Smallholder wheat fields run right to the edge of rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park in the Virunga Mountains, the last redoubt for the world’s remaining mountain gorillas. The park sits amid one of the most densely populated and impoverished regions in Africa, with around 540 people per square kilometer, leading to intense pressure on the park’s resources from fuelwood gathering to poaching bushmeat. But conservation efforts combined with community development projects and tourism revenue sharing from the park have been largely successful, with the government and non-government conservation groups building schools, providing fuel-efficient stoves, and helping farmers in the surrounding villages grow more food as well as cash crops like tea, that wildlife doesn’t eat. In a region haunted by past conflicts and even genocide over land resources, both gorillas and neighboring farmers are benefiting.
