KPRC 2 and the Houston Zoo are in Rwanda to document conservation efforts supported by Houstonians. Follow along with the journey on click2houston.com/conservation.
Day three of our journey was our first full day in this beautiful and busy place. Rwanda is a country packed with people but also remarkably clean. Our Saturday morning started with a three-hour drive from Kigali to just past Musanze. As we headed to visit the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund headquarters which the Houston Zoo supports, we noticed along the way, people making their way on foot or by bike with goods for their local markets. They balanced sacks of potatoes or trays of bananas on their heads and secured tall sugar cane across bicycles.
Periodically, we saw someone sweeping the shoulders of the road. Not even leaves were left behind. We’re told once a month, the country hosts a national clean-up day. The effort shows. While we try to not mess with Texas with our anti-littering campaign, the people of Rwanda take personal responsibility for keeping their country clean.
We’re seeing already they also take responsibility for protecting the wildlife. The animals here are a source of income as tourists come from all over the world to see them. The biggest draw are the mountain gorillas, which live in a small area of Volcanoes National Park. We will see them ourselves on Monday, but on this day, our focus was learning about efforts to save them.
We were greeted at The Ellen DeGeneres campus of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund headquarters by the organization’s leader Tara Stoinski. The CEO is collaborating with teams in Rwanda to help grow the number of gorillas in the wild.
She showed us maps of where the four species of gorillas in Africa live. The small, dark blue dots on a wall map are where mountain gorillas live in Rwanda and Uganda.
Since renowned conservationist Dian Fossey began her work in the area, the mountain gorilla population has grown and is one of conservation’s greatest success stories. The illegal act of poaching gorillas has stopped, but occasionally the animals will get snagged by a snare set up for other animals or get sick or hurt in other ways. When that happens, the teams with the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund and the Gorilla Doctors (who we will meet on Sunday) will notice on their daily checks of the gorilla families and get the animal help.
We’ll be covering their important work in a one-hour documentary that will air in the fall of 2024. In that program, you’ll meet Nadia Niyonizeye. She told us she watched the movie “Gorillas in the Mist” when she was young and immediately knew she wanted to be like Dian Fossey and save gorillas. Now she’s not only doing that through the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, but she is helping with a program through the Gorilla Fund called Girls in Conservation, which is developing young girls into future conservation leaders.
Houston Zoo president and CEO Lee Ehmke serves as the vice-chair for the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund board of directors. The Houston Zoo also contributes to the Fossey Fund to support its mission of empowering women in conservation.
While gorillas are the focus here, visitors to the Gorilla Fund headquarters can also pick up a bird scavenger hunt of sorts... a sheet identifying some of the most commonly seen birds in the area. We saw quite a few in the gardens at the complex.
We’re headed to the Gorilla Doctors offices Sunday and then up the mountain to see the gorillas ourselves Monday. Look for updates and more pictures from our trip on click2houston.com/conservation.