Art for Gorillas

Category: Art of Conservation (AoC), Rwanda's Park & Tourism, art | Date: Nov 24 2008 | By: Julie

Carole S, Sosthene, Amy, and Jen at Handkerchief Project, we appreciate your comments and interest! Thanks for getting in touch.

Douglas B., wow, thank you for your generous donation of $250.00 to the project and $25.00 to Wildlife Direct! This really helps us as we prepare for an exciting and busy 2009!

In 2007, we asked a primary school headmaster named Laurent if we may hold one of our conservation learning classes at his school - a school located right next to the border of National Volcanos Park, (PNV), which was, by the way, not too long ago protected park land before recent human encroachment. We made a request to Laurent: please enroll 50 children who have parents or relatives presently working in conservation. We knew this would not be a difficult request for Laurent to fulfill because the school is situated nearly next door to the Park Headquarters and park staff and conservationists flock here to work with visiting gorilla trekkers or to sign in for field research in the PNV.

With classes in full swing we arrived at our technical drawing lesson and Eric, AoC’s art instructor, encouraged the kids to really look at the models and draw the figure and head in proportion. Once the pencil drawings were completed, Eric directed the students to try different mediums and have fun with the drawings. The kids came up with fantastic pictures.

Alice TUYISHIME’s father is a member of the National Volcanos Park Anti-Poaching Task Force. You will find below Alice’s wonderful drawings.

And this is Alice!

I mentioned earlier in the post that the primary school Alice attends is located on what used to be protected forest of National Volcanos Park. Last night I read an article in the October - December 2008 issue of Conservation Magazine titled

‘Living on the Edge, Human population soars near protected areas’

by Scott Norris presenting a study which suggests that in both Latin America and Africa people have increasingly moved out of rural areas to protected area buffer zones. The article continues with possible reasons such as buffer zones may provide new economic opportunities as well as offer access to forests with firewood, bushmeat, and clean water. Does this mean that reserve establishment with the goals of habitat and biodiversity protection will be even more challenging?