The Ongoing Fight To Protect Virunga National Park & Its Mountain Gorillas

Along the equator on the eastern border of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo), you’ll find Virunga National Park, one of the most beautiful yet afflicted places on the planet.

Its location along the seismically active Albertine Rift, along with large variations in altitude and rainfall, have given rise to a hugely diverse range of habitats: tropical forests, acacia savannahs, glaciers, wetlands and two active volcanoes.

As you would expect from such an incredibly varied landscape, Virunga is a land of unparalleled biodiversity, home to half of all the species on the African continent—and over a third of the world’s mountain gorillas.

Declared as critically endangered by the IUCN in 1996, these great apes live in forests high in the mountains. They have thicker fur, and more of it, compared to other great apes, helping them to survive in a habitat where temperatures can drop below freezing.

Sadly, though, decades of political instability and rebel activity in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has put immense pressure on Virunga National Park, placing mountain gorillas in the middle of a humanitarian crisis.

Virunga’s turbulent past

“The mountain gorilla faces a grave danger of extinction—primarily because of the encroachments of native man upon its habitat,” Dian Fossey wrote in her 1983 memoir, Gorillas in the Mist. By the time the movie of the same name was released in 1988, Fossey had been murdered at a research site in the Virunga Mountains.

She would not be the first to die for Virunga and its mountain gorillas. Over 175 rangers have been killed over the last 20 years as a result of conflict and illegal activities, with eight gunned down in 2018 and another killing last year, making Virunga one of the deadliest conservation projects in the world.

You see, Virunga has been in the crossfire of political turmoil since the early 1990s.

Already in decline from decades of mismanagement by park rangers, Virunga became the centre of what some scholars have termed “Africa’s World War”—a multilayered conflict that, at its height, involved nine African armies and dozens of rebel groups, spawning a humanitarian crisis that resulted in the death of an estimated 5.4 million people.

During the Rwandan genocide in 1994, 2 million refugees escaped over the western border of Rwanda and into the Congo. Roughly 850,000 of these fled to the borders of the national park itself, of which many entered it daily in search of food and firewood, destroying and felling large areas.

Virunga became listed as a world heritage site in danger by UNESCO.

The First and Second Congo Wars destabilised the region and wounded Virunga further, as anti-poaching efforts were obstructed and many of the park’s rangers and wildlife were killed. By the time the Second Congo War ended, lawlessness in the park had reached an all-time high. Conflict between park personnel and rebel groups raged, as rebels illegally extracted and smuggled Virunga’s natural resources to generate income.

As time went on, so did the challenges. Virunga was almost exploited by British oil company Soco in 2006, and became the epicentre of The Kivu Conflict as rebels overthrew the park’s staff and occupied the land.

As Virunga bled, poachers ran riot, and in 2007, an unimaginable horror occurred when a family of mountain gorillas were murdered by an illegal charcoal mafia. Their rationale was that if there were no mountain gorillas, then there would be no need to protect the park.

Virunga was on her knees.

A new hope for Virunga

In 2008, Virunga finally found some good fortune in the form of Emmanuel de Merode, a Belgian conservationist who was appointed as director of the park. A pragmatist and a visionary, de Merode works tirelessly to protect the park and bring sustainable development and economic growth to the region through his Virunga Alliance programme.

“The underlying causes of the armed conflict are economic. We have an unemployment rate of 70 per cent in our region, and 4 million people live within a day’s walk of the park boundaries. When you have that population size and level of unemployment, combined with the availability of small arms, it’s no surprise that young men choose the militias as a means for survival. If you can provide them with an alternative livelihood, you go a long way to fostering stability and peace.”

– Emmanuel de Merode in New Scientist

In 2015, DR Congo, Rwanda and Uganda signed the Greater Virunga Transboundary Collaboration, a treaty designed to put conservation efforts into place by protecting habitats, cracking down on poaching and developing tourism.

Part of the Virunga Alliance programme is to raise awareness of the potential economic value of the mountain gorillas, especially within ecotourism. Thanks to the programme, a gorilla guide would earn more than a gorilla poacher.

A mountain gorilla tour is costly: approximately $1,500 in Rwanda, $700 in Uganda and $400 in DR Congo. But a significant share of this cost is fed directly back to the villages, as well as the park itself, and is used to build schools, roads, cisterns and other vital infrastructure.

A beneficial relationship formed: When mountain gorillas prosper, so do the local communities.

After years of civil war and corruption, you wouldn’t expect DR Congo to be very high on many travellers’ bucket list. But if we consider the estimated $20 million in revenue generated last year from gorilla trekking in neighbouring Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park, the potential of a thriving tourism industry in DR Congo doesn’t seem too unrealistic.

Not only does DR Congo boast critically endangered mountain gorillas, but also an enormous range of other species, awe-inspiring landscapes and epic volcano hiking.

And indeed, Virunga has attracted a growing number of visitors in recent years.

Conservation efforts are working

Despite years of civil unrest in the region, the conservation efforts have found success. While the outlook for mountain gorillas may have looked rather bleak just a couple of decades ago, their numbers are beginning to increase.

Findings show that populations in Virunga have grown to 604 individuals, up from 480 individuals in 2010, putting the total global wild gorilla population over 1,000 individuals.

In 2018, IUCN declared that mountain gorillas had moved up from critically endangered to endangered.

However, a new challenge has arisen. Ecotourism itself is not without risk, because people can pass infectious diseases to mountain gorillas.

Virunga National Park has made the decision to ban visitors until 1st June 2020, citing “advice from scientific experts indicates that primates, including mountain gorillas, are likely susceptible to complications arising from the COVID-19 virus”.

Neighbouring Rwanda is also temporarily shutting down tourism and research activities in three national parks that are home to primates.

Paula Kahumbu, chief executive of the Kenya-based conservation group WildlifeDirect, told the Associated Press that “every possible effort must be made to protect mountain gorillas because so few are left in the wild.”

This does, sadly, mean that tourism revenue is not currently being bought into Virunga, and conservation efforts are put on hold.

But Virunga has been through worse, and I’m confident she’ll bounce back stronger.

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