Rwanda supports a diverse reptile fauna associated with its montane forests, savannas, wetlands, freshwater ecosystems, and agricultural landscapes. Despite its ecological diversity and location within the Albertine Rift, the country's reptiles remain incompletely documented, with historical records dispersed among taxonomic publications, biodiversity databases, and natural history collections. This inventory presents a preliminary annotated checklist of the reptiles of Rwanda, synthesizing published literature, museum specimens, and biodiversity occurrence records to establish a baseline for taxonomy, geographic distribution, and conservation assessment.

Taxonomic nomenclature and reported national occurrences were evaluated using The Reptile Database (Uetz et al., 2026), historical and regional inventories (Hinkel & Fischer, 1990; Roelke & Smith, 2010), and specimen records maintained by the University of Rwanda's Centre of Excellence in Biodiversity and Natural Resource Management. The Reptile Database currently recognizes 84 reptile species reported from Rwanda, including snakes, lizards, turtles, and crocodilians. Preliminary reconciliation with museum records expands the working inventory to 87 scientific names, although three additional names require further taxonomic and distributional verification. The CoEB Natural History Museum currently holds 127 reptile specimen records representing 21 species, providing an important foundation for documenting species occurrences and validating historical records. Each taxon in the developing checklist is evaluated for accepted nomenclature, geographic occurrence, specimen evidence, and conservation status, with particular attention to Albertine Rift taxa and poorly documented species. The resulting annotated checklist provides a foundation for biodiversity monitoring, conservation prioritization, future taxonomic research, and development of an accessible national reptile inventory through the Rwanda Biodiversity Specimen Portal.

Hinkel, H., & Fischer, E. (1990). Checklist of amphibians and reptiles of Nyungwe Forest, Rwanda. Tauraco Research Report, 3, 135–145. Source PDF.

Roelke, C. E., & Smith, E. N. (2010). Herpetofauna, Parc National des Volcans, North Province, Republic of Rwanda. Check List, 6(4), 525–531. https://doi.org/10.15560/6.4.525.

Uetz, P., Freed, P., Aguilar, R., Reyes, F., Kudera, J., & Hošek, J. (Eds.). (2026). The Reptile Database. Rwanda species. Accessed 11 October 2026. https://reptile-database.reptarium.cz/advanced_search?location=Rwanda&submit=Search