This is Diddy. As you know, most of the Mikeno Sector (where the gorillas are) has been out of bounds for us for the last 8 months. Before the rebels took over, we had 5 Patrol Posts in Mikeno: Jomba, Bikenge, Bukima, Gatovu and Kibumba. Kibumba is the only one we have had access to.

Well today I have good news: this morning we sent a team from our anti-poaching unit to the Gatovu Patrol Post with the help of the Congolese Army (FARDC). We had heard that the rebels were no longer controlling Gatovu, so we wanted to check it out.  

The Reconnaissance Team 

The Patrol Post   

We were pleased to discover that the Patrol Post building has not been destroyed by the rebels, although we did find that a large area of trees around it had been cut down for charcoal.

We also found a FARDC position nearby- they told us that they would collaborate with us in re-establishing our presence in Gatovu. We hope to send a team of Rangers next week to stay there permanently.  This is a fantastic development: re-opening Gatovu is an important first step on our way back to seeing the gorillas once again. Hopefully the Jomba, Bikenge, and Bukima Patrol Posts will follow, although we know that the rebels are still very much present in those areas.   

I’ll let you know how things go next week.

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This is Diddy. I am back at Rumangabo Station and I want to tell you about the living conditions of the wives and children of some of our Rangers.  

  Hopefully in the future we will find the money to bring this building up to standard.

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I have just moved to Goma from London, where I was working for the BBC making documentaries. One of my goals will be to put more video on the Virunga blogs, and I welcome any suggestions you have in terms of what you would like me to film.

In the meantime, here is some footage that I shot last week at the Rumangabo Station, where you can see the smoke coming from charcoal kiln fires burning within the Virunga National Park.

Later this week, I will post footage from the Kibati charcoal roadblock, where we looked on as the Rangers confiscated about 30 bags of illegal charcoal from a single truck.

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This is what he told me:

Having walked from Rumangabo to his village in Bukima, he got started working in his crop field. After a couple hours, two young men with guns approached him and asked him why there weren’t any other villagers around. He told them that he was just there earlier than the others.

The men then became threatening and took the food he had with him (sweet potato with beans). They ordered him to follow them, taking him to an area near the Bukima Patrol Post. For three days, he was subjected to interrogations and beatings.

Once they were satisfied that he actually knew nothing, they transferred him from Bukima to Bikenge. There, he witnessed widespread poaching and saw other villagers forced to work for the rebels. At one point he also saw a group of gorillas in the forest (Diddy thinks it was the Kabirizi group). This was the first time he had seen gorillas in their natural habitat.

Kwibesha from the Kabirizi group

He was forced by the rebels to bring 200 liters of water every day from a spring several hundred meters into the forest. He survived on potatoes and slept in an abandoned hut, with the rebels in their tents nearby.

He did the best he could to hide his fear and fatigue from the rebels. In the end, he was finally freed because he was smart enough to do everything the rebels ordered him to do. Oddly enough, the rebels asked him to come back from time to time to bring them cigarettes. They even offered him a job as a tracker, with the promise that he could one day become a park ranger. He of course declined the offer and left, eventually finding his way to the displaced people’s camp at Kabaya.

He is still very traumatized by his ordeal, but hopefully he will get better soon.

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These pictures show a military truck rented by smugglers to transport charcoal.

The situation between us and the military is so bad that three of our Rangers (Mwanga bin Assani, Majori Gakuru, and Ndianabo Ido) have been attacked and injured by soldiers in the past few weeks. We now have 60 bags of confiscated charcoal at the Kibati roadblock, but it is not safe to keep such a large amount there. Thanks to your donations, we are renting a truck to take the stockpile to Rumangabo Station where it is safer. 

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The Makala Campaign is the sustained effort to prevent the destruction of the gorilla’s habitat for charcoal, and which is considered to be the single most important threat to the future of the Mountain Gorillas in Virunga.

There has been a non-stop watch at Kibati with regular patrols on the eastern flanks of the Nyamulagira and Nyiragongo Volcanoes and Kibumba, in the gorilla sector. Forest destruction for charcoal in these, the most critical sites in the park, have been reduced by two thirds.  In the past tens years, since the war started, we have never achieved such results, so there is quite a sense of encouragement among the rangers.

The patrols have been interesting as well.  On Nyiragongo, the big active volcano to the north of Goma, rangers of the Advance Force, and gorilla rangers from Rumangabo joined forces with the Monuc Indian batallian in January and effectively displaced the FDLR rebels from this part of the park.  For those that are not familiar with the various Rebel factions in Congo, the FDLR are the militias that formed out the Interahamwe, the Rwandan militias that perpetrated the Genocide in Rwanda in 1994.  Not a nice group of individuals.  Unfortunately they are camped out in the forests of eastern Congo, and are a major threat to the ongoing work of the rangers.  The FDLR are also heavily involved in illegal activities including illegal logging for charcoal.  For now, the rangers have the upper hand in this area, but it’s a constant struggle, with occasional armed contacts between militias and government rangers.

The Makala road blocks have been difficult to manage, with trucks trying to force their way through the roadblock at night and at high speed.  But they have been very succussful in reducing charcoal.  These are the registered results so far:

November 07:  5o sacs seized and 3 kilns destroyed

December 07: 102 sacs seized and 180 kilns destroyed

January 08: 413 sacs seized and 37 kilns destroyed

February 08: 296 sacs seized and 53 kilns destroyed

March 08:  385 sacs seized and 7 kilns destroyed

First  two weeks of April 08: 499 sacs seized adn 17 kilns destroyed.

This makes a total of  1745 sacs, or about 80 tons of charcoal seized since the beginning of the campaign.  This charcoal is distributed among the people who have been displaced by the war and are living in camps around Goma.
Unfortunately, many people make money from charcoal and it is a constant battle at a political level to explain the sense of what is happening.  On 20th March, the Provincial minister for the Environment was formally requested to explain the actions of the rangers to the Provincial Assembly (this was documented on the ending charcoal blog).  Last week she defended our position in parliament, and the vote was carried in our favour, which is a big relief, and give us the legal basis to continue the difficult work that lies ahead.

So the legal institutions in Congo, so often criticized in the international media, have played their role very effectively, and maintained the integrity that we had hoped for.  This also applies to the arrest of the suspects considered to be behind the Rugendo Massacre last year.  For my part, I never believed that we would get this far.  But the suspected ringleader has been arrested, and five accomplices were heard at the military tribunal of Goma last week.  That they started at the top on this difficult trial, rather than just finding a couple of small scapegoats, is very much to the credit  of the Congolese judicial system.

In the Mikeno, around bukima, it remains very difficult.  We tried working with a team of villagers to get information on the gorillas.  This worked for a while, but we have since suspended activities because of the risks involved for the villagers going in.  That said, the little information that we have suggests that the mountain gorillas have not suffered, and that there may have been three births, which is pretty miraculous.

All in all, the situation is as difficult a ever, but we are hopeful that we are in a good position to buy time for the gorillas, until this conflict is over.  It means constant support for the rangers so that they don’t lose their morale and continue their incredible efforts.

Emmanuel

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However, since last weekend nobody has been going back to Bukima. Befor this incident, the FARDC (the National Army) troops caught two rebels who were in government controlled area where we are. The FARDC officers told all the villagers not to go back to Bukima to cultivate incase of retalliations by the rebels. Unfortunately this one villager did not get the message and went anyway. We’re trying to get all the information we can but it’s very difficult.

There have been many cases of villagers going missing in the rebel held area over the past six months, and never being seen again. It’s terrible, because the villagers have nothing to do with this terrible war, they are only the victims. They have to cultivate their crops to survive, but take huge risks in going behind enemy lines. We will start to report on these disappearances, because it is one of those things that nobody hears about.

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Inspite of the difficulties we have had quite a lot of success, with charcoal supply being reduced to about a third of what it was. Also our rangers are now very present in the park, and regularly make arrests of poachers and teams going in to clear the forest. Three days ago, one of our patrols seized a group of poachers with snares and poison.

Poison seized from poachers in the Nyamulagira Sector

The impact of poison on wildlife can be devestating, and we are very concerned about its increased use near the gorilla sector. Again, one incident could destroy a whole family of mountains gorillas, and so we have to be incredibly careful. Snares have also had a terrible impact on our gorillas. You will remember Karema, who was killed at the beginning of last year, had also lost his hand to a snare when he was a young juvenile black back.

A second troop of 15 rangers of the Advance Force has been deployed in our area. They are here to strengthen the existing patrols and road blocks. We have also been carrying training with the rangers, to continuously build up their skills and update them on new techniques. Yesterday we trained them in using GPS. We have been donated a GPS by Andrew C, in Colorado, which will be extremely useful in the remoter parts of the park.

GPS training

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We will continue to update you as news comes in. Diddy and Innocent.

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Senkekwe, shortly after the Massacre in July last year

The charges against Mashagiro were brought against him by the state, through ICCN, the wildlife authority, and is testimony that the rule of law can be brought into effect, even when it concerns powerful people. It is definitely a moment of hope for all of us, but obviously we await the outcome of a trial before saying any more.

Results like this take time, but it is so important never to give up. We don’t yet have all the details, but will update you in the coming days.

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