Abstract
Most National Parks (NP) and nature reserves in Rwanda have been established opportunistically in the early 1900s, without clear consideration of ensuring the protection to all threatened different taxonomical or functional groups, such as vegetation, invertebrates, fish, and birds. With the increasing conservation objectives, raised expectations into Protected Areas (PA), and within a more challenging environmental context, it is important to identify biodiversity hubs and key areas for Ecosystem Services (ES) to maximize the efficiency of conservation efforts by assisting priority areas under threats. To date, no comprehensive analysis, to the best of our knowledge has been done to assess both biodiversity and ES in Rwanda. This is a notable gap, considering that global-scale research suggests that the spatial overlap between biodiversity targets and ES is low. This study reports a nationwide assessment, mapping the richness of threatened species and three key ES Carbon Storage, Water Quantity, and Water Quality. Our analysis has shown that PAs are neither perfectly delineated to protect biodiversity nor key ES. The state of PAs offers a taxonomic protection bias in favor of mammals and birds but leaves many endangered species in other taxonomic groups in collapsing and unprotected small ecosystems scattered around the country. Rwanda’s PAs cover important carbon stock but can do better at securing higher water balance regions and clean water sources. We propose an improvement of the NP system in Rwanda to help guide the economic development along a path of green growth and ensures the well-being of both people and nature. Locating biodiversity hubs and key ES can help to connect conservationists, local people, and governments in order to better guide conservation actions.
Highlights
The degradation of natural ecosystems relentlessly continues to threaten the long-term survival of many species around the world [1]
An extreme poverty of biodiversity, in all taxonomic groups is very obvious in the central part of the country, the very region that holds the largest urban centers including the capital city Kigali, and Muhanga, Nyanza, Ruhango, Nyamata, and Rwamagana towns
From the east to the west, the lower elevation averaged 1220 m in the swampy Akagera river valley lays the ‘East-Rwandan dry and hot lowland zone’ in which the annual rainfall 900 mm and the annual temperature averaged at 21 ̊C, is dominated by savannah habitats and is mainly conquered by large mammals most of which are protected in the Akagera National Park (ANP) and others scattered through the surrounding districts in relatively small unprotected natural habitats such as Ibanda-Makera natural forest (Kirehe district), Karama natural forest (Bugesera district) and Mashoza natural forest (Ngoma district)
Summary
The degradation of natural ecosystems relentlessly continues to threaten the long-term survival of many species around the world [1]. As Myers et al [7] put it, Rwanda is among regions that appear to feature exceptional plant endemism and exceptional threat, but that are not sufficiently documented to meet the hotspots criteria. For this reason, ‘biodiversity hub’ terminology will be used to express a biogeographic region with significant levels of endemic biodiversity that is threatened by anthropologic activities Weaknesses at protecting such important regions have been raised by different authors. The common preference to protect ‘wild’ areas, thanks to their easier opportunities for the future expansion of PA compared to the greater challenges of expansion into human-dominated landscapes, in most of the cases brings people to choose remote, cold, or arid areas holding few species to protect [15]
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