Rangers fear for gorillas caught in the crossfire

Published on Saturday 22 November 2008 18:37

JEAN-Marie Serundori wakes up every morning with gorillas on his mind.

"I wash my face, I stare at the mountains, and I think of them," he said. "They are like our cousins."

But Serundori, a Congolese wildlife ranger entrusted with protecting some of the most majestic – and most endangered – animals on the planet, lives far from the broad-backed mountain gorillas he loves. Instead, he is stuck in a wet and filthy camp for internally displaced people where the only wildlife are the cockroaches that scurry across the mud floors. He is one of the hundreds of thousands of people left idle and destitute by eastern Congo's most recent spate of violence, and the consequences in this case may be dire and irreversible.

Eastern Congo is home to almost a third of the world's last 700 wild mountain gorillas (the rest are in of Rwanda and Uganda). Now, there are no trained rangers to protect them. More than 240 Congolese game wardens have been run off their posts, including some who escaped a surging rebel advance last month and slogged through the jungle for three days, living off leaves and scoopfuls of mud for hydration.

"We figured if the gorillas can eat leaves, so can we," said Sekibibi Desire, who is staying in a tent near the other rangers.

This is just the latest crisis. Congo's gorillas happen to live in one of the most contested, blood-soaked pieces of turf in one of the most war-torn corners of Africa. Their home, Virunga National Park, is high ground – with mist-shrouded mountains and volcanoes – along the porous Congo-Rwanda border, where rebels are suspected of smuggling in weapons from Rwanda. Last year in Virunga, 10 gorillas were killed, some shot in the back of the head, execution style, park officials said.

The park used to be a naturalist's paradise, home to more than 2,000 species of plants, 706 types of birds and 218 varieties of mammals, including three great apes: the mountain gorilla, the lowland gorilla and chimpanzees.

Now Virunga is a war zone. Rebel soldiers command the hilltops. Government soldiers fire mortars at them, blowing up precious gorilla habitat that is disappearing because of deforestation and the illegal charcoal trade.

"Armed groups hide in the park, they train in the park, and most importantly, they eat in the park," said Samantha Newport, a spokeswoman for Virunga National Park.

Newport said that two years ago, at one of the lakes in the park, a local militia went on a hippopotamus-hunting rampage, machine-gunning hundreds of hippopotamuses for their meat. "The lake turned red," she said.

Last month, the 14-year-old daughter of a ranger was shot in the stomach during a firefight near a ranger post deep in the forest.

"I put her in my arms and just ran," said her father, Mberabagabo Rukundaguhaya. "I thought she was dead." She lived, though it is not clear when her family will be able to go home.