(Posted 30th July 2024)
Courtesy of African Elephant News / Stenews and Daniel Sabiit, KT Press
In the next two years, elephants could return to Nyungwe Forest National Park where they formerly lived in this natural rain forest in large numbers, 25 years ago.
The last elephant was seen in Nyungwe forest and is believed to have been killed by poachers at a time when the country was coming out of the 1994 genocide against Tutsi.
“We would like to return the elephants to this forest so as to reduce the overgrowth of the choking vine grass,” said Pacifique Ngezahayo, a Nyungwe Park Tour Guide.
Ngezahayo explained that one of the reasons is that elephants used to consume choking vine grass, and since their disappearance, the grass has been unconsumed and growing in numbers.
“The choking vine grass, formerly consumed by elephants in the forest, is currently growing in numbers and this grass is found in almost every part and covers a good percentage of the flora in the forest,” Ngezahayo said.
Ngezahayo was this June 23, 2024 giving a guided forest tour to a group of journalists attending a two-day media training on environmental reporting organised by the Rwanda Environmental Journalists (REJ) and Fojo Media Institute.
Nyungwe forest national park has over 1,068 plant species and the choking vine grass is one of them but believed to have both negative and positive impact to the flora in the forest.
For instance, its lack of consumption by elephants (the only animal that consumes this grass) causes natural competition with other plants in the forest; though on the positive side, the grass is also a habitat for many other smaller living animals and insects.
Nyungwe Forest National Park Manager, Protais Niyigaba says that in order to bring back elephants into their former habitat, the government of Rwanda and the African Parks will have to conduct a survey to respectively indicate the benefits or loss if the elephants returned or were not returned to the park.
“African Parks has the expertise in relocating wildlife but conducting the study is very important before returning the elephants to Nyungwe forest,” Niyigaba said this June 23, 2024 during a media training on environmental reporting.
Though costly and not an easy task, the relocation of elephants back to Nyungwe is expected to happen locally with translocating some of the 140 existing elephants inside the Akagera National Park- also managed by African Parks under an existing partnership with the Government of Rwanda.
This, according to Ngezahayo, will require the Akagera elephants (Savanah elephants) which were relocated from Bugesera and Kenya and to adapt to a new hilly terrain that is found inside the Nyungwe forest.
“Every animal including humans can adapt to a new environment. This may take time but it happens,” Ngezahayo said.
Elephants are one of the big 5 wildlife animals found in the Akagera National Park attracting many of the visitors (local and international) in Rwanda’s tourism sector which has seen annual tourism revenue rise by 36 percent from $445 million in 2022 to reach $620 million in 2023.
