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116 elephant tusks have been seized by authorities in Congo, near the town of Kisangani – the third largest city in the country that sits right on the edge of the vast Congo forests and is a major commercial hub. This seizure – that you can read a bit more about in the AP article below – is a sign of the times. The illegal hunting of elephants for their tusks is, by all accounts, very much on the rise.

I was in Mugunga (right in the south of the park) quite by accident on Saturday, sort of took a detour on my way to pick up some more masks in Goma for the tourists visiting gorillas, when I came across people sifting through garbage in the park.

This mound of trash was a stone’s throw from the road

I was absolutely horrified to see this. It is pretty much a first. There was all kinds of garbage - paper, plastic, syringes… you name it, with groups of kids and women going through it to see what they could recover.

Medical waste in Virunga

With a growing population of over half a million in Goma, and nowhere to really dump waste, it is hardly surprising that our park has ended up with this problem. Yet another problem. I will speak with my superiors to see what the appropriate action is - it is clearly a political problem as much as a practical one, so we need to find solutions on both fronts. We cannot let this pollution go on though, in a National Park and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

I have mentioned in recent posts the repeated armed contacts that we have had over the last month with rogue elements in the army and militias.  Most of these fights relate to control over the fish breeding sites on Lake Edward.  These are shallow bays that are incredibly important for the production of fish, but also for our hippo populations.  Thousands of hippos used to live in these bays, and the fish that bred here created the most productive lake on the African continent.  Before the war, Lake Edward’s fishing industry used to be a pillar of the economy in eastern Congo.  Today, the fish stocks have collapsed, driving the fishing communities that live around the lake into a spiral of poverty.  According to the fishing cooperative, a fishing boat used to come back with over 700kgs after a day’s fishing.  Today, they struggle to come back with 10kgs of fish.  All of this is caused by the destructive habits of armed men living off the land and profiting from poaching and illegal fishing.

Hippos are still being slaughtered by rogue elements in the army as well as militias.

Some of the biggest hippo killings over the past few years happened in these bays.  I remember flying over them in 2006, and seeing the waters colored red with the blood of slaughtered hippos.  Ever since, we have tried to dislodge the camps of armed groups but we were always outnumbered and outgunned.  During this time, they established very lucrative protection rackets for illegal fishing.

Things are now changing.  We have entered into a partnership with the fishing communities, with the traditional chiefs, and have come to an agreement with the army, to push out the all armed men on the lake shores and re-establish the park’s authority in those areas.  A few weeks ago we began a blockade of the lake using the park’s three vessels, and we cut off all their supply lines on land by placing 120 Rangers across the area.

ICCN maintain a position on the shores of Lake Edward to catch illegal fishermen and poachers. The area is flooded and mosquito infested, but the hardship that the Rangers have had to put up with is beginning to pay off.

We released a joint communiqué last month with the Fishermen’s Union, the Cooperative and the traditional chiefs, enforcing a ban on all illegal fishing (no fishing in the breeding sites, no illegal nets and no unregistered fishing boats).   If we can enforce these laws, we would effectively cut off one of the major sources of financing for the armed groups and rogue elements in the military.  The Rangers on the ground have been enforcing this ban, and this has turned violent on several occasions.  In spite of the difficulties, it’s very important to keep our resolve, as we discovered recently, when 240 armed men left the peninsula at Chiondo and withdrew from the park.

Rangers destroy an illegal fishing boat.

Yesterday, we placed a series of buoys to mark off the protected sites.  Two of these sites, Mwigha and Kabale, have now been marked out, and we hope to do the others in the coming weeks.  If we can keep our alliance going with the local fisherman and the traditional chiefs we can achieve a lot, but they too are constantly threatened by the armed groups.  They don’t have weapons to defend themselves, so it’s a brave move on their part to hold out against the destruction of the park.

This is where the buoys are positioned to protect key areas of the lake from illegal fishing (in the spawning grounds).

Since mid-April 60 of our Rangers have been deployed in a series of operations on the southern shores of Lake Edward (see map). These are the “killing fields” in which thousands of hippos have been slaughtered over the years by rebels and rogue elements in the Armed Forces.  The most important hippo population in the world has been reduced from 27,000 20 years ago, to about 300 today.

Rangers learn to shoot in a straight line at Lulimbi training camp

Now the Rangers are fighting back. There are a number of programs that we’re putting in place to give the Rangers - who are seriously outnumbered by their opposition - an edge. The first is an intensive training program at the eastern park station in Lulimbi (that Samantha blogged about last week).  This teaches the Rangers the latest law enforcement techniques - ie how to be a lot more effective in a combat situation, but also how to stay alive.  They’ve been doing a lot of close combat without firearms, as used by the police force in many countries, which is already proving incredibly useful in some of their confrontations.  We’re also trying to improve their personal equipment.  We’re looking to bring in four used 4×4 trucks from the Dutch army to increase the mobility of the Rangers, and we now have the 3 boats on the lake (paid for by the European Union), which are a huge help in protecting the hippos.

Despite the lack of equipment, we had to start somewhere, and the operations were launched.  They were incredibly violent at first, with 8 armed contacts with rogue military elements in the park.  After 3 weeks of operations, we received news that the soldiers were leaving the park.  This has since been confirmed, which is a major victory for the park.  33 arrests were made during these operations, many of them armed men illegally in the park.

Rangers camping out during the operations

One of our biggest priorities now is to improve communications and surveillance.  We’re trying to raise funds to set up a radio network to cover the area.  We’ve also made some progress in raising the funds to purchase a light aircraft for the park.  We’ve found the aircraft, a 1976 cessna 182 in the United Sates and paid a deposit on it (to read more on how aerial surveillance can help Virunga go here).  We’re making adjustments to the aircraft to make it a good bush plane, and we’ve found a ferry pilot to fly it from Colorado to Congo.  It should be good to go in the park by mid-July, and that should transform our ability to support our Rangers on the ground.

This is the plane we have put a deposit on with YOUR DONATIONS… it will be ferried from Colorado to Congo

The aircraft will make the Rangers more effective against the poachers - and also help us to make the right decisions to keep the Rangers safe.

We’re enormously grateful for the support that we’ve received from you in making this happen.  It could not be done without your help.

There were a number of important questions over the issue of an aircraft for Virunga. I think it’s impossible to manage a park as big and as complicated as Virunga without adequate aerial support. There are three main areas where we need an aircraft: for surveillance, medical evacuations and for logistics.

Surveillance is becoming increasingly important as the pressures on the park and on the rangers increase. This is for all sorts of reasons. Of course, the primary purpose is to get law enforcement teams in place rapidly when we find poachers. Our main aim is to prevent poaching, so we need to try to find the poachers before they kill an animal. With regular surveillance flights, we can often spot the poachers fires, even if they’re in the forest. Poachers know that they have a much greater chance of being detected and this acts as a very important deterrent, ultimately helping us to ensure that poachers give up even trying to enter the park. The same is true for the charcoal fire.

Virunga is 7,800 square kilometres of park - much of it inaccessible by road

Another important issue is that our wildlife authority is currently going through a reform process. One of the outcomes is that our staff will be reduced by almost 50%. This reduces our ability to carry out widespread surveillance on foot. However, it does mean that the remaining rangers will be younger, and more able to carry out interventions against poachers, but only if we are able to guide them effectively, and for that we need aerial support.

Of course, it is not just about law enforcement. Sometimes we come across a problem, like a land invasion. If we detect it early on, we can talk to the local chiefs and to the people involved, and through persuasion, convince them to leave the park. But if we aren’t even aware that the land invasion has happened, weeks or months can go by, and the situation becomes almost irreversible. An aircraft would help us to set up a very effective early warning system that is in everyone’s interest.

Elephants are just one of the many species that need protecting in Virunga

Medical evacuations are an serious problem for us. Last year, Kanyangara died from bullet wounds eight hours after he was shot by poachers. He died in a dug-out canoe as his team were trying to get him to hospital. If we had had an aircraft, we could have evacuated and got him into intensive care in about three hours. I don’t know if that would have saved him, but it certainly would have increased his chances.

Logistics would improve enormously with a light aircraft. At the moment it takes me 5 days to a week to cover all the stations and sub-stations of the park by road. I need to do these rounds to check on staff and make sure that things are running smoothly. If I were flying a plane, I could do it in a day. It also means that we can deal with urgent supplies, like dropping medicine for rangers during operations.

There are other important reasons to acquire an aircraft, but in essence, I don’t think we can succeed in protecting the park without aerial support. Thank you for your donations. And if you have any more questions please leave a comment here.

Over the past month we have suffered a growing number of very serious poaching incidents across the central savannas of the park. These killings have affected the elephant population (which has declined by 90% in the past twenty years) the buffaloes, and more recently lions, which are critically endangered in eastern Africa. We have had 5 elephant killings in the last four days.

A lionness killed and eaten by soldiers a few months ago

Unfortunately, we now have unquestionable proof that it is elements in the Congolese army who are largely responsible for these killings. There are eight battalions (over 5000 soldiers) stationed in and around the park, and our rangers, who number just over 500, cannot effectively protect all the wildlife all of the time.

We need much more effective surveillance to keep the national park safe, and deploy our rangers quickly and effectively when there are poachers looking for elephants. For that we desperately need an aircraft. We’ve found the perfect aircraft for our needs, which is a Cessna 182 built in 1959. It’s old but in perfect condition, and as it has high wings, it offers excellent visibility below. It also has an extended and strengthened undercarriage for the rough airstrips that we have to use.

We have support from the European Union for running costs for the next two years but we need to buy the aircraft for US$75,000. We’ve managed to raise just under $25,000, so need to raise a further $50,000 as soon as we can.

The aircraft that we need to buy for anti-poaching

All our fund raising efforts will be focused on this, and we’d be enormously grateful for any thoughts from you on how we can reach this critically important target.

Check out the story on the CNN website: Central African Gorillas May Go Extinct.

It refers to a recent report by UNEP, the United Nations Environment Program, that states that gorillas may go extinct in much of Central Africa by the mid-2020s - victims of the meat trade, logging, mining and the Ebola virus.

The article and Unep report are slightly more optimistic about Virunga’s gorillas in particular (although very pessimistic about DR Congo in general), in that the mountain gorillas have survived despite long periods of instability in the region. The Rangers of Virunga who have died in the line of duty are also mentioned.

Have a read. Not very uplifting but that is the harsh reality.

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.

Thank you all for your outpouring of concern. The loss of Nsekanabo was a big blow to all of us working to save Virunga’s mountain gorillas. With only 720 mountain gorillas now left in existence, every unnatural death is both tragic and a setback.

At a time like this, the best thing we all can do is channel despair and outrage into action. Nsekanabo’s death illustrates the need for increased frequency of Ranger patrols to remove deadly snares and arrest poachers. With the park already running on limited resources, however, we need your help.

Please honor Nsekanabo’s life by sponsoring an area of the gorilla sector. If you are already sponsoring an area of the park, I hope you will reach out to your community and family and encourage them to do so as well.

By protecting a 30-acre plot of Virunga’s Gorilla Sector for $25/month you will fund the Rangers to keep this area snare-free.

If we all take on the personal challenge of getting a 30-acre plot sponsored, by ourselves or through others, the chances of losing another critically-endangered mountain gorilla will be greatly diminished.

With gratitude,
Emmanuel de Merode
Director
Virunga National Park

The baby gorilla injured after being caught in a snare laid by poachers has died. He was Nsekanabo, son of Tumaini and Kabirizi.

I thought I was going to be giving you good news. The Gorilla Doctors Magda and Eddy and the Rangers finally found Nsekanabo yesterday afternoon and performed an urgent intervention. They sedated Tumaini and her baby, and succeeded in removing the rest of the snare from Nsekanabo’s left ankle, in addition to sewing up his face that was so badly damaged.

Drs Magda and Eddy perform the intervention in the forest, in the pouring rain.

Nsekanabo’s face, that was so mangled, is sewn up by Magda. (Photo copyright Gorilla Doctors)

Tumaini and Nsekanabo were still close, as Tumaini was still breast feeding. Nsekanabo was Tumaini’s first known child. Tumaini is also the sister of Ndeze, one of the 2 orphans in the Senkwekwe Centre.

And then this afternoon we have just had reports from Rangers in the field that Nsekanabo is dead.

Tumaini is still carrying him around, so the Rangers will now follow the family closely (maybe for several days), until she leaves Nsekanabo behind. Then the Rangers will recover the body, and the Gorilla Doctors will be able to perform the autopsy.

This is terrible news. Nsekanabo seemed to be doing well after the intervention by the Gorilla Doctors. And now this. Innocent and the Rangers are devastated.

Nsekanabo, 2008-2010. May he rest in peace.