- An informal network of community members, including former poachers, that delivers information to the ANP security team has bolstered internal response to potential poachers even before they enter ANP limits.
- High employment rates within the periphery community, significant reinvestment in infrastructure projects and income generation opportunities.
- It also includes a sustained relationship through informal events like sports have increased positive relationships between the park and periphery community.
The first time Bugingo Gaspard illegally entered Akagera National Park in Rwanda, he was 10 years old. With no fence separating the now 112,200-hectare (277,300-acre) protected area from the agricultural plots of community members, families in the neighboring villages frequently grazed livestock past the park limits, sharing grass with impala, zebra and other protected wildlife.
While grazing a herd of cattle, Gaspard and his friends were startled by a bushbuck, an antelope native to the region. Together the children stoned the animal to death, acting mostly from a kind of misguided childish curiosity.
“At that time I was at a bad age,” Gaspard says. “I was young, so I found that fun.”
Gaspard grew up in Nyankora village on the outskirts of Akagera park. Now 40 years old, he has worked as a chief builder for construction projects in the park for the last nine years. His father, Nayo Landuard, settled the family there in 1973. A father of 11, Landuard says he felt he had little choice when he began poaching meat in order to keep his family from starving.
“I was a good poacher,” Landuard remembers, sitting with his family outside their home in the late afternoon sun. “I used to do that for my babies, for my kids.”
Although occasionally apprehended by park rangers and punished with severe beatings, Languard was not deterred. “It was like my restaurant where I could get food for my kids,” he says, adding he only stopped in 2001. “By the time I was getting older, my wife told me to stop or else our kids would follow my way, and would be poachers like me.”
Gaspard remembers the beatings his father would give him to stop entering the park as an adolescent, though they didn’t always work. “I used to go with some other crazy kids who were the same age as me,” he says. “My dad used to tell me to stay home.”