"On this road, wildlife is a priority," reads a huge billboard at the entrance of Akagera National Park. But not a single zebra or gazelle is to be seen on the paved road that winds for miles along the park border to the rolling savannah -- just two cranes hiding behind a bush.
Instead, the hills and plains are dotted brown with long-horned cattle -- hundreds of thousands inching across the tawny grass, prodded by dogs and young boys with sticks.
The cattle herds have arrived from Uganda in recent months with their owners, ethnic Tutsi who have lived in exile since fleeing massacres in Rwanda in 1959. These families have been returning since a rebel force dominated by the Tutsi minority came to power in Rwanda last summer.
For decades, the struggle for arable land contributed to ethnic hatred between the Tutsi and the majority Hutu. Again and again, Hutu and Tutsi refugee groups have moved across borders, abandoning land to the other ethnic group until another ethnic uprising reversed the cycle.
With arable land at a premium, the Government of this tiny, densely populated country has had little choice but to let returning families settle on this arid savannah bordering the 925-square-mile park.
If it looks like an idyllic grazing area now, the area will soon bear all the signs of a catastrophe, Western relief officials warn. As the influx has gathered momentum in the past month, the herds have advanced 15 to 20 miles into the park, threatening its fragile ecosystem and pushing many of the wild animals into neighboring Tanzania.
Alternating between swamp, savannah, forest, valleys and hills, Akagera National Park's remarkable topography has fed a diverse ecosystem of wildlife, from lions and leopards to gazelles, giraffes, elephants and birds. Herders say their cattle have been attacked by lions.
More than 250,000 people and 700,000 head of cattle are now grazing in the Domaine de Chasse, a 130-square-mile hunting area bordering the park.
Dry and infertile, this land can only support one-tenth of the present cattle population, wildlife officials say. Already it is infested with tse-tse flies, hoof and mouth disease and many other threats to the animals. And when the rains end next month, the water holes and the savannah will dry up, and the cattle will begin dying, Rwandan Government and relief officials say.
There are no easy solutions. No arable land is available for these Rwandans, and the Government lacks the money to provide the basic services to support them here. Most are living in thatched huts covered by bright blue plastic tarpaulins issued by the United Nations.
The returnees do not want to go back to Uganda, and the n Government there does not want them back.
One idea would be to start slaughtering the cattle now and sell their meat. But there are no slaughterhouses here in Nyagatare, and no way to transport the meat. In any case, the herders are pastoralists whose culture is based on their cattle, and they are resisting efforts to cull their herds.
"Eventually the cows will be dying in thousands," said Chris Kille Kigezo, a Rwandan field assistant for the World Food Program whose own family fled to Uganda in 1959. "Here everything is seen in cows. A man would rather have five sick cows than three healthy ones. Cows are the center of life."
Their dilemma is a reminder that land shortages are one of the biggest problems facing Rwanda's leaders.
Reintegrating the more than one million Tutsi who fled to Burundi, Uganda and Zaire in 1959 and have now returned with some two million Hutu who fled the advancing Tutsi rebel army last summer is the immediate challenge for the Rwandan Government.
Sixty percent of the houses in the capital, Kigali, are still occupied by Rwandans who moved in after the city fell to the Tutsi army in July, officials say. The Government has said the previous owners can reclaim their houses, but residents are resisting, and for now there is no legal remedy for the dispossessed.
With one-seventh of Rwanda's territory consisting of national parkland, the Government has begun to resettle some returnees in forests previously used by the military and in the Akagera hunting area. The Government acknowledges that the influx threatens the land and wildlife but insists that any delay in resettling people will only aggravate tensions. Ultimately, they say, the park might well be a necessary victim.
"We are saying this is a mother to all the problems," said Christine Umutoni, the Deputy Minister of Rehabilitation and Reintegration. "It is very urgent to resolve if we are to avoid other social clashes. Our objective is not to destroy the park but to resettle people. We might be forced to use the park.
"It is not easy to settle people in virgin areas," she added. "We need money for roads and water."
The northern section of Akagera National Park was a front line during the civil war, and the border remains heavily mined -- another problem for the returnees. The park is still closed to tourism, and the main hotel is a military base.
The Rwandan Government has begun a campaign to convince the pastoralists to cull their herds in exchange for larger plots of land. If there was a big slaughterhouse and a way to transport frozen beef, that might prove a success. The rest of Rwanda has hardly any cattle, and the Government is thinking about using some of the beef to feed the army.
The beef could also be exported to Burundi and to Uganda. Since the Rwandan Tutsi started leaving Uganda with their herds, the price of meat in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, has more than doubled, relief officials note.
For the moment, the problem is startup money.
One 20-year-old returnee, Alex Nkubana, each day herds his 20 cattle and about 50 others belonging to friends to the nearest river, walking one and a half hours each way.
"The problems will start when the rains finish and the grass dies," he said. "We will have to move our home and follow the water."