Category: News

Virunga National Park is one of the remaining forest in the East North Kivu province and is surrounded by lots of villages with high demographic density.

These villages are living near the Park by using resources close to them in different ways with real impact on habitat and wildlife.

Protection of the Park becomes then complex and violent as park managers and their partners face different threats towards their lives.

Managing these conflicts need commitment and good willing of different actors after understanding these conflicts and different parameters.

Through the process of conflict analysis, mapping and strategy development, we’ve been able to start looking at different opportunities that can help reducing some of the conflicts starting with fishing villages as it can lead to other complex conflicts.

Needs from different stakeholders are increasing towards conflict resolution that we need to put more efforts even though some conflicts need political decisions.

Help Virunga to survive!!!

Virunga National Park as first National Park in Africa is facing several threats despite the efforts from rangers and conservationist to protect its resources.

One of its resources is African elephant (Loxodonta africana) inhabiting different ecosystems of the park from the forested areas to the savanna areas.

Elephants in Virunga have been killed in Virunga for the trophy. Due to the occupancy of the park by armed groups, elephants have moved to areas closed to ranger posts with limited movement. Once they want to move, they are killed and forced to stay in limited area.

In order to protect them form this daily threats, rangers have been trying to plan for daily patrols and observations. Three groups of rangers have been monitoring about 300 elephants in Kabaraza ranger station with limited food ration and basic field equipment.

Any help for these elephants is an input to Virunga conservation

Virunga National park located in Eastern DRC is among the richest protected area in terms of animals and plants. Some of these species cannot be found every where apart from the Virunga surrounding regions (e.g. Gorillas).

Covering about 8,000sqkm, Virunga Park is surrounded by a populated region which might be among the highest in DRC – up to 350 habitat/km². In these different areas, natural resources are the most used as about 80% of rural areas in DRC depend on agriculture and use firewood as source of energy.

In order to get firewood, local communities are obliged to get into the park –in most of the surrounding areas – and get some trees cut down for survival purposes. Besides firewood, charcoal is also the main forest killer in the area as the Park is surrounded by 3 big towns (Goma, Butembo and Beni) and others cities (Kiwanja, Rutshuru, Kasindi, etc.) where charcoal is the most used in different households for cooking.

In other areas where there are still some patches of forest, people are cutting down forests for timber, charcoal and firewood.

Surrounding communities as future threats to protected forests

Protecting Parks and forests is seen as a management purpose than a common benefit in Africa and especially in DRC. The forest on community lands is reducing every day and year leaving behind the protected areas as lonely and isolated forested areas.

Even if the forest on community lands is finished, local communities and surrounding towns’ population will still need charcoal, firewood and timber and the only place to get these will be into the protected areas. That’s the future threat towards natural resource exploitation in the Virunga region.

And this is more serious when you consider the birth rates of the areas and their economic status! More threats towards conservationist than how it is now!

Actions to be taken for both sides
In order to get this threat reduced, there is need of working on both sides – developing incentives in the community areas and actions for resources sharing with neighboring communities on the community side and protection of resource with community on the other side.

Among solutions, get networks organized for community and individual plantations for timber products for communities.

To manage to get people committed to such activities, there is need of technical and financial supports.

Wildlife is more interesting when people try to look into their eyes. When you try to look into wildlife eyes, you think about their needs in terms of habitat, food, shelter, movement. When people kill wildlife, they don’t look into their eyes; they look on their bodies, shape and trophies, etc.

The Virunga NP is facing poaching for both commercial and domestic needs in bushmeat. In order to discourage this process which can lead to species depletion, rangers carry out patrols in the Park with support from NGOs working in Conservation. This action is done also during any monitoring of wildlife in the park.

This has been one of the toughest missions of rangers during these two decades in Virunga Park and ICCN (Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature) has lost over 100 rangers on duty. As a consequence, there are widows and orphans without assistance.
But also, rangers are working under pressure in need of field equipments and shelter. Some of the ranger posts have been rehabilitated with partners’ support; others are still in traditional status and makes rangers vulnerable to any armed attacks as they face it frequently.

Helping rangers, saves the most biodiverse and the oldest Park of Africa!

We are proud of individual donors who have donated to this project and specially Robert J.G.