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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: April 2008

Senior conservation official charged with ordering massacre of Virunga National Park gorillas

 

GOMA, DRC--Honore Mashagiro, formerly regional director of the Congolese Wildlife Authority for Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was arrested at his home in Goma on March 18, 2007 for allegedly orchestrating the killings of 10 gorillas whose remains were discovered in June and July 2007.

DRC environment minister Felicite Kalume announced the arrest. Agence France-Presse reported that "Six foresters would also be questioned on suspicion of having trapped and killed the animals in the site on Mashagiro's orders."

"Mashagiro was in a position of great responsibility," Wildlife Direct spokesperson Dipesh Pabari told Claire Soares of The Independent, "and allegedly used his authority to promote the destruction of forest for charcoal to make money. This threatened the gorilla habitat, so when the rangers tried to protect the forest, he allegedly orchestrated the gorilla massacres to discourage them."

Congolese Nature Conservation Institute director Alexandre Wathaut told Agence France-Presse that effects to stop charcoal trafficking from within Virunga had been "seriously stepped up" since the gorilla killings. "The latest development is a departure from previous killings of gorillas," assessed Agence France-Press, "when suspicion has fallen on local rebel forces."

An unnamed inside source hinted to Agence France-Presse that the gorillas "could have been killed to create a diversion from the illicit charcoal trade--or even to throw suspicion heat on rival park workers."

Wrote Soares, "Poachers were not suspected because the carcasses, potentially valuable on the bushmeat market, had been left behind. And a hit job for the trophy trade was ruled out as the animals still had their heads and hands.

"Mashagiro, a senior official in the Congolese Nature Conservation Institute, was removed as director of Virunga not long after the killings," Soares noted--but was apparently not yet suspected, because he was "put in charge of the gorilla population at Kahuzi-Biega National Park."

Mashagiro in his Kahuzi-Biega role participated in a tree-planting ceremony on November 19, 2007 with representatives of the Gorilla Organization, formerly called the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund Europe.

Dan Bucknell, Africa program manager for the Gorilla Organization, had already observed to Soares that, "The people that did this located the animals in one go and they knew how to approach them, which suggests an inside job."

Asked how long the Gorilla Organization knew and worked with Mashagiro, Gorilla Organization communications officer Abigail Girling told ANIMAL PEOPLE, "I have passed your questions to our field program manager, who worked with Mashagiro in the past and will be better placed to answer. I will forward his answers as soon as possible." Eighteen days later no answer had come.

Paul Lughembe, coordinator of the DRC grassroots organization Safe Environ-ment & Enhanced For All, on May 28 and June 20, 2007 distributed electronic warnings 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.

But Lughembe was also at first looking in a different direction.

"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," said Lughembe in his first warning. "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.

"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.

By June 20, 2007, just before the gorilla killings started, Lughembe did suspect that "corruption or influence" was enabling bushmeat traffickers to conduct a side business in selling baby gorillas. Lughembe on June 16 had gone to investigate a report about one baby gorilla for sale, and found three offered by different vendors in the same area.

Lughembe did not comment on Mashagiro's arrest, but Bantu Lukambo, a fellow member of his organization, could only confirm the basic facts.

"We were all at the field to investigate the killing of two elephants at Mabenga," Lukambo told ANIMAL PEOPLE, and therefore they had no new perspective to offer.

The threat to the Virunga gorillas that Lughembe anticipated in May 2007 had emerged into global view just nine days before Mashagiro's arrest.

Reported BBC News on March 9, 2008, "Rebels who have seized control of eastern DR Congo's Gorilla Sector have said they will execute any wildlife ranger who attempts to enter the area. Despite the recent signing of a peace deal, a group of rebels have set up a parallel administration in Virunga National Park. United Nations peacekeepers say land mines have also been planted along one of the main routes through the region."

Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature (ICCN) senior ranger Diddy Mwanaki told the BBC that the group of rebels had begun taking tourists into Virunga to see the mountain gorillas.

"At the moment, we reckon they are taking about two groups per week, which generates money for their militias," Mwanaki blogged on a Wildlife Direct web site. "They are not--as far as we can tell--respecting the basic regulations to ensure that the gorillas are kept safe from disease and disturbance."

Continued BBC News, "Following the signing of a peace agreement to end the conflict between rebel groups and the government in January, rangers were hopeful of quickly returning to the Gorilla Sector."

But Frankfurt Zoological Society researcher Rob Muir told BBC News that an advance party was stopped on the road. ICCN director Norbert Mushenzi was informed that his ICCN delegation had only been let in out of respect for Monuc," the U.N. peacekeeping force, and "added that if it was not for the presence of Monuc, the delegation would have been executed."

About 380 mountain gorillas inhabit Virunga, Africa's oldest national park. This is about half of the total world population of mountain gorillas..