In a tweet, the Akagera National Park said, “It is with sadness that we announce that Mutware, Akagera’s most well-known elephant, has died.”
A statement released by Akagera National Park, following Mutware [The Chief]’s death says that “Mutware was one of the original 26 young elephants, who were all under the age of eight years, brought to Akagera from Bugesera in 1975 in what was, at that time, a groundbreaking conservation effort to eliminate human-wildlife conflict from the area and restore the species to Akagera where elephants had previously existed.”
The statement on the National Park’s website adds that “At approximately 48 years old Mutware was one of the oldest elephants in Akagera. He was easily recognizable to those who knew him, he had broken his tusks years ago.”
Mutware was infamous, raised alongside humans as a young elephant, he was familiar with people and, in the past, was quite a tourist attraction with visitors coming to touch or feed him. Unfortunately, however, he was also notoriously disruptive and had a long rap sheet of anti-social behavior, sadly all as a result of his early human interaction.
In his last years Mutware would spend most of his time at the very southern tip of Lake Ihema, often in the water, only traveling through the park once a year for a few weeks at a time. Mutware’s death appears to be of natural causes.
Mutware is most known because he was reared by the Belgians who fed him with the beer, sugar cane, cassava bread and other food eaten by humans but he was later returned back into the park.
In June this year, when IGIHE visited Akagera National Park, we were unable to see him despite all efforts to have an eye on him and take some photographs of his.
Daniel Ishimwe, the Chief Tourists Guide at Akagera Park, told this website a little about this famous elephant.
“Mutware liked to approach the road in the park waiting for the food people gave him. In the 1994 genocide against Tutsi, killers wanted to kill him, they fired him many bullets but he did not die,” recounted Daniel Ishimwe.
“Most of the times in April, Mutware returned back in the road beating the cars so hard. We usually don’t use the down road, we instead pass through the upper road. We knew Mutware has come when he goes breaking trees and pulls them down on the other side,” Ishimwe then continued.
Leave a Reply