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Their stoves completed, Rwandans will wait three weeks as it sits in the sun to dry before using it. Photo courtesy of Partners in Conservation. |
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Great Ape Trust-supported conservation program collaborates with Rwandans to build fuel-efficient stoves, cut reliance on pristine rain forest
Des Moines, Iowa – September 27, 2007 – In just two years, a Great Ape Trust of Iowa-supported conservation project in Rwanda has measurably affected the amount of fuel wood harvested from one of East Africa’s most ecologically important areas.
Under the project coordinated by Partners In Conservation (PIC), an initiative of the Columbus Zoo, Rwandans are learning to make fuel-efficient household stoves from clay and straw that use 75 percent less wood than conventional three-stone circular stoves. In 2007, Great Ape Trust gave a $5,000 conservation grant funding collaborations to build 1,500 of the energy-saving stoves, enough to equip about one-fourth of the households in three vulnerable villages adjacent to Nyungwe National Park. Since the PIC stove project began two and one-half years ago, some 13,500 stoves have been built. Built of local materials, they cost about $3 to make.
Reduced reliance on the forest for fuel wood is good news for the chimpanzees and other endangered species living in the Nyungwe National Park, an area unparalleled in the world for its beauty and, at 378 square miles, East Africa’s largest protected high-altitude rain forest. The forest has decreased by about 15 percent in the past 40 years, limiting habitat for endangered chimpanzees and a dozen other primate species that depend on it for survival. Nyungwe also provides habitat for at least 275 bird species, many of which are found only in the dense forest, as well as other endangered species.
The conservation work also is good news for the nearly 300,000 Rwandans living near Nyungwe, PIC founding member Charlene Jendry said during a recent visit to Great Ape Trust. Rwandans understand the ecological sensitivity of the rain forest and, as a water catchment area that serves the entire nation of nearly 10 million, the importance of keeping the dense canopy intact. But given a choice between starvation and harvesting firewood, conservation becomes the lesser priority, Jendry said.
“In Rwanda, the people living nearby the forest know the value of the forest,” she said. “They know their water comes from there, but when they have been able to grow food and don’t have firewood to cook it, they’re going to go into the forest because their family needs it.”
Jendry was joined at The Trust by Nsengiyunva Barakabuye, who directs the Nyungwe Forest Conservation Project (PCFN), and dignitaries from Rwanda, including His Excellency James Kimonyo, the ambassador of the Republic of Rwanda. Kimonyo was in Iowa attending a President’s Convocation at Oskaloosa-based William Penn University, where officials have signed letters of intent establishing a formal relationship with the Rwandan government. That relationship is expected to include faculty and student exchanges between William Penn and Rwandan universities. Several Rwandan students already have enrolled at William Penn for the 2007-2008 academic year.
Jendry outlined several reasons for PIC’s success in Rwanda, but mainly credited the organization’s hallmark of “respectfully listening to the ideas of our conservation partners.”
“They know the solutions to their conservation problems,” she said, “but sometimes just need a small amount of money to convert their ideas into action.”
PIC works hand-in-hand with PCFN, an organization that seeks to protect the Nyungwe Forest and the animals living there through holistic programs that educate and involve local people. Great Ape Trust previously has financially supported PIC’s work with beekeepers, purchasing smokers and modern hives that were placed outside the rain forest. When traditional hives are used, grass is burned to create smoke to calm the bees; however, that practice carries a risk of igniting forest fires. Since the project was launched in 2005, there have been no forest fires and beekeepers are collecting 50 percent more honey.
Jendry said PIC’s projects reflect Rwandan conservation officials’ “outside in” approach to reducing environmental pressure on Nyungwe and other fragile areas, a departure from the more conventional “inside out” thinking that has guided conservation efforts in the past. The old model held that the best way to protect endangered species was by protecting the habitat they depend on for survival.
However, “if you take care of the people on the outside, they don’t have to go into the forest,” Jendry said. “If they don’t go in the forest, the forest survives and the animals live. It makes so much sense: By having outside-in-conservation, you really have effectively made people active participants in conservation.”
PIC was established by Jendry and others associated with the Columbus Zoo, which continues to fund the organization’s operating budget, in 1991 in response to the effect the civil war in Rwanda was having on endangered gorillas. For the first few years of the project, PIC focused its work mainly on conservation, but following the genocide in 1994 the focus expanded and now equally includes conservation and humanitarian programs.
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Rwandan basket makers made field bags for Des Moines Public School teachers involved in a Great Ape Trust of Iowa education initiative, Great Ape Academy. Pictured are Charlene Gendry, Nsengiyunva Barakabuye and Jan Drees, The Academy’s director. |
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Jendry and PIC cofounders Jeff Ramsey, Barb Delorme and Judy Hoffman Bolton have learned that conservation and humanitarianism are two sides of the same coin in Rwanda, where a proud people with a rich cultural heritage are journeying back from one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century. Violence between the Hutus and Tutsis had been occurring for years, but the conflict ended when more than 800,000 Rwandans were killed in genocide committed over a 100-day period from April to June of 1994.
Prior to 1994, Rwandans identified themselves by ethnicity, but as the African nation heals, “everyone strives to be just Rwandan,” Jendry said. “That’s a very major part of the healing process. There’s been a commitment from the government that reconciliation happens, but also a commitment one-on-one.”
Jendry marvels at the resilience of Rwandans and their quickness to forgive. “Things are difficult in Rwanda,” Jendry said, “but Rwandans have clearly stepped up. It was a very bad situation, but they have managed to move on. I consistently find that remarkable, that they forgave.”
In addressing both the conservation and humanitarian needs, PIC has partnered with the Imbabazi Orphanage, which provides a home for 121 Rwandan children whose entire families were killed during the genocide. PIC helps fund the annual operating budget, as well as vocational and apprenticeship programs that provide older children with the skills they’ll need to survive in adulthood.
“We realized that supporting an orphanage didn’t exactly fit within our conservation objectives, but we knew that it was the right thing for us to do,” Jendry said. “An unexpected benefit from our partnership with the orphanage is that we gained the respect of the Rwandan government for helping children who survived the genocide. This opened doors for productive conservation discussions with Rwandan wildlife authorities.”
Social impact also is measured in less dramatic, but by no means less important, ways. Consider the value of the stove project to Rwandan women, on whom the responsibility to gather firewood and prepare meals most often falls. “It takes a long time to collect firewood, sometimes a whole day, and they cannot do other productive work,” said Barakabuye, the PCFN director.
Spending less time gathering firewood allows more time for basket-making, a centuries-old art form in Rwanda that has emerged as a source of income for the women’s families and a vital cog in the reconciliation process, as women on both sides of the conflict work side by side weaving baskets. Cooperatives have been established for the sale of the baskets, and with more money in their households, the women are able to buy charcoal made from non-rain forest woods for cooking and heating and further reduce their reliance on the forest. While the stove project has reduced by 75 percent the amount of wood needed to cook the same amount of food, the basket makers have reduced by 85 percent the amount of rainforest wood they previously gathered for cooking.
PIC provides a strong model for other conservation programs, said Dr. Benjamin Beck, Great Ape Trust’s director of conservation. He said conservation efforts are doomed if they fail to address the unique needs of local people, such as access to health care, education and long-term security. PIC’s programs are transparent, provide measurable results to investors, and are rife with respect for people and their local customs, making it easy for organizations such as Great Ape Trust to provide funding, he said.
“It’s very easy to be positive and support this program and the way Charlene and PIC have worked with the conservation community and local people,” Beck said.
Great Ape Trust Background
Great Ape Trust of Iowa is a scientific research facility in southeast Des Moines dedicated to understanding the origins and future of culture, language, tools and intelligence. When completed, Great Ape Trust will be the largest great ape facility in North America and one of the first worldwide to include all four types of great ape – bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans – for noninvasive interdisciplinary studies of their cognitive and communicative capabilities.
Great Ape Trust is dedicated to providing sanctuary and an honorable life for great apes, studying the intelligence of great apes, advancing conservation of great apes and providing unique educational experiences about great apes. Great Ape Trust of Iowa is a 501(c) 3 not-for-profit organization and is certified by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA). To learn more about Great Ape Trust of Iowa, go to www.GreatApeTrust.org. |
Great Ape Trust is certified by the Association of Zoos & Aquariums
