Congo Rangers

Category: Crises, Rangers | Date: May 03 2007 | By: admin

The Congolese military are going to set up a military training camp at Nyaleke, inside Virunga National Park. I was told today that after huge efforts by UNESCO, the European Union, the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature (ICCN) and other conservation NGOs over many many months, all efforts have failed and we are soon going to see thousands of Congolese soldiers receiving training within the borders of one of the world’s most spectacular national parks.

This is not a regular military training camp. It is called a “camp de brassage” and is one of many such camps set up for the training, redeployment and demobilization of the Congolese military. While these camps are a crucial part of the peace process in Congo, placing them within the park is potentially very damaging.

Using Nyaleke as military camp - with the presence of potentially up to 4,000 former rebels being integrated into the regular army - not only poses a serious threat to the future of Virunga National Park but is also illegal according to the laws of DRC. The camp is clearly within the parameters of Virunga, about 11 km east of Beni.

This aerial photo shows the demarcation of the park, and the location of the camp inside the park.

The Dutch government financed the establishment of the military camp at Nyaleke. The camp was actually operational throughout 2006 but was due to be moved.

Virunga National Park was established as Africa’s first national park in 1925 and became a World Heritage Site in 1979. ICCN is committed to preserving the wildlife within the park after a 10-year civil war that saw most of the infrastructure destroyed and poaching soar. So it is simply not the right place to have a military camp. I am still making enquiries as to what has gone wrong with the attempts to prevent this and move the military camp to somewhere outside of the park. We are looking into a number of issues: why did the Dutch government fund a camp inside the park? What can we do to stop a disaster in the making?

Congolese soldier sitting on a dead elephant that was poached

Technorati : beni, congo, drc, eu, iccn, nyaleke, unesco, virunga, wildlifedirect