Drake University has Key Role in Growing Rwanda’s Gishwati Forest

(Des Moines, Iowa - November 17, 2011) A small pocket of Rwandan rain forest, home to a tiny population of endangered chimpanzees, has become an important scientific learning tool and research site for Drake University students and faculty. The area is known as Gishwati Forest in the western highlands of Rwanda and is where Great Ape Trust, a scientific research organization based in Des Moines, supports and directs the Gishwati Area Conservation Program, (GACP), a reforestation and chimpanzee conservation initiative in partnership with the Rwanda government.

For the past two years, Drake students under the direction of Dr. Keith Summerville, an associate professor of environmental science and policy, have meticulously worked on plans for a 30-mile (50km) forest corridor from Gishwati to Nyungwe National Park. The forest bridge would expand the habitat for the 20 eastern chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) and provide reproduction opportunities with a much larger chimpanzee population in Nyungwe.

"We started with a very simple question. How can we take this isolated forest fragment and connect it to other forest habitats in the western Rwanda landscape," asked Summerville? "We had a pretty sensible methodology, figure out where the environment tolerates animal movement and figure out where people aren't living so that we can move animals through there with as little impact as possible.'

The process began with high-resolution aerial photographs provided by the Rwandan government. Drake students pored over the images and identified the terrain (within 10 feet) as hillsides and valleys, farmland and forest, rivers and roads--a topographical quilt of the western one-fifth of Rwanda. With digital markers, the students then painstakingly plotted the individual location for each building throughout the three proposed routes from Gishwati to Nyungwe - nearly 300,000 separate points.

"Planning corridors presents many difficulties - topography, land use, waterways and, possibly the greatest challenge, people and structures,' said Dr. Benjamin Beck, conservation director of Great Ape Trust, which manages GACP. "We were quite surprised to find in Africa's most densely populated country, one route option with only 350 buildings within the 30-mile long, 100-meter wide forest corridor."

The corridor proposal has been approved by Rwandan President Paul Kagame and his cabinet ministries and is now awaiting approval from the Parliament.

In addition to planning the corridor for the Gishwati Area Conservation Program, Drake is interested in helping Rwanda determine what to plant in the forest bridge. Research conducted by GACP's Dr. Rebecca Chancellor, has shown that figs from Ficus trees are a primary food source for the Gishwati chimpanzees - they rely on figs throughout the year and especially during the dry season.

Through efforts by Drake students working in Gishwati Forest this past summer, it was determined that branches cut from fig trees and simply stuck into the ground, will grow.

"After three months we found they root, bud and flower," said Summerville. "The advantage is we have a quick and inexpensive way of reforesting a lot of trees." He added that Drake hopes to send a student back next summer to check on the growth and health of the cuttings.

But sometimes food sources in the forest just aren't enough and the chimpanzees of Gishwati look elsewhere for something to eat - crops grown by farmers outside the forest. A scientific research program that studies crop raiding is of interest to Dr. Michael J. Renner, a Drake professor of psychology and biology who specializes in animal cognition - including great apes.

"Anytime you have an interface between a protected area where the animals have free rein and an area where humans are trying to do agriculture, you get instances where the animals take food products the humans consider to be theirs,"said Renne r. "That creates a tension between the human population and the protected area and is one of the things that can undermine local support for a project especially if you want to expand. It's particularly going to be an issue for a corridor because you have an awful lot of boundary compared to the amount of territory that is inside the area.'

Renner visited Rwanda in fall of 2011 and conducted reconnaissance and preliminary research of the Gishwati Forest and surrounding villages - learning about the chimpanzees and local agriculture practices.

"Where does crop raiding occur and what can you do to minimize it," asked Renner? "If we could provide a local guidebook to farmers, 10 handy hints to reduce crop raiding, that would be terrific." Renner said he plans to continue research on crop raiding on a larger scale in summer or fall of 2012.

A fourth area of collaboration between Drake and Rwanda involves carbon sequestration. If the 30-mile corridor from Gishwati Forest to Nyungwe National Park is planted, how much carbon will be sequestered or removed from the atmosphere as the plants and trees grow and flourish? Using data on tree size and growth compiled by Dr. Rebecca Chancellor, Drake University's David Courard-Hauri is compiling precise estimates of carbon stored in trees in the existing Gishwati Forest, and what could be stored in the planned corridor. Someday, this carbon could be traded on the international carbon market, with proceeds used to compensate Rwandans and offset the cost of Gishwati Forest and corridor protection.

"Most of our work is capacity building - being able to empower Rwandans to administer this project once we provide them with the appropriate data for objective decision-making," said Summerville. "The strength of the Drake partnership is really about capacity building as it is doing science."

While a Memorandum of Understanding between GACP and Rwanda is scheduled to end December 31, 2011, Drake University officials are confident they will be able to continue their research efforts through separate partnerships with Rwanda. Grants are currently being sought to help fund those collaborations.

TO READ PERRY BEEMAN'S ARTICLE ABOUT THE COLLABORATION IN THE DES MOINES REGISTER, GO HERE

GISHWATI AREA CONSERVATION PROGRAM BACKGROUND

The Gishwati Forest Reserve's history of deforestation extended over many decades. A forest that covered about 70,000 acres in 1930, was nearly depleted because of ill-advised large-scale cattle ranching projects, resettlement of refugees after the 1994 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.

In late 2007, the President of Rwanda, His Excellency Paul Kagame, and Great Ape Trust Founder and Chair, Ted Townsend of Des Moines, Iowa, pledged at the Clinton Global Initiative conference to create a 'national conservation park" in Rwanda to benefit climate, biodiversity and the welfare of the Rwandan people. In early 2008, the Gishwati Forest Reserve in western Rwanda, disregarded for years by international conservation organizations, was chosen as the site of the future park--and the Gishwati Area Conservation Program (GACP) began.

In 2010, the Rwandan Ministry of Lands and Environment entered into a Memorandum of Understanding granting GACP responsibility for managing the protected forest while endorsing the most challenging element of the project--a 30 mile-long forest corridor connecting Gishwati to Nyungwe National Park.

Today, there are 20 identified chimpanzees in the Gishwati Forest - a 54 percent increase from 13 apes in early 2008 when GACP began the chimpanzee field studies and forest restoration initiative. During that period, the protected area of Gishwati Forest has increased an impressive 67 percent from 2,190 to 3,665 acres. GACP also provides secure and meaningful employment to 27 Rwandans, and is an economic engine in the communities surrounding Gishwati. Students and working adults in 15 schools and 10 cooperatives as well as officials of the Rutsiro District government are partnering with GACP to help restore Gishwati.