Congo Rangers

Category: Crises, Mountain Gorillas | Date: Dec 15 2006 | By: admin

Last week fighting broke out between the Congolese military and the dissident General Laurent Nkunda in the gorilla sector of the Virunga National Park. Park rangers and their families were forced to flee the Congo for Uganda where they sought saftey for nearly a week along with over 6,000 refugees who had also fled the fighting.  As soon as it was safe enough, the chief warden collected them in his truck and brought them all to the relative safety of his station at Rumangabo.  However they had lost everything.  They had nowhere to stay and nothing to eat, and were unable to return to their patrol posts becasue most of them were occupied by military personnel. 

We immediately launched an emergency appeal to raise funds for food, clothes and medical supplies to help support the rangers and their families.  The response was staggering.  Within 24 hours we had received funds from the International Primate Protection League, the Africa Conservation Fund, The Born Free Foundation, UNESCO, FZS and one private donor, enabling us to provide immediate support to almost 80 rangers women and children who had been left homeless as a result of the fighting.

Part of the Advance Force mandate is to remain flexible and to prioritize their responses to emerging crises.  As such, the operation in the far north of the park which was going to be filmed for the Discovery Channel has been postponed.  Elie is currently leading a troop down to Rumangabo to provide security to the rangers and their families wishing to return to Bukima, the only patrol post not currently occupied by the military. 

Ricochet, who wanted to film the tough reality of life as a ranger in Virunga National Park, will accompany Elie and his men on this important mission and will see for themselves the extreme hardships of life on the front line for the rangers and their families.  The Advance Force will also need to check on the mountain gorillas to make sure that that none of them have been injured or worse still killed in the crossfire.  It wasn’t the story that Ricochet had originally planned for, but this is real life in real time, and the show must go on!