Anti-poaching efforts around Karisoke
Anti-poaching efforts around Karisoke. Our experience was not one of neat development from study through analysis to action in conservation. From our first days in the park, we were actively working against poaching near Karisoke. We knew very little about the identities of the poachers, their possible goals, or the reasons a market for their horrific products existed.
Time would allow us to find the solutions to some of these problems. First, however, we covered the first line of resistance in a deadly fight to preserve the gorillas. We thus burnt poacher homes, seized firearms, and cut traps wherever we came across them. With little regard to what we might do should we ever capture poachers, we pursued them as long as lungs would endure. We herded gorillas outside of recognized poacher areas. And we tried our little best with a few resources to free those unable to escape the deadly hold of traps.
Bill was requested for help on several park-related problems on his regular visits to Kigali. German tourist adviser to ORTPN, Dr. Siebrecht, said much more should be done with gorillas. Sadly, one of his initial ideas was to gather a small number of gorillas and house them in a confined area accessible to visitors.
Then, of course, mon ami, Detlef would rapidly add that the enclosure needs to be within the park limits. His grin was interesting, and his reasoning was simple: we have to earn enough money to guard your park and the other gorillas. But his concept was terrifying, hence Bill gave top importance to eradicating any such thinking in conversations with Detlef and other ORTPN staff members.
On one visit to Kigali, Bill discovered the secretary general of education wanted to meet him. Soon after Bill had suggested a speaking tour of Rwandan high schools, he anticipated this meeting would provide a letter of permission. Instead, he was asked whether he would assist in designing a national curriculum revision environmental studies program spanning grades one through twelve.
Saying no to the second most powerful guy in the government was challenging, but Bill insisted on saying he lacked the required background for that sort of employment. Two months later, the secretary general caught him in a more hopeful moment; Bill consented to speak with Gilles Toussaint and Francois Minani, a team of professional educators already assigned to work on the redesigned environmental curriculum.
Early in our participation with anti-poaching, tourism, and education, inspiration and effort dominated more than knowledge and training. Our knowledge of these problems and their interconnections developed gradually, but after a meeting with Jean Paul Sorg, everything was out of perspective. Assessed under the Ministry of Agriculture or MINAGRI, Sorg was a forester sent from elsewhere.
Like most of his Swiss colleagues and countrymen in the direction of the Eaux ET woodlands, he saw his job extremely pragmatically. His trade was growing and chopping wood. But Sorg also viewed forestry as a means of preserving Rwanda’s remaining natural woods, about which he was rather passionate. After learning of his interest, Bill set up a meeting outside of Butare at an ancient colonial research station to go over suggestions for Parc des Volcans protection.
Bill answered simply with a red blankly on a park inquiry. Apart from that, you never know? Bill most definitely did not know. Sorg broke the shocking news that another 15,500 acres of the park will be cleared for a cattle-raising development by the government.
Though there had been a lot of conjecture, nothing was clear until Sorg produced a recent official paper in great detail explaining the intended plan. Five thousand cows spread across five thousand hectares. One third of the park, European money, Sorg apologized for delivering such awful news; Bill thanked him for warning and rushed North to Kigali.
