Gishwati-Mukura National Park is the fourth national park in Rwanda and was established in 2015. The significant effort made by the Rwandan government to establish the nation as a top travel destination in East and Central Africa is exemplified by the creation of Gishwati Makura National Park. With the inauguration of the Musanze caverns, the restoration of royal heritage sites, the introduction of professional birdwatching, the Congo Nile Trail, and this new national park, Rwanda’s tourism industry is expanding rapidly.
Gishwati-Mukura National Park is 13.2 square miles in size and is situated in the districts of Rutsiro and Ngororero in western Rwanda. Between Rwanda’s Akagera National Park and Volcanoes National Park, the Mukura and Gishwati forests were combined to create the park. Due to the merging of two large woods, a park with remarkable biodiversity has been established, home to creatures such as black-fronted duiker, serval cats, bush bucks, red river hogs, and tree hyraxes. Five primate species can be found in the park: chimpanzees, baboons, golden monkeys, L’Hoest’s monkeys, vervet monkeys, blue monkeys, and black and white colobus monkeys. These days, Gishwati-Mukura National Park is one of Rwanda’s top birding destinations. Birds of more than 100 species can be seen here.
A trip to this park shows how committed human efforts might start to undo the harm done by illicit mining, deforestation, flooding, overgrazing, subsistence hunting, soil erosion, and careless farming. A network of verdant forests that stretched from the Kibira range, which is a component of Nyungwe in the south, to the Virunga Mountains, which encamp in Volcanoes National Park in the north, originally covered the Congo-Nile split and included the Gishwati and Mukura forests. Throughout a stunning ecosystem, these forests sustained a remarkable variety of plants and animals. When Rwandans started returning home after the 1994 genocide and turmoil, they cleared forests for cattle grazing and to establish homes and farms.
Comparing Gishwati Mukura National Park to, example, Nyungwe or Akagera National Park, the former receives less foreign visitors while having a rich ecosystem. One of the primary causes, as was previously said, is that the forest lost many of its priceless resources to refugees who had been displaced from various regions of the nation. For subsistence farming, they removed a lot of the forest, which resulted in landslides, floods, soil erosion, infertility, and low water quality. The trees, animals, wild fruits, and vegetables in the two forests were reduced by more than 80%.
Gishwati Mukura National Park is worth visiting for a variety of reasons. Rwanda is currently rated as the fifth safest and most secure country in the world, and with the upscale ecotourism project that was started in the park, it’s a destination that visitors shouldn’t miss. Among the many tourist activities available in this park are guided nature hikes, bird watching, picnicking, and primate viewing.