The Mukura Forest Reserve is a protected

reserve Reserve or reserves may refer to: Places * Reserve, Kansas, a US city * Reserve, Louisiana, a census-designated place in St. John the Baptist Parish * Reserve, Montana, a census-designated place in Sheridan County * Reserve, New Mexico, a US vi ...

in the northwest part of

Rwanda Rwanda (; rw, u Rwanda ), officially the Republic of Rwanda, is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley of Central Africa, where the African Great Lakes region and Southeast Africa converge. Located a few degrees south of the Equator ...

, covering about 16 km Mukura Forest is situated in western Rwanda's

Albertine Rift The Albertine Rift is the western branch of the East African Rift, covering parts of Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania. It extends from the northern end of Lake Albert to the southern end of Lake Tan ...

region, which lies in the Congo-Nile crest. Once part of a swath of mountain forest that extended all the way from Nyungwe to the Volcanoes Park, the Mukura is now an isolated chunk of

forest A forest is an area of land dominated by trees. Hundreds of definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as tree density, tree height, land use, legal standing, and ecological function. The United Nations' ...

. Mukura was designated a reserve in 1951. It originally covered an area of 30,000 hectares. However, nearly half of the total

forest cover Forest cover is the amount of forest that covers a particular area of land. It may be measured as relative (in percent) or absolute (in square kilometres/square miles). Around a third of the world's surface is covered with forest, with closed-canop ...

and

biodiversity Biodiversity or biological diversity is the variety and variability of life on Earth. Biodiversity is a measure of variation at the genetic (''genetic variability''), species (''species diversity''), and ecosystem (''ecosystem diversity'') l ...

has been lost since, leaving the forest with an area of only 16,000 hectares. A host of factors have led to this decline, including a

population density Population density (in agriculture: standing stock or plant density) is a measurement of population per unit land area. It is mostly applied to humans, but sometimes to other living organisms too. It is a key geographical term.Matt RosenberPopul ...

of nearly 600 people per km and a mean local household income of $3/month, the latter causing inhabitants to exploit the forest for financial solvency. The average annual temperature of Mukura Forest is 15 °C. The forest rises to an average height of 2600 meters above sea level, and receives 1500 mm of

rainfall Rain is water droplets that have condensed from atmospheric water vapor and then fall under gravity. Rain is a major component of the water cycle and is responsible for depositing most of the fresh water on the Earth. It provides water f ...

annually. The reserve has about 163 species of birds.

References

Protected areas of Rwanda Forest reserves {{africa-protected-area-stub