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As of January 2012 Virunga National Park will once again offer visitors the chance to see chimps in the forests of Tongo. Tongo is situated 2 hours drive north of Goma, 3 hours drive from Bunagana and only 1 hours drive from Mikeno Lodge (Rumangabo).

Chimps in Tongo were previously habituated by Frankfurt Zoological Society (FZS) in the 1980s. Unfortunately due to the civil unrest in 1993 in DR Congo, FZS was unable to continue their work until September 2009 when they returned to Tongo and the habituation process was re-started in June 2010.

There are currently 36 individual chimpanzees who live in Tongo’s forests who can be tracked along some of the 80 km of trails. The trails cut the entire forest from north to south and east to west and are about 200 meters apart.

Permits will cost $100 (excluding transport) and as with all our permits:

• 50% of your permit fee goes to ICCN, the Congolese wildlife authority. ICCN uses this money for funding the management and conservation efforts in all Congolese National Parks.
• 30% of your permit fee is invested by Virunga National Park into community projects. 
These projects include activities such as building schools, health centres, and improving water supplies to local communities.
• 20% of your permit fee goes towards the operational costs of Virunga National Park. 
Operational costs can range from salaries of our rangers who play an invaluable role in the survival of the park, to investment in infrastructure in and around the park which also benefits local communities.

Rangers need rations. The 650 + Rangers in Virunga all need to eat and drink to protect the flora and fauna of the park during their anti-poaching, anti-charcoal and routine patrols.

Rangers get ready to take rations from Goma to Lulimbi

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In the Congo of today, the death of a husband plunges a family into poverty.

We’ve received a significant donation from the International Gorilla Conservation Programme (IGCP) to help the widows of the rangers who have died protecting the park.  Over 130 rangers have died, many of these during the war, and because of the situation, we were unable to provide them with any kind of support.

Life has been extremely hard for these women, who’s husbands made the ultimate sacrifice.  They were with us last year, when we evacuated Rumangabo during the fighting.  They remain with us, and are considered part of the Virunga “family”, but they don’t receive any financial help, and many of them are homeless, but for the makeshift accomodation that is prepared for them on the station. Read the full story »

We are often asked for maps of Virunga National Park, so we decided to create a library on the website where you can download various maps in high resolution.

Click here to access the map library

You can now refer to maps such as the one below when we mention specific places in the blog:

Thank you Bruno from WWF for providing many of these maps.

Earlier this year I wrote about the lack of clean water in Bukima and how the population near the park was struggling with water, even going into the park just to find some to drink and cook with.

The month of June marks the beginning of a dry season that will last into August. We haven’t had any rain at all in over three weeks and already people are running out of water. The fews sources of water such as stagnant ponds and volcanic caves are drying up.

These pictures by Eddy tell the story better than I can:

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I had been in Goma for a while, but I am now back at the Bukima Camp. Whenever I come back here I take a lot of pictures, because this place is so beautiful.

I just want to share a selection of images from the last couple days of work (I am doing some GPS work which I will tell you more about on Monday). As usual, these photos and more than 300 other pics from our archive) will be available on our Flickr Page.

I hope some of these pictures capture the beauty of the Mikeno Volcano and the forests at its slopes, home to Virunga’s mountain gorillas:

(click on “read the full story” to see the full selection of these photos)

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Today was a beautiful day in Bukima, so I took some pictures to share it with you:

The Mikeno to the right, the Karisimbi volcano to the left. Read the full story »

It is relatively calm this morning in Goma and in nearby Kibati, where the fighting was at its worst on Friday. Below is a video filmed by journalists from Euronews on that day, which shows exactly why Rangers such as Kazerezi Barigomwa, Jean-Marie Serundori, and Sekibibi Bareke cannot go back to their patrol post in Kibati:

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Please keep the donations coming for our refugee camp- we will need them in order to continue providing food and medicine to these Rangers and their families.

I last posted about the Museya patrol post construction about three weeks ago. Now it is almost done which is very impressive considering how isolated we are. The materials must travel far along bumpy roads. Some materials, for example bricks with holes in for ventilation, have to be flown, brick by brick, from Goma to Beni to then be transported by road for several hours. We are very grateful to the European Union for funding this via WWF.

I would also like to extend a special thanks to The Andrea and Michael Banks Nature Fund. WildlifeDirect has just told me that Andrea and Michael have sent a check for $360 to fund the conservation work at Ishango. This amount is what I am still missing on a monthly basis to reach the $690 monthly target - ie the amount that keeps Ishango going. Thank you Andrea & Michael for this.