Gorilla Protection

I’m going to write a few posts over the coming days that describe some of the key tasks that my rangers and I have to do on patrol. The first is finding and destroying snares. It’s definitely some of the most important work we do.

A snare left in the Gorilla sector near Bikenge

One of the biggest threats to wildlife in Congo (and throughout Africa) are snares. There are many different types of snares, but the worst are wire snares. These are made from barbed wire, electrical wire, fence wire etc. and are laid out like a lassoo in the undergrowth. An animal will walk into it and catch it’s neck, or leg in the snare. They can sometimes take days to die an agonising death. It’s an extremely cruel way of hunting, and can wipe whole forests clean of all their wild animals. The Gorilla sector is littered with snares and we spend many many hours trying to find them to destroy them.

A photo taken by Mark Languy a few years ago of a very young gorillas that lost his hand to a snare

Gorillas are vulnerable to snares, especially the young. You will remember that Karema lost his hand, almost certainly to a snare.

So we spend a lot of our time patrolling the forest looking for snares. When we find them, we destroy them and bring the wires back to the station where we have a huge pile of old snares picked up over the years.

Removing and destroying the snare at Bikenge last Sunday

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