DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO: Gorillas set to be evacuated from wildlife park in wake of rebel advance on ranger station

Record ID: 789137

  • Title: DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO: Gorillas set to be evacuated from wildlife park in wake of rebel advance on ranger station
  • Date: 10th October 2008
  • Summary: (W1) VIRUNGA PARK, KIVU PROVINCE, EASTERN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO (OCTOBER 2, 2008) (REUTERS) SIGN READING VIRUNGA PARK
  • Embargoed: 25th October 2008 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: Environment / Natural World
  • Reuters ID: LVA1DZWFEHZDOLAGLS6DRDLIU2M2
  • Story Text: Conflict forces rangers to evacuate Africa's oldest national park.
    Congolese wildlife guards prepared to evacuate from Africa's oldest national park on Wednesday (October 8) as Tutsi rebels advanced on a ranger station protecting rare mountain gorillas, park officials said.
    Rebel fighters loyal to renegade General Laurent Nkunda seized an army base 3 km (2 miles) from the ranger station at Rumangabo during an artillery battle with government troops in Democratic Republic of Congo's eastern North Kivu province.
    The station is in the southern half of the Virunga National Park, located on the border with Rwanda and Uganda and home to around 200 of the world's 700 surviving mountain gorillas.

    "The fighting started about a year ago, as soon as the fighting started the rangers were forcibly removed from the gorilla sector by the CNDP forces, Nkunda's rebel army. We have not been able to go back since, we are hoping to, negotiations are continuously under way with the Congolese government trying to regain access to the sector," said Virunga park director Prince Emmanuel de Merode.
    Between 30 and 50 rangers were waiting to be evacuated from Rumangabo late on Wednesday. Many have been living there since Nkunda's insurgents invaded much of the park last September.

    "Unfortunately over the past month there has been a massive renewal of fighting with very intense fighting in the last few days, that obviously affects our work, it effects the security of the rangers who are on the ground trying to patrol the forest,'' said Emmanuel.
    In the past decade, 120 Virunga park rangers have been killed in clashes with armed groups and poachers making protection of the gorilla groups almost impossible.

    "Nowadays in our forest it is very difficult to work because there are different groups of army who are in the park. You can see the FDLR, the Congolese army, the CNDP, it is very difficult to work," said Innocent Mburanumwe, Director of the gorilla project in the Virunga reserve.
    Around 10 mountain gorillas were slaughtered last year in the Virunga reserve, shocking conservationists and causing a stir even in a country where violence, hunger and disease kill 1,500 people a day in the aftermath of a 1998-2003 war.
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