population growth," Gasogo said.
Strunden also doubts there will be enough jobs as tree planters and eco-guards to make up for the lost farming opportunities.
"In Rwanda, you can't say, ‘Go farm somewhere else,'" Strunden said.
Model for development?
The Gishwati program attracted local partners with the promise of improving the lives of Rwandans in addition to saving a forest that's critical to preventing landslides and providing rainfall for crops.
If the project succeeds, backers say, it could be a model for sustainable development around the world.
Beck, the Des Moines-based scientist overseeing the work, is fond of saying, "If we can do it here, it can be done anywhere."
He is determined to sift through the push and pull of conflicting demands to save what soon might be lost forever.
"That the Gishwati fragment and the chimpanzees survive at all is miraculous, and we should not let them slip through our fingers," he said.
Beck thinks Iowans have a clear interest in what happens in the tiny, landlocked nation.
"Environmental degradation deepens all of the adversity of poverty: social injustice, gender inequality, lack of education, malnutrition and ill health, overpopulation, lack of economic development, and childhood neglect," Beck said. "Any and all of these factors contribute to political instability at a national and regional level, which in turn can ignite threats to world peace and global stability. That is a major reason why Gishwati matters in Iowa, and why Iowans have a stake in stabilizing and restoring environments and biodiversity throughout the developing world. Of course, apes are pretty cool, too."
Vincent Karega, Rwanda's minister of infrastructure, predicts the Gishwati effort will be successful.
"It will be something to tell the world," he said. "It can create even better livelihoods and at the same time save this forest."
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