Poachers have burned a third of Rwanda’s largest national park, hampering efforts to protect wildlife from dangers posed by the country’s fast growing rural population.
“It’s true, one third of Akagera National Park has burned over the past week ... (but) the fires are under control as I’m speaking,” park warden David Mugisha said Thursday by telephone from Rwanda.
Akagera is a haven for wildlife in overcrowded Rwanda, where more than 8 million people are squeezed into just 10,160 square miles and deforestation is already widespread.
The sprawling park in the east of the country is home to elephants, giraffes, zebra, and various species of antelope and monkey.
Mugisha said poachers lit the fires to scatter animals and then set snares to catch them should they return to feed on vegetation that grows back.
“We are very much concerned. ... It’s very damaging and very abrupt for the biodiversity of the park,” Mugisha said.
He said the poachers were both commercial hunters and subsistence hunters trying to feed themselves. Rwanda’s rural population is among the poorest in the world.
Mugisha said no arrests had been made but patrols in the park were being increased.
The fires will also hurt Rwanda’s fledgling tourism industry, which is a key foreign exchange earner along with coffee and tea.
The news comes days after the World Wildlife Fund said illegal settlers had destroyed huge areas of mountain gorilla habitat in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, threatening the survival one of the world’s rarest animals.
There are only about 700 mountain gorillas left in the world in the lush mountains and volcanoes straddling Rwanda, Uganda and the anarchic Democratic Republic of the Congo, and any loss of remaining habitat can push them closer to extinction.
“Over the last two months, 1,500 hectares (six square miles) of prime mountain gorilla habitat have been cleared by illegal settlers in Virunga National Park, a World Heritage Site,” the group said in a statement.
“Since April, convoys of people from Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo have destroyed large tracts of the park, home to the mountain gorilla and other endangered species, to create agricultural and pastoral land,” the WWF added.
In all of Virunga there is only about 180 square miles of suitable gorilla habitat, so the loss of even six square miles is important.
“This is particularly significant since it is encroaching on an area where gorillas live. There are three family groups in that area comprising about 50 animals,” said Peter Stephenson, the group's African Great Apes program coordinator.
The group said evidence of the deforestation was uncovered by the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature and that most of the damage took place from early May to June.
“Several thousand people moved in to the area to farm illegally in Virunga ... The forest has been entirely cut down and turned into timber or charcoal,” the WWF said.
The group added that recent meetings between Congolese and Rwandan officials had led to a cessation in forest clearance but it remained concerned that it could start again.
“If the deforestation continues then some of the animals will be cut off from the rest of the park,” Stephenson said.
The border area has been a scene of tension in recent weeks after Congo accused Rwanda -- which has twice invaded its giant neighbor in the past eight years -- of backing renegade troops who briefly seized an eastern Congolese town in early June.
Rebel groups have used the gorillas’ forest home for bloody incursions into all three countries and military activity is another threat to their survival.
