Congo Rangers

Category: General | Date: May 24 2007 | By: admin

I have just received reports from ICCN and those on the ground at Tshiaberimu that Madame Katabsi, the wife of a Congo Ranger, has died following the Sunday attack by the Mai Mai. Madame Katabsi was pregnant, and suffered a miscarriage as a result of the shock of the attack. She went into intensive care but sadly did not survive.

One wildlife officer who worked for World Wildlife Fund was killed during the attack, and three others remain critically injured at hospital in Kyondo, near where the attack took place.

Kambale Mulonda, a Congo Ranger, shot twice in the leg.

Alain Mali, a student injured by bullet during the attack on Sunday.

Jean de Dieu Vwosi, member of The Gorilla Organisation injured.

The Mai Mai only want the destruction of Virunga National Park and all that is in it. They want to poach, hunt, cultivate illegally, fish in spawning grounds, get rid of Congo Rangers - and obliterate Africa’s oldest national park. ICCN is currently attempting to negotiate with the Mai Mai group, headed by an individual called Jackson, with the assistance of the Congolese army and the United Nations Peace Keeping Force in Congo (MONUC).

I will keep you posted with more details during this difficult time.

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Category: Crises | Date: May 20 2007 | By: admin

I have taken this post from Atamato’s blog:

At 4h00 this morning Mai Mai rebels attacked the Burusi Patrol Post here in Virunga, leaving one park ranger dead, four critically wounded, as well as kidnapping Officer Monya. There were 10 Park Rangers stationed at Burusi, including the Conservateur and the Conservateur Communicateur.

Rangers and Trackers in Tshiaberimu

The Burusi Patrol Post is the sub-station and also the entry point for the Tshiaberimu area in Virunga, where there are lowland gorillas.

It was reported on this blog that only 10 days ago the Mai Mai in Muramba, of the Jackson group, were rumoured to be around 50. But following meetings between the Mai Mai and the farmers of Mulango wa nyama, with plans to attack ICCN Patrol Posts in order to continue cultivating within the park, there numbers were able to quickly swell. This information was reported on several occasions to the Commander Brigade and MONUC, but to no effect.

ICCN have deployed two troops of the Advance Force of Congo Rangers to track the attackers, as well as contacting the military authorities of the eighth, based at Butembo. It is feared that the Mai Mai have plans to attack the lowland gorillas as they are now heading towards the Patrol Post of Kalibina, where the gorilla monitoring takes place.

We urgently need funds to support the Advance Force, as well as money for the hospital bills for the Park Rangers who are critically wounded. Please donate now, all money received will go directly to this cause.

UPDATE

Two troops have been deployed. Troop 1 to Tshiaberimu and Troop 2 to Ishango. Troop 3 have cut short their 10 day patrol at Byangolo and are now on standby at Mutsora. Some units from the Congolese military have also been deployed.

We have also just found out that there were a total of 13 people who have been taken hostage, and now they are with the Mai Mai somewhere in the forest.

The Burusi Patrol Post was completely ransacked by the Mai Mai; all stock, arms, as well as family possessions, have been taken.

Technorati : Con, Mai Mai, Wildlifedirect

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Category: Active Service, Mountain Gorillas, Rangers, Your Donations | Date: May 17 2007 | By: admin

Christof Schenck, Frankfurt Zoological Society’s Executive Director, arrived in DRC a week ago to see how we were getting along. Christof has been wanting to come and visit the Congo for three years now, but every time he planned to come over, renewed fighting would break out between different rebels factions, or between rebels and the Congolese military, thousands of people would evacuate across the border to Rwanda or Uganda, and the park in which we work would become impossible to visit. Furthermore, all Embassies would advise against all travel to the region, and although that advice may well still stand today, Christof did at last manage to find his window of opportunity. He made it to the Congo! He also brought with him three journalists - Michael, Sebastian and Norbert, who will be covering the story when they get back to Germany. For us it was a very special occasion and a huge honor to have the ‘Grande Fromage’ come and visit our project and different activities. The ICCN even sent over the Head of International Cooperation from Kinshasa to welcome him to Congo!

First up, of course, were the gorillas, but not before a quick trip to the HQ of the gorilla sector to hand over two vehicles (one of which was purchased with funds raised through Paulin’s blog - thanks again Chris!!), 5 desk tops, 5 lap-tops, three printers, a projector and screen, 11 office tables, 36 chairs, a conference table, 2 solar systems, and a large stock of drugs for the medical dispensary (which was also purchased through the blog). See photo below.

We spent two days in the company of gorillas… the first day with the Kabarizi family who has just had another newborn - just two days old - and we had the great luck to be joined by Anne Hammil from the IISD and Ellen Brown from WCS (who has a blog on her work up in Epulu).

This is Anne with the photographers behind her!

The following day we went to see Rugendo - very different family of 12 individuals - and a very different family dynamic. Rugendo means wanderer, and he wanders much further than any other family. In fact he wanders right out of the forest and into the community land where food is plentiful. This however causes problems with local communities, and so it is important to involve them in conservation activities.

Before leaving, we met with some Pygmies who live around the edge of the park. They have been marginalized from society, having left their traditional way of life in the forest but without having found acceptance by the Bantu, they have no access to education or health care, and although getting more ’street-wise’ they originally had no real concept of ownership over land or plants - it just didn’t figure in pygmy logic - so if they saw a banana plant growing somewhere they would simply help themselves. This got them a really bad reputation for thieves… despite the fact that this land that the bananas are now growing on, did once in fact ‘belong’ to them… Christof gave all the women skirts and tops, and for the men, two pairs of jeans… it is important for us conservationists to work with the pygmies as well as other local communities living around the park if we are to have a chance of saving the gorillas in the long term, and getting to know them over a song and a dance is a first step…

Next up was a flight to Ishango and then a hike up the active volcano to spend the night on the crater rim… to be continued…

Technorati : congo, drc, fzs, gorilla, virunga, wildlifedirect

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Category: General | Date: May 14 2007 | By: admin

Dr Richard Leakey, Chairman of WildlifeDirect, was interviewed for the UK Spectator Magazine. Click on the picture below to see the whole article. Richard is credited with putting an end to the elephant slaughter in the 1980s in Kenya and has a unique perspective of conservation in Africa. Many of us admire him deeply.

Technorati : leakey, spectator

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Category: General, Mountain Gorillas | Date: May 09 2007 | By: admin

Check out this article I just spotted… we already know we are not that different from apes but this makes interesting reading. Just click on the article below and you will get the full story.

Technorati : ape, bonobo, chimpanzee, yahoo

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Category: General | Date: May 08 2007 | By: admin

Last week I went to Lubumbashi, in the south eastern corner of Congo in the province of Katanga. I met Franck and his wife Roxanne, who run JACK, Jeunes Animaux Confisces au Katanga (Young Confiscated Animals in Katanga), a small NGO that operates out of Lubumbashi that has a chimpanzee sanctuary with about 7 chimps.

Franck and Roxeanne have been fighting to raise awareness over the illegal trade in chimpanzees in the area. Before these chimps were sold openly in the market, but thanks to JACK this is now more difficult. Franck and his team ultimately want to work with the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature (ICCN) to re-introduce these confiscated chimps into the wild.

This is a chimp that was illegally being trafficked

Here is Franck at Likasi railway station where more chimpanzees are being trafficked

Zamba - a rescued chimp taking a bath

Franck and Zamba

Technorati : chimpanzee, fzs, iccn, katanga, lubumbashi, trafficking, wildlifedirect

3 responses so far

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

4 responses so far

Category: Crises, General | Date: Apr 28 2007 | By: admin

This article came out yesterday on the BBC website. Click on the picture below and you will get the whole story. The Congolese army said that it has killed 22 Rwandan Hutu rebels during an operation to secure a road near the Ugandan border. 100,000 villagers have been forced to flee as a result of the chaos.

As you can see the peace process is still tenuous here in the east of the country. I now need to establish the situation of the Rangers in this area to see if they need any emergency support. Will keep you all posted.

Technorati : congo, drc, fzs, hutu, rebel, rwanda, wildlifedirect

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Category: Mountain Gorillas | Date: Apr 26 2007 | By: admin

I know that recent videos of Mountain Gorillas are always fun. Here is one taken about 10 days ago of the Humba family, which as you know from Paulin’s blog was thought to be heading to Rwanda and then stuck around for some more Congo fun! Here are three of his 9-member family eating the trees they are actually sitting in!

Technorati : congo, drc, fzs, mikeno, mountain gorilla, virunga, wildlifedirect

5 responses so far

Category: Mountain Gorillas | Date: Apr 25 2007 | By: admin

Dr Richard Leakey will make a rare visit to the UK to address the Royal Geographical Society on “Climate change and the future of Great Apes.” Ape Alliance in the UK has just forwarded me the news:

World renowned paleo-anthropologist and conservationist Richard Leakey will be visiting the UK in May to address the implications placed upon Great Apes as a result of climate change.

Professor Leakey will speak at the Royal Geographical Society on 31st May to discuss what can be done to alleviate the pressure placed upon these threatened species and whether we can predict probably consequences far enough ahead to enable the conservation authorities to take steps now to avert disasters.

Professor Leakey will be available for interviews. Please contact the Orangutan Foundation - 0207 724 2912 - for further information. Tickets are 15 pounds and doors open at 6.30.

If you are in London I would not miss this for the world. Richard Leakey is the Chairman of WildlifeDirect and widely credited with putting an end to the elephant slaughter in Kenya in the 1980s. Recently he has taken on the cause of Congo’s Rangers and their dedication and bravery in protecting the parks of Congo, especially Virunga National Park, the oldest park in Africa. He featured on the cover of Time in 1977 - see below!

Technorati : apes, congo, drc, rgs, richard leakey, virunga, wildlifedirect

2 responses so far