Congo Rangers

Category: Crises | Date: Aug 28 2006 | By: admin

I received a report in yesterday from the ICCN that over 150 hippos, 20 elephants, 50 buffalo and in excess of 200 antelope had been killed and butchered over the last two months by a group of Mai Mai living on the southern shores of Lake Edward.

Becoming a rare sight - Hippo with Calf

This is not for local consumption, this is for profit. The hippo, a true icon of Africa, has recently been put on the IUCN Red List of critically endangered species thanks entirely to the massive poaching of Virunga’s hippo population.

While some of the meat is sold in the towns and villages of the hunting reserve, the bulk of the bushmeat is sold in the illegal fishing villages along the west coast of Lake Edward. Fish stocks are now crashing dramatically as fishermen illegally plunder the sensitive breeding grounds. With less fish to eat, they are ready consumers of hippo meat, poached by the Mai Mai and shipped secretly across the lake in dug-out canoes. The fishermen are also resorting to other illegal activities such as farming and cultivation, cutting down the forest once used as a corridor for elephant migration along the lake’s shore, and planting manioc and sombe in its place.

Burning and cultivation along the West coast - this was all once forest

Something needs to be done and fast. A couple of years ago there were only 850 or so hippo left in the park (down from around 25,000 in the 1980’s) as a result of the catastrophic poaching during the war. Now we can only guess how many are left, but I would be surprised if it is in excess of 500…

This morning I flew around the lake with Vital Katembo (the ICCN’s Chief Scientific Officer) carrying out aerial surveillance of the Mai Mai encampment and monitoring the destruction along the west coast. Tomorrow morning, Vital will meet with the Vice Governor of North Kivu in charge of Political Affairs, and given the complete failure of the UN negotiations to evacuate the Mai Mai from the park, Vital will request immediate military intervention. Whether the Advance Force will play a role in such an operation is still unclear, but what is certain is that unless the Mai Mai are expelled soon, there may little left for the Advance Force to protect.

One of two Mai Mai camps in the bay of Kabale on the southern shores of Virunga National Park