Congo Rangers

Category: Active Service, Rangers | Date: Aug 15 2006 | By: admin

Garamba National Park in North Eastern Congo has been in a critical state for the last few years, suffering from extensive poaching at the hands of heavily armed Sudanese Cavaliers known as the Janjaweed. Within just a couple of years they had managed to poach a sub-species of white rhino to the brink of extinction. From March 2001 through to March 2006 the population crashed from around 30 rhinos to just 4 individuals.

About as close as I may ever come to seeing the Northern White Rhino

Park Infrastructure and vehicles destroyed during the war still dominate the station. An old WWF lorry lies jacked up in the hope that someday someone may return its tyres…

Following the end of the training programme in March 2006, Elie led two ranger troops to Garamba to try and protect these last four rhinos, while we provided training to some of the rangers from Garamba at Ishango. Elie has now just returned from his mission having carried out some outstanding work in the south-western sector of Garamba.

Elie and a section of his men at the Advanced Base in Garamba National Park

In the four months that Elie and his men were operating there, not one rhino or one elephant was shot. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the park they were continuing to lose between 20-25 elephants a month. The threat is no longer from the Sudanese Janjaweed, as the remaining rhinos are too far south of the international border. The poaching threat is now from the local communities, many of whom have access to weapons and are alleged to be members of the SPLA, sending ivory up through Sudan to be sold on the black market.