Rwanda

Rwanda, the country of a thousand hills, is small, mountainous and densely populated, and has concentrated its wild nature in three large and very different areas. To the northwest, Volcanoes National Park protects the Rwandan slope of the Virunga chain, with bamboo and hagenia forest on the flanks of volcanoes above four thousand metres, home to the mountain gorillas that Dian Fossey studied from 1967. To the southwest, Nyungwe keeps one of the oldest and most extensive montane rainforests in Africa, with thirteen primate species, chimpanzees and a walkway suspended above the canopy. To the east, Akagera combines savannah, lakes and papyrus in a very different landscape, where one of the most ambitious rewilding programmes on the continent has been completed.