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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS
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MONTH: July-August 2007
Who is killing the Virunga gorillas?
GOMA, DRC--Seeking the
killers of endangered mountain gorillas in Virunga National Park, near
the eastern border of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, UNESCO and
the World Conservation Union on August 14, 2007 sent out a posse.
"The killings are inexplicable,"
said a United Nations press release. "They do not correspond to traditional
poaching," and "have taken place despite increased guard patrols
and the presence of military forces.
"Seven mountain gorillas have been
shot and killed this year, four of them last month, more than during the
conflict that wracked Africa's Great Lakes region in the late 1990s,"
the release continued. "Some 700 gorillas are estimated to still
survive in the area, about 370 of them in Virunga."
The first two gorillas killed in 2007
were the silverback males of the Rugenda family. The next five victims
were adult females.
"The family is one of several groups
of gorillas that live on the Congo side of the sprawling Virunga National
Park, and are visited from the Bukima camp," reported Stefan Lovgre
for National Geographic News.
The killings did not surprise Paul Lughembe,
coordinator of the DRC grassroots organization Safe Environment &
Enhanced For All, which operates from a Rwandan post office box due to
fighting in the DRC.
Lughembe on May 28 and June 20, 2007 distributed
electronic updates about imminent threats to gorillas and other animals
in the Virunga region, seeking help that never came to prevent just the
sort of massacres that occurred. ANIMAL PEOPLE promised Lughembe coverage
of his findings, but did not get to press between receipt of his reports
and the killing of four gorillas on July 22.
"The deployment of three brigades
[of the newly reconstituted DRC army] is a source of annoyance to the
local population in Rutshuru, Masisi and Lubero," Lughembe warned
in his first report. "Locals have created their own defence groups
to resist the soldiers of the three brigades, who seem to be loyal to
the renegade General Laurent Nkunda. So the situation is confused on ground
and the war is generalized.
"Gorillas have been taken hostage
by men of war," Lughembe explained, who "gave an ultimatum of
killing all 20 gorillas living in the reserve" near their encampment.
Lughembe's second report described his
June 16 effort to rescue a baby gorilla, after notifying representatives
of the Uganda Department of Environmental Conservation and the World Conservation
Union. The gorilla was said to be held at Rumangabo.
Posing as "messengers of a business
man who sent us from Goma to buy a gorilla," the team obtained a
Rwandan military driver, who "helped as interpreter," Lughembe
said. "The guide drove us to Camp Vodo," on the outskirts of
the Rumangabo military base. There the team found not one but two baby
gorillas, one two months old and the other four months old.
"The possessor of the first baby
gorilla was selling her for $3,000 U.S., and the second was selling his
for $5,000 U.S," Lughembe said. He was not allowed to photograph
the gorillas. A sale was not completed because Lughembe did not have the
money and the sellers did not accept his invitation to bring the gorillas
to Goma to be paid.
"The guide then drove us to a third
possessor," Lughembe recounted. "Her baby gorilla endured an
atrocious wound to the right thigh. This woman collaborated with soldiers
who provide her with gorillas, she said. She told us that they always
kill the mother first, before they can take babies. She told us that she
had an older gorilla eight kilometres from there. We told her that we
would only buy it if we could see it. Imploring that it was too far to
go there, but to reassure us, she brought us a packet of hairs and the
excrement of this adult gorilla.
"We asked her where they find these
gorillas," Lughembe continued. "She confided that they are taken
from the Bukima forest, six kilometers from there, probably in collaboration
with some armed soldiers. The woman confided that she collaborates with
an Ugandan business man who often comes to Kiwanja from Uganda,"
and named several of their associates.
Despite the many roadblocks and checkpoints
in the region, Lughembe established that the gorilla sellers--whose main
business appeared to be bushmeat--appear to move easily, "through
corruption or influence," and interviewed a man who claimed to be
one of their couriers. --Merritt Clifton