Classroom lesson 路 Nyungwe Forest馃嚪馃嚰 Rwanda

Nyungwe Forest

An ancient rainforest full of monkeys and a treetop walkway

Photo 路 Wikimedia Commons

What is it?

Nyungwe is a huge, old rainforest in the south-west of Rwanda. It is one of the oldest rainforests in Africa - parts of it have been standing for around 60 million years, since before the time of the last big animals on Earth. It is full of giant trees, waterfalls and noisy troops of monkeys.

Tell me more

Nyungwe covers around 1,000 square kilometres of hilly forest. Walking inside, the canopy is so thick that very little sunlight reaches the forest floor. The air is cool, damp and full of the sound of birds, insects and the swishing of leaves as monkeys move through the branches above your head.

Thirteen kinds of monkey live in Nyungwe. The most famous group is a giant troop of Angolan colobus monkeys with long black-and-white tails - sometimes 400 of them all travel together. From below, it looks like a black-and-white waterfall flowing across the treetops.

Nyungwe is also where two huge African rivers start. Water trickles down from the forest's springs and slowly grows into streams. Some of those streams eventually become part of the Congo River; others become part of the Nile River, which flows all the way to Egypt. One little drop of rain in Nyungwe could end up in the Mediterranean Sea.

High above the ground, a long suspension bridge stretches between the tallest trees - called the Canopy Walk. Visitors can walk along it, 60 metres above the forest floor, and see birds and monkeys at eye level. From up there, the forest looks like a sea of green ruffled by the wind.

In the classroom

Walk your class through this in 15 minutes.

Talk together

Discussion prompts

  1. 01What might it feel like to walk along a bridge 60 metres above the forest? What would scare you, and what would excite you?
  2. 02Rivers from the same forest can end up in different oceans. What does that tell you about how water travels around the world?
  3. 03Why might a troop of 400 monkeys travel together instead of in small groups?
Try this

Classroom activity

On a big sheet of paper, draw a tall tree from root to canopy. Use four levels: ground, lower branches, middle, top. Place a different animal at each level (forest elephant on the ground, civet in the lower branches, monkeys in the middle, eagle at the top). Discuss as a class: which level would you want to live in if you were a forest creature?