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Protecting the Mountain Gorillas of Virunga
A New Initiative to Remove the Threat of Snares from the Gorilla Sector
One thing we’ve learned in Virunga, is that when you have a major setback, you double your effort. Nsekanabo’s killing was a catastrophic setback for us.
We were in Bukima yesterday, working to strengthen the de-snaring effort. Our main problem is that we don’t have the manpower to deploy enough patrols in the sector. We have 36 Rangers across the sector, and at the moment we can carry out 8 patrols a day, every day. Although these patrols removed several thousand snares from the area in 2009, Nsekanabo’s killing has shown that this isn’t enough to keep the Mountain Gorillas safe.
So we’ve made the decision to work very closely with the local community to try to resolve this problem. We have established a unit of 40 “Community Scouts” who will help with the de-snaring operations. Instead of a patrol being made up of 4 Rangers, a patrol will now be made up of 1 or 2 Rangers accompanied by 2 or 3 Community Scouts. Their job will be surveillance and destroying snares. This will double our patrolling effort from 8 to 17 patrols a day. The Community Scouts are unarmed, but the security situation has improved enough to make this feasible. These are all young men from the local community who are known to be supportive and who have volunteered their time to help us in the past. We will pay the scouts $30 a month. We held the meeting with the community leaders yesterday, and we’ve agreed to launch the new approach on 1 March.
30 Community Scouts with Rangers yesterday in Bukima
Over the next two weeks, we will be equipping them with new uniforms and giving them a basic training to work with the Rangers. This is all being done with the support that you have given us. So we are also working on a new feature on the Protect the Park page of the website, where every patrol is logged by GPS, and registered on the map. That way, you will be able to monitor their efforts. The sponsored areas will continue to be updated, but we are also trying to improve that feature as well.
As always, we really appreciate your feedback on this.
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15 Responses to “A New Initiative to Remove the Threat of Snares from the Gorilla Sector”
This is a great plan and I’m sure it will bring more donations for the project. It’s very important that the “Protect the Park” will be improved with the implementation of those concrete things you described in this blog post. It’s really a very good idea to get local communities more and more involved in the well being of the park and it’s wildlife inhabitants and even better that these community scouts will get some salary for their work.
Good plan and looking forward to see it in action!
Excellent strategy! This will increase patrols, decrease the chances of another snaring, and get the community involved. I think it’s money well spent. It benefits the men who will earn a salary and their families, benefits our mountain gorillas who will be safer with more patrols, and allows the young men to make a contribution to preserving the legacy of their country. It’s a great program all the way around. I would venture to bet some of these young men will one day be rangers. Kudos, Emmanuel and team for a great initiative!
I second everything pirjo and Theresa wrote. This is a win-win project!
Great idea - hope everything goes well!
Hopefully the program will be successful and can expand. I hope additional positive programs can be developed with the communities around the park.
Brilliant solution, as always! You make more in a completely transparent way with less than any other organization I know of. Thanks for setting a great example.
As always an extraordinary and strategy with the best approach (involving the locals…giving them a sense of ownership and responsibility to help boost morale).
Best wishes to all
This is a really positive response and the tragedy of Nsekanabo’s killing will not have been in vain.
This will be great for the men and of course for the gorillas. Can’t wait to see the GPS locations on the Protect a Park page, that will certainly be helpful in giving us a more practical view of what is going on there.
This is one of the most intelligent websites I came upon the last 12 months…
You’re at the very core of what sustainable development is all about, and a great example indeed. For the sake of all our children, please do not ever be discouraged to continue.
You guys are doing a great job. Involving the community members is the key. Thanks for your updates.
Emmanuel, I agree: involving the local population in the protection of the Virunga park is the perfect strategy. Everybody gains by it; I’m sure it will work well. All the best, Iris.
Excellent news. Thank you.
This same concept can be used for monitoring for many types of efforts. Great idea! I will share it with the Orangutan Foundation International… where we also have patrols who monitor with GPS.
[...] HUGOs - or Human Gorillas - are hard at work. These men - 40 of them in total - are the Community Scouts that Emmanuel blogged about in February, and form part of a new intiative to remove snares in the [...]