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Olivier Nsengimana
Olivier Nsengimana. Photograph: Ambroise Tézenas
Olivier Nsengimana. Photograph: Ambroise Tézenas

Rehabilitating the endangered Crane in east Africa

This article is more than 9 years old

Once a flourishing species, Crane numbers have fallen 80% in Rwanda. A new initiative looks to rehabilitate the birds and return them to the wild

Only the other day I saw a man walking through the wealthier part of town with two grey crowned-cranes tucked under his arms wrapped in blankets, probably looking for a potential buyer. I remember, as a child, going to fetch water and hearing the sound of the grey crowned-cranes.

They foraged in the marshes at the bottom of the hill I lived on – beautiful, long-legged birds with their golden crests and their head-bobbing dance. I’d go to get water, and I could hear their booming calls. Sadly, they are no longer there. These days you’re more likely to see one strutting around a garden or the grounds of a hotel than you are in the wild. What few people realise is that they are endangered, and it is illegal to poach or sell the birds.

People cut the feathers so that they can’t fly away, and sometimes even break their wings. It’s ironic in a way, because in Rwanda people prize the birds as a symbol of wealth and longevity, and yet most of the birds die in captivity, due to stress, injuries and malnutrition. They die without ever breeding. The crane population has fallen by around 80% in the past 45 years and, with only a few hundred left in the wild, the International Union for Conservation of Nature has put the bird on the endangered list. It is for this reason that I decided to act.

As a veterinarian, I was fortunate enough to be introduced at university to Gorilla Doctors who help protect a better known endangered species in my country, the mountain gorilla. As soon as I was out in the field, I thought: “Wow, this is me, conservation is what I was meant to do with my life” and from there I haven’t looked back.

I’m starting an initiative, in collaboration with the Rwandan Development Board (RDB), to rehabilitate domesticated grey crowned-cranes and return them to the wild. As a young Rwandan, I believe that it is important we find solutions to the problems we face in our country. If you can really understand the reasons why grey crowned-cranes are threatened, you can then put in place projects to help the population of cranes recover.

Rwanda is a small country, with a population of around 11 million. That means that there are over 400 people per square-kilometre and all those people have to be fed and housed. So most of the marshes are gone now, drained for agricultural land, or built over. Living in a developing country, unfortunately many Rwandans face poverty, hunger and unemployment.

It is not surprising, therefore, that living near the marshland, the natural habitat of these cranes, local people are tempted to poach the birds and sell them on. School children are also tempted to capture small crane chicks and find a buyer. Perhaps young entrepreneurs in the making, they often don’t realise the longer term impact of their actions.

However, it is also our responsibility to find ways of living in harmony with our environment, and this is what my project aims to promote. The first step is to register all those cranes currently living in captivity so that we know how many there are and can monitor the illegal trade more easily. Through a media campaign and amnesty, we hope to persuade owners to give up their cranes.

A lot of our effort will then be directed at rehabilitation. The birds will be sent to a facility which we plan to build outside Kigali, and they will be given a check-up before being sent on to a rehabilitation centre that is already being built in Akagera national park in the north-east of the country. Once there, they will be free to come and go as they please, but we will encourage them to forage in the wild by restricting their food.

To make this project sustainable, a third and most important step is to work with the local communities around the marshlands to provide education and alternative means of making a living. Through this project, I hope to inspire others just as the Gorilla Doctors inspired me. Rwanda needs young conservationists, and it is essential that young veterinarians take ownership of conservation projects like this one.

Oliver Nsengimana is a veterinarian working with Rwanda’s Gorilla Doctors. He will be speaking at the Every Second Counts Forum on 15 November 2014 at Kings Place, London. Follow this link to find out more and to apply to attend.

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