Captured as chicks and kept as a symbol of status as pets in the gardens of hotels and private homes, the birds were almost destroyed. The destruction of their habitat for agriculture was added to the pressure and in 2012 only about 300 remained in the wild.
Gray crowned cranes dance together as part of their mating ritual and often mate for life.
But the species has experienced a remarkable recovery in Rwanda thanks to local veterinarian and conservationist Olivier Nsengimana. Nsengimana, who lived in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, had found it strange to hear the cranes screaming from people’s gardens, while the wild habitats had almost no birds. “I told myself someone has to do something about it,” he says. “Someone has to make a change.”
Gray crowned cranes remain endangered in other parts of Africa. Nsengimana says there is no “copy and paste” solution for all countries, but lessons can be learned from Rwanda’s success.
An amnesty
Nsengimana says the majestic cranes are “a symbol of wealth and longevity” in Rwanda. “People love them a lot, but (the) lack of awareness is like too much love … it created a threat.” Taking nature cranes is illegal in Rwanda, but many pet owners did not know they were breaking the law.
In 2014, Nsengimana worked with the Rwandan government to launch an amnesty program encouraging owners to hand over their pets, without fear of being prosecuted. He broadcast his message on national radio, asking pet owners to call him on his personal phone number. “I said, I know you love them too, we all love them, but if we keep them in our gardens … we’ll lose them.”
Crane owners across the country responded.
Since 2014, 242 gray-crowned cranes have been successfully rescued from captivity, Nsengimana says.
Last year, a census identified 881 gray-crowned cranes in Rwanda, Nsengimana says. It is “quite certain” that no more cranes remain in captivity in the country.
“This is really a huge success story that we share with all Rwandans,” he says. “If we work together, if we can incorporate everyone, we can achieve the unattainable.”
The future of Rwanda’s gray crowned cranes looks much safer, but can Nsengimana’s success be replicated elsewhere in Africa?
The international trade in cranes
According to Kerryn Morrison, Africa director of the International Crane Foundation and senior manager of Africa for the Endangered Wildlife Trust, it is illegal to capture and exchange gray crowned cranes for most of their range.
But legal protection has not saved the birds.
Across Africa, gray-crowned crane populations are estimated to have fallen by up to 80 percent in the last 25 years, leaving only 25,000 to 30,000 birds left, according to Morrison.
Gray-crowned cranes are kept as pets across the continent, Morrison says. Police are often weak due to lack of resources and focus more on protecting larger animals such as elephants and rhinos.
Morrison says demand for the UAE has slowed in recent years, but it appears the country remains a conduit for cranes, supplying them to the Middle East and Asia.
Unfortunately, Morrison says Rwanda’s amnesty model is unlikely to work in other African countries. “You just don’t see the same adherence to government policies as in Rwanda,” he says. However, raising awareness with local communities in Uganda and Kenya and training them to control cranes has led to some successes in reducing poaching.
Nsengimana says that while cranes are not migratory, they travel across borders and it will take a “huge” joint effort to remove them from the endangered species list.
“When I was little, I saw that cranes really coexisted with people and … I would really like to see that kind of balance again,” Nsengimana says. “We want people to see cranes as part of them, as their friends, as part of their lives.”