WCS Activities

Mountain gorilla, Rwanda

The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has been working in the Albertine Rift since the 1950s, supporting the conservation and establishment of national parks. George Schaller was the first person to succeed in studying the Mountain Gorilla in the wild. Bill Weber and Amy Vedder built upon his work and established gorilla tourism in Rwanda which reversed the decline in the population of this endangered species.

WCS has been involved in monitoring the status of the population of mountain gorillas since the first census by Shaller. Recent work has expanded these pioneering projects with the first census of Grauer's gorilla in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in 1996, support to the conservation and management of the Kahuzi Biega National Park,  where about 85% of Grauer's gorilla occurs,  and continued support to the mountain gorillas in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park and the Virunga Volcanoes. Gorilla surveys have also been undertaken in other parts of the Albertine Rift such as the Maiko National Park (1990) and the Itombwe Massif (1996) by John Hart.

Following the success of the tourism development project in Rwanda, WCS went on to support the Nyungwe National Park in south west Rwanda. This forest is one of the last forests of reasonable size that incorporates altitudes between 1600-2300 meters. These altitudes generally have favorable soils for agriculture and have been converted to farmland throughout most of east Africa. As such, it contains many species that are endemic to the Albertine Rift. WCS has been supporting the conservation of this forest since 1986 with support to tourism development, law enforcement, capacity building of parks staff, research and monitoring and working with local people to educate them about the values of the forest. The Projet Conservation de la Forêt Nyungwe (PCFN) was established and continued operating throughout the civil war and genocide that engulfed Rwanda in the mid 1990s.

Recently, WCS established an Albertine Rift Programme, directed by Dr Andy Plumptre, that is focusing on the conservation of this region and building upon the history of WCS's work here. The programme is focusing on three main activities:

1. Blue-headed sunbird

   Applied research to inform conservation 
   

• Priority setting for Conservation: WCS has recently compiled a list of species for most of the protected areas in the Albertine Rift to establish priorities for conservation in the Rift and to identify landscapes of contiguous natural habitat.

• Chimpanzee surveys. WCS recently completed a nationwide survey of chimpanzees in Uganda and supported the development of a national action plan for this species.

• Mountain gorilla surveys. WCS has supported the monitoring of the mountain gorilla populations in both the Virunga Volcanoes and Bwindi Impenetrable National Park.

• Biodiversity surveys. WCS has been surveying the forests of the Rift to identify priority sites within forests so that the key areas of the forests for conservation are protected. This is especially necessary in a region of high human population density with the consequent demands for access to the forests for fuel wood and non-timber forest products.

• Economic analyses. WCS is developing a programme to undertake economic valuations of protected areas in the Rift. These valuations will be used to influence the policy makers in national governments to put more funds into conservation.

2. Capacity building of nationals

• The Projet Conservation de la Forêt Nyungwe (PCFN). PCFN has been supporting the capacity building of Rwandans since the mid 1980s. Today, the whole project is run and managed by Rwandan staff. Continued support for the training of ORTPN staff still occurs.
  
• Uganda Wildlife Authority training in Monitoring and Research. WCS has started a programme of support to the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA), responsible for the conservation of all wildlife in Uganda. UWA develops the monitoring and research capacity of their staff to enable them to adapt management strategies to changing situations.
  
• Supporting Congolese biologists. WCS supported the training of the first Congolese biologists to obtain Masters of Science degrees in the Institute Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature (ICCN), which manages Congo's national parks. WCS has also established the Centre de Formation en Recherche et Conservation des Forêts (CEFRECOF) -  a training center in the Ituri forest that is training Congolese biologists in applied field techniques.

3. Support to protected area management
   
   
• Nyungwe Forest Conservation.  WCS continues to support the conservation of this forest and recently has been helping the Office Rwandais pour la Tourisme et Parcs Nationaux (ORTPN) develop boundary plans to gazette the forest as Rwanda's third national park.
  
• Virunga National Park. The Virunga National Park is Africa's richest park for vertebrate conservation. It was also Africa's first national park. During the recent civil wars in Congo it has suffered greatly with people encroaching in the park to farm, rebel groups hiding out in the park, and the lack of any funds to support staff salaries and the basic running costs. Tragically, many park rangers have been murdered during this time.
  
• Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. WCS has been supporting the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park through support to the Institute for Tropical Forest Conservation (ITFC). This support funds monitoring programmes for the park and is supporting research projects that evaluate the effectiveness of conservation strategies.