Declared as a national park in 2019 by the government of Rwanda, this protected area was gazzeted first in 2015 as a game reserve.
It is made up of two forest reserves that include Giswati and Mukura forests. Connecting to Mukura forest reserve, Giswati is located near Lake Kivu in the north western part of Rwanda.
Popularly known as the land of a thousand hills, Rwanda now has four national parks including Volcanoes, Akagera and Nyungwe forest national park.
The history of this newly established park starts from way back as far as 1970s. Between 1978 and 1986, a big part that includes about 80% of Giswati Mukura forest reserve was covered by the forest not until1994 when the Rwanda genocide took place and forced people to leave their homes and settle with in the forest reserve.
Later on these refugees carried out deforestation by cutting down the trees to create space for construction of their homes and farmlands. This led to destruction of a bigger part of the reserve and killing of some animals that use it as their shelter.
The reserve used to extend west wards as far as Lake Kivu and stretching into the tropical rain forests of DR Congo.
The southern part of Gishwati forest also stretched into Nyungwe forest. By 2001 a small part of Gishwati forest was left covering about 15000 acres. The area was also affected by soil erosion, degradation and landslides.
In 2007, the government of Rwanda in partnership with the great ape trust introduced the Giswati area conservation program.
The main reason for this program was to create a national conservation park to protect the rich bio diversity of this forest area.
The forest of hope association a non-governmental organization which is currently managing the area conservation program took over the forest area in 2011. It has been able to restore back 67% of Giswati forest.
The park now occupies a total area of 34 square kilometers and it is the smallest national park in Rwanda. It is located on the edge of Congo Nile basin.
Right now it consists of 20 chimpanzees and other primates like blue monkeys, golden monkeys and more, 60 tree species and 395 bird species, 163 found in Mukura and 232 in Giswati forest.
If you want to get there, this tourist spot is about 157km from Kigali city. It requires about 3-4 hours to drive from the capital up to this place.
The major activities you can enjoy once there include bird watching, community visits, guided nature walks, hikes to the water falls and Chimpanzee tracking.