Rwanda’s Ministry of Environment through the Rwanda Forest Authority (RFA) is accelerating efforts to meet up with its objective of protecting two million hectares of degraded land by 2030.Towards this goal, RFA stressed on Wednesday the need to protect forests with deep cultural and historic significance to the Rwandan people.
In line with Vision 2030, the Rwanda Forest Authority (RFA) is set to rev up its efforts to preserve more natural forests across the country with deep historical and cultural attachments.
The fresh efforts announced on Wednesday by the Ministry of Environment plans to extend to forests on a scale of 7,000 hectares across the country mostly threatened by human activities like agriculture, poaching, settlement, illegal wood cutting, fires just to cite these few.
According to Fidèle Kabayiza, Director of Non-timber forest Products at the RFA, the Buhanga forest in Nkotsi sector, Musanze District had been a key conservation success. He further explained that the Forest is intertwined with Rwanda’s history and believed to be where Rwanda’s origin began.
Data in Rwanda show that of the country’s 724, 695 hectares covered with Forests, 130,850 hectares have been classified as natural forests, over 161,000 hectares as wooded savannah and 43,963 hectares as shrub land.
All these efforts are part of a broader environmental strategy put in place by the Rwandan government in 2011 to restore two million hectares of degraded land, including natural forests by the year 2030.
