Rwanda's Grey Crowned Cranes Come Home to Rugezi Marsh

Grey crowned cranes were being trapped out of Rwanda's wetlands for the pet and hotel trade, and by the mid-2010s Rugezi Marsh — the country's largest high-altitude wetland — was down to a single non-breeding visitor. Rwanda Wildlife Conservation Association, founded in 2015 by veterinarian Olivier Nsengimana, ran a national amnesty with the government that removed 242 cranes from captivity, rehabilitating and releasing those that could fly and giving the permanently injured a home at Umusambi Village on 21 hectares of restored Kigali wetland. Community Champions recruited from marsh-edge villages monitor nests and are paid to plant and tend indigenous trees, and Rugezi Marsh Rangers patrol the wetland itself. Rwanda's wild crane count rose from 487 in the first national census in 2017 to 1,245 in 2025, with 351 birds at Rugezi alone and 73 breeding events monitored there that year producing 116 fledglings.