Rwanda will import animals including lions and rhinos and invite five-star hotel developers to upgrade Akagera National Park in a project funded by investors including the head of Wal-Mart.
The $12.3 million project is being managed by Akagera Management Co., a unit of African Parks, the South Africa-based non-profit development company. Wal-Mart Chairman Samuel Robson Walton pledged $2.5 million to the project, Bryan Havemann, project manager for Akagera, said in an interview.
This year, the industry may generate $216 million, the government said in March. In 2008, 17,000 people visited Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park to see the country’s mountain gorillas, according to the World Bank.
“We can keep people who come for the gorillas in the country,” Havemann said in a phone interview yesterday from Kigali, the capital. “The economic effect is going to be huge.”
The Rwandan government last month said it would spend $2.3 million helping build an electric fence as long as 75 miles (120 kilometers) around parts of the 386 square-mile reserve. The barrier will curb poaching and quell some of the human-animal conflict that has plagued the park in recent years, Havemann said.
“One of our biggest problems is that people set snares by the hundreds,” he said. Another issue is keeping the animals in the reserve. Last month, 55 elephants — about half the total population — wandered onto nearby farmland before being driven back by park authorities, Havemann said.
The Athens Group, a U.S. luxury-hotel developer, expressed interest in two of the three hotel concessions available at Akagera, Havemann said. The group may build resorts that rent rooms for $1,500 to $2,000 per night, he said. The company declined to comment when contacted by e-mail.
The electric fence is expected to be completed in about a year, after which developers plan to re-introduce black rhinos and lions into the park. The animals were exterminated by poachers and cattle farmers who overran the park in the early 1990s amid conflict and lawlessness. They will join elephants, buffalo and leopards, making the park home to the “big five” animals, a draw for international tourists, Havemann said.
The Walton FamilyFoundation didn’t immediately respond to an e-mailed request for comment.
Leave a Reply