A young tour guide and his group of student mentees are helping monitor bird species in Rwanda with the help of a mobile app, Mongabay contributor Mariam Kone reported.

Joseph Desiré Dufitumukiza, who enjoys bird-watching, felt moved to take action after he read about the decline of native bird species in Rwanda, including the Maccoa duck (Oxyura maccoa).

“If I do not act, any conservation activity will be lost. My kids will not be able to see birds,” Dufitumukiza tells Mongabay.

At just 19 years old in 2022, after graduating with a degree in tourism from the University of Tourism, Technology and Business Studies in Rubavu, Dufitumukiza founded the Rugezi Ornithology Center to share his love for wildlife and contribute to conservation efforts.

He leads students in bird-watching excursions twice a week in support of the center’s goal to raise community awareness about the need to protect birds and their habitat.

In the Mongabay video, Dufitumukiza leads the students on a 30-minute walk to Nyakinama valley in northern Rwanda, where he teaches them about bird families and how to use binoculars and a field guide for the birds in East Africa.

They use a parabola, a dish attached to a phone, to record and listen to birds from a distance, and then a free mobile app called Planet Birdsong, which uses artificial intelligence to identify the species.

Patrick Bigirimane, one of the tourism students who joins Dufitumukiza, tells the Mongabay team that listening to the sounds makes him feel closer to the birds. “It makes me have strong feelings for conserving them as well as trying to convince and encourage my local community people to conserve those bird species,” he says.

Dufitumukiza tells Mongabay that he also tries to promote citizen science in the countryside with the local people he encounters, including Esperance, a resident of Kiguhu, a wetland area known among bird-watchers. Esperance tells Dufitumukiza that she has observed a decline in animals locally.

During the excursion, the students were able to spot the pied crow (Corvus albus), the yellow-billed duck (Anas undulata) and the grey-headed sparrow (Passer griseus).

Bird-watching clubs such as the Rugezi Ornithology Center contribute to a database of birds maintained by the Centre of Excellence in Biodiversity and Natural Resource Management (CoEB) at the University of Rwanda.

“These data are useful for policy decision-making here in Rwanda,” biodiversity data manager Thacien Hagenimana tells the Mongabay team.

Since the CoEB project started in 2019, more than 120,000 recordings have been logged.

Watch the Mongabay video here.

Banner image of Joseph Dufitumukiza. Image © Mariam Kone.