A community network

In Cyarubare village, near Akagera’s gates, a small marketplace hosts vendors selling a variety of meats, vegetables and fruits. One woman begins wrapping what’s left of her fish stocks, finished with the day’s sales.

Zanika Savera has been a member of the Copabarwi fishing cooperative for the past five years. She serves as the cooperative’s adviser, coordinating with her fellow members to hire local fishers to work under security supervision, casting in Akagera’s lakes and selling their catch in Kigali, the Rwandan capital. The fish are also sold in the local community for a reduced price.

“This used to be for rich people,” Savera recalls of the time only poachers fished in the park. “Now we are good, we are getting them all the time.”

Savera says the legal pathway to long-term financial gain offered through community cooperatives also serves as an incentive for poachers to stop entering the park illegally. She says she considers it an imperative of her cooperative to prevent poachers from depleting the park’s fish stocks, and takes action when she can.

“I found people who were trying to poach,” Savera says. She encountered them at a location where she would pick up the day’s catch from supervised fishermen. “I told them, ‘Please make a cooperative, I’m in a cooperative and I’m working with the community liaison officer from the park. I will inform them to also organize something for you. You can get fish as well as I do. And then you can sell them in different places, then you get money instead of poaching.’”

The infusion of direct and indirect support to the communities on Akagera’s periphery has sparked an informal community-led process of reporting potential poachers to park law enforcement and local authorities.

“We have that good community who has a good will of keeping the park safe,” says Boaz Washika, a 36-year-old ranger and kennel manager of the Akagera K9 unit for the past four years. “You find they really work hand-in-hand with law enforcement to keep the place safe.”

“You don’t go out searching for informers,” Gruner says. “They sort of reveal themselves. It doesn’t have to be a former poacher. It can be an old lady selling something in the market, it could be somebody owning a bar. That shows community buy-in.”

Gruner says a financial reward is provided to community members for tangible, evidence-based information that leads to the thwarting of poachers, and that about 40% of the information collected from community informers ends up being true. The continuing incentive, however, is in the long-term community investment born of the park’s relationship with the neighboring community.

“If you do find poachers or illegal activities,” Gruner says,” it’s the people who are actually coming from 20 or 30 kilometers away,” about 12 to 19 miles. “They’re not people who live on the park periphery.”

Former poacher Landuard hasn’t entered the park illegally to hunt animals in 19 years. He says his influence in recruiting others to start poaching years ago was essential in helping to curb the practice and to keep his peers involved in reporting other potential poachers as well.

“I was the poacher, I used to encourage other people to poach,” Landuard says. “I was one who came up with the idea, I was the really serious one. So if I’m the one who told you to poach, you should also stop when I tell you.”