NEW GROWTH

Western Rwanda’s much-depleted Gishwati Forest— and its primate population—is slowly being brought back to life.

- MARCIA DESANCTIS

IT IS HARD TO imagine any greater thrill than seeing a primate in its native habitat, living by the rules of the animal kingdom. Even an environmentalist like Thierry Aimable Inzirayineza, who encounters wildlife for his work in Gishwati Forest every day, was beside himself when we spotted a L’Hoest’s monkey, with its distinctive white neck ruff, sitting on a mound of earth on the forest floor. The sighting was a small victory for Inzirayineza’s Forest of Hope Foundation, which runs the primate-habituation project in Gishwati—the goal of which is to acclimate animals to human visitors. “He is not afraid,” Inzirayineza said of the monkey, which would typically have hidden in the forest canopy when humans were nearby. “This is a sign that our efforts are working.”

The moment was made even more memorable by the fact that, with the exception of Inzirayineza and a tracker named Innocent Mutangana, my husband, Mark, and I had this jungle—the fluting tropical boubou birds, the droopy red amaranthus blossoms, the crashing waterfalls—entirely to ourselves. Gishwati is the newest park to join Rwanda’s rapidly growing ecotourism circuit, and we were some of its first international visitors.