Gorilla Protection

This is Augustin. Here is a video of an interview I did with Albert Sebagabo, the ranger who went missing after a run-in with FDLR rebels. Translation is provided by Ranger Augustin Rwimo.

 

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This is Augustin. The Makala Campaign is the effort to prevent the destruction of the gorilla habitat for charcoal, which is the most important threat to the future of the mountain gorillas in Virunga National Park. Our charcoal roadblock at Kibati on the route between the park and Goma has been difficult to manage, with trucks trying to force their way through at night and at high speed.

The charcoal we confiscate is sent to our station at Rumangabo for storage and is then redistributed to people who have been displaced by the war. On Monday the UNHCR came with two trucks and picked up 240 sacs of charcoal for redistribution in displaced people camps. Considering that each sac is worth $30 in Goma, that is $7,200 worth of charcoal that we are donating to the refugees.

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This is Augustin. The patrols from the newly reopened Gatovu ranger post have been fruitful. The front between the Congolese Army and Nkunda’s rebels is nearby, so the forest has suffered from illegal activities by hungry soldiers. My team of rangers have already destroyed more than 10 charcoal fires and 51 snares in the past two weeks.

Inspecting the snares

The presence of so many snares is very worrying, since the area is within the home range of the Kabirizi group of mountain gorillas. We can’t try to track down the gorillas, since most of their range is still crawling with rebels who would shoot at us on sight.

Mesi from the Kabirizi Family Group

Bonane and Kwibesha

You may remember that we arrested a poacher near Gatovu and I filmed an interview with him. The best we can do right now is patrol where we can safely, removing snares when we find them and tracking down poachers.

I just hope that the gorillas have been able to avoid the snares and are doing OK without us…

Karibu and Serundori

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This is Augustin. Late last week we continued our patrols in the Gatovu area, where we discovered 21 snares and caught a poacher. Please watch the video:

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I am currently at Rumangabo park headquarters working on the anti-charcoal patrols and other duties. Since the signing of the peace accord a couple of weeks ago the security has improved at our park station. We have not yet brought back any of the equipment we evacuated in November and December, but at least we cannot hear shelling or bombing in the Gorilla Sector. So all in all things are looking a little better.

Here is the Mikeno volcano rising up. The gorillas live on the flanks of the volcano. The house here is in our park station. The first door on the right you see is Innocent’s house. My house is just opposite.

The Rangers’ children play football in the afternoons after school.

Rob Muir from FZS is doing some construction up at Rumangabo because he wants to move his office up here and leave Goma. The truck had a bit of an accident!

While on patrol we came across this recently slaughtered bushbuck. The animal had left the forest just briefly, and was killed by local villagers. The head had already been cut off by the time we got there.

Augustin with the slaughtered animal.

The anti-charcoal patrols have continued relentlessly. We are now up to 56 tons of confiscated charcoal, up from 40.8 last week. We are very proud of this achievement. The fight against the charcoal mafia is one of the main threads of WildlifeDirect and a new blog called Ending Charcoal has been started up by Rob in the US who is helping out enormously to find a solution to this fuel crisis.

We continue to await news of the Gorilla Sector. We are still waiting for peace to become more of a possibility (or even a reality) before we venture back in. On Sunday it will be FIVE MONTHS since we were last in there checking on the Mountain Gorillas. It is years and years since that has happened.

Diddy

(PS here I am with my wife Justine and 2 of my children)

Technorati : congo, drc, iccn, wildlifedirect

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Since the end of December we have now seized over 40 tonnes of charcoal during anti-illegal charcoal patrols north of Goma. We are very pleased with this result and it sends a strong message that we will not stand back and watch our park be destroyed.

We blogged last week that the seized charcoal would go to schools, orphanages and hospitals - but instead ICCN decided it should go to the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) who are in camps near the park, which makes perfect sense. You can see a map of these camps here - it was posted by Samantha on Friday. We have been working closely with Rob Muir of Frankfurt Zoological Society to do this. The camps that have benefitted are: Mugunga I, Mugunga II, Buhimba & Bulengo - which include a total of some 65,000 IDPs who have lost everything.

Charcoal distribution at an IDP camp south-west of Virunga National Park; that is Rob in the cap

This kind of shelter is commonplace in IDP camps

People were curious

And looked on

Then the distribution began

Sack by sack

The women helped with the organization

And took control

To ensure it was distributed fairly

The seized charcoal was not distributed to the IDP camp at Kibati, because they do not yet have food from UNHCR. Samantha will be providing an update on that in coming days and the fuel wood.

This distribution is an excellent idea, as the charcoal is badly needed by the thousands upon thousands of people fleeing the conflict. We hope the peace conference will work because the humanitarian situation is simply catastrophic. Although the camps are not right next to the Gorilla Sector, they are right next to Virunga National Park. And it is all part of one eco-system.

We are continuing our anti-charcoal patrols and the number of tons of seized charcoal is going up every day.

Here Augustin takes the details of the people we arrested with the charcoal

There are still many, many trucks

And we need to stop them all

Augustin, our head of the Anti-Poaching Unit, is currently sick with malaria and is in the clinic at Rumangabo. He will be on his feet soon!

Also, the 3 Rangers who were badly beaten last week are slowly getting better.

Thank you everyone for your continued donations and support. We will be doing a post soon on how money has been spent so far.

Diddy, Innocent & all of the Rangers on the anti-charcoal patrols

Technorati : congo, drc, iccn, wildlifedirect

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This is Diddy & Innocent. During the last 4 weeks we have been intensifying the anti-charcoal patrols in the southern sector of Virunga National Park. You will recall that we spoke about the increase in charcoal burning as a result of the insecurity in the area caused by the war between the rebels and the army. We estimated in mid-December that there had been a 10-fold increase in the illegal charcoal trade since September.

So we have been trying to stop the illegal making of charcoal in the park, on 2 fronts. We have been doing sporadic patrols into the park, but security has been very precarious because of the presence of rebel groups. So we have focused more on stopping the trucks actually transporting the illegal charcoal to Goma for sale.

This is an example of one of such trucks. Absolutely packed with illegal charcoal.

Sometimes the trucks are SO overloaded they simply tip over.

We have to stop all trucks on the road because often there may be potatoes or cabbages in sacks that are visible, and in the middle there is charcoal. This was the case with this truck.

So we have been organizing ourselves - about 36 of us in total - at the Kibati patrol post which is about 15km north of Goma on the main road to Rumangabo and Rutshuru. Some of us are also at Kibumba. So we are split into 3 teams of 12.

We have legal permission to stop the trucks full of illegal charcoal from the National Prosecutor of DR Congo. This is the legal document that states that we are entitled to protect Virunga National Park, according to Law 069-41 of 22 August 1969.

This is the same law under which we are working to bring to justice those responsible for the July massacre, and the death of the baby gorilla in September. There is a blog post about this here.

Since about the 20th December we have confiscated over 240 sacks of illegal charcoal, which is equivalent to about 20 tons. These have been brought to Goma and will ultimately be distributed to orphanages, schools and hospitals.

The charcoal, once confiscated, is brought to Goma.

We have to store it while the judicial process is underway.

And then we will be able to distribute it.

All these patrols that we are talking about have been led by Augustin Kambale. He has been promoted to Head of Anti-Poaching. This is a significant promotion from head of the Bukima patrol post as he now heads up over 80 to 100 Rangers. He has started this job during a very very challenging time.

Jean Bosco, head of Community Conservation, & Augustin, earlier this week in Goma.

Late on Monday afternoon Rangers stopped a truck, that had illegal charcoal in it, at Kibati.

The truck driver knew that we had set up this barrier at Kibati to stop the illegal charcoal.

The driver tried to drive very quickly through the barrier. Because the roads are not even, he veered too much to one side and the entire truck ended up tipping over.

Heated arguments followed between the local people, the Rangers, and the military who were also present. The situation got totally out of control amid the shouting, and the local population beat up 3 of our Rangers. There was absolutely nothing we could do among all the people. At one point there were at least 15 people kicking the Ranger Asumani. Once the people had stopped beating up the Rangers, the military stole their boots & berets. A local man also stole one of the Ranger’s guns. Remember with the long war here everyone knows how to use a gun. There were so many people around, all shouting at once, it was absolute chaos.

Once we were able to gain hold of the situation we took the 3 Rangers to hospital in Goma where they spent 2 nights. They came out this morning.

Afterwards the local population also pushed our car off the road.

This morning Maniroho, Ndayumujina & Asumani went back to the Kibati patrol post, and will then go on to Rumangabo to rest for a few days and continue receiving treatment. Asumani’s leg, as you can see, is in plaster as a result of the beating.

Now Director Mushenzi is following the judicial process with the lawyer Maitre Mathieu to deal with the confiscated illegal charcoal to date and the debacle of Monday afternoon. We will keep you posted.

Diddy & Innocent

Technorati : charcoal, congo, drc, iccn, ranger, wildlifedirect

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Bonane, from the Kabirizi family, born 1st Jan 2000

This is Samantha. I am waiting for Diddy, Innocent, Nestor, Rob & Balemba to get back from Rumangabo so I can provide a comprehensive update of what is going on in the Gorilla Sector and surroundings today. Weather and fighting are bad - so they may not be back til late.

Thank you again everyone who donated specifically to the fuel wood campaign yesterday. The total came to $1,120. Leah S-$100.00; Gerald I-$60.00; Dana T-$260.00; Jennifer and Damon B-$40.00; Faye B-$20.00; Gregory F-$200.00; Gretchen C-$40.00; Anthony B-$20.00; Lauren F-$20.00; Cynthia G-$40.00; angela s-$20.00; Lucia C-$200.00; sue d-$100.00.

With the $1,400 from yesterday this comes to: $2,520 of the $20,000 target.

Gerald posted this comment when the payment was made: We saw the photos in National Geographic and were very saddened. Jerry, Marnie, Jacob, age 10 and Eli, age 7, Tunkhannock, Pennsylvania, USA.

Dana said: from the Tori Amos ‘07 crew!

Finally, for those of you who have not seen this video by Augustin Kambale, head of Bukima patrol post, I wanted to post it again. It is a few months old, but I originally posted it when we had less traffic, and I just think it is terrific. The same message stands today.

Technorati : charcoal, congo, drc, iccn, virunga, wildlifedirect

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This is Samantha at WildlifeDirect.

I have just spent the morning in Goma with Diddy, Innocent and Jean Bosco, the head of community liaison for the Rangers at Rumangabo. We were talking over several issues - security, current work, frustrations etc.

This is basically a summary so you can all understand what is going on:

Fighting has started again at Bukima. Augustin Kambale, the Bukima patrol post chief who is at Rumangabo station, called in about an hour ago and said he could hear gunfire. This does not bode well as we are all meant to be waiting to see if the rebels will integrate into the national army. I explained this concept here. It is my impression that often announcements made to the press or by the leaders are not interpreted on the ground by those actually engaged in combat.

The Rangers are fearful that the rebels have had time in recent days to get more supplies. They fear that the rebels will target the military base 4km from Rumangabo and that the park station itself will get taken.

They are more worried than they were 2 weeks ago. They sense these things from the ground - local people for example have been trying to get back to their fields to get food in recent days and weeks, and at the same time hear and report what is going on on the ground. So the Rangers are well informed.

Innocent is evacuating his family as a result, that is his wife and children. They will stay for a couple of days with family in Goma and meanwhile look for a small house on the outskirts that they can rent. WildlifeDirect donations will pay for this. It will only be about $50 a month, plus furnishings (beds, cooking pots etc) so we have this already from your generous donations as work has been paralyzed in other areas like patrols.

ICCN is also going to evacuate more equipment from Rumangabo. Lots has already come to Goma and is scattered around the various NGO offices in the city.

So tense times again. We wait, and wait, and wait. Goma in terms of security is adequate. In other words from my point of view (and most other residents) the rebels will not ever enter the city, because of the UN peacekeeping mission here.

Jean Bosco, Diddy and Innocent this morning

But one of the repercussions of this current insecurity is that it breeds more insecurity. So there is an increase in general banditry, and the activities of the other armed groups in and around the park. So the Rangers cannot go into the Gorilla Sector. But the other sector, the Nyamulagira Sector to the west of Rumangabo is also more problematic than it was a couple of months ago. This sector is shown as the orange bit on this map and as you can see is larger than the Gorilla Sector. Armed groups such as the Mai Mai and the FDLR are active here - charcoal burning and poaching.

On a positive note the legal proceedings against the 2 suspects in the gorilla trafficking incident last month will begin next week. ICCN is instigating all of this and the suspects are being held in Goma.

Diddy was looking at the Smithsonian article

Also the crisis cell of conservation NGOs - WildlifeDirect, FZS, ZSL, DFGF(I), IGCP - met yesterday to coordinate activities. This group was set up with $100,000 (contributions from all the above NGOs) in early August to manage the crisis after the July Mountain Gorilla massacre. The nature of the crisis has obviously changed: initially it was intense patrols and gorilla protection, and now it has become emergency rations and accommodation for the 34 displaced rangers (and some families), medical supplies, evacuation etc. and above all being ready to act when the Rangers can once again get into the Gorilla Sector.

Thank you for your support everyone.

Samantha

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

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Today we buried the dead infant gorilla. We named her Mufabure. This means “Killed without reason“.

Mufabure is buried next to the others at Rumangabo, the headquarters for the southern sector of Virunga National Park. She joins the members of the Rugendo family that were massacred in July: Senkwekwe, Neza, Safari and Mburanumwe. She also joins Nsekuye, executed in June.

May she rest in peace.

Mufabure - next to the other gorillas, also killed without reason

The culprits have yet to be found

Also yesterday me and Jean-Marie Serundori went to the Bukima patrol post with members of the UN peacekeeping mission in DR Congo, MONUC. We went to have a look. The patrol post is occupied by about 40 members of the army, with their families. They have ripped out the ceiling of the 2 patrol post buildings. I asked why but they did not answer. They have also destroyed all the crops in the fields that were planted by the rangers, like Augustin and Jean-Marie.

MONUC at Rumangabo before leaving to Bukima

Beds have also been vandalized.

Unfortunately we were at Bukima a short time and I was not able to track any gorillas. This situation is not really getting any better and we still cannot go back there. It was only safe for me because I was with MONUC.

Innocent

Technorati : congo, drc, iccn, mikeno, wildlifedirect

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