Peace pact could save kings of the jungle

BENEATH the rain-drenched jungle canopy of the high mountains of the Virunga Volcanic region, straddling the Congo-Uganda-Rwanda border, live Africa's last 680 silverback mountain gorillas.

It was just over 100 years ago that the first non-African saw these magnificent creatures. The German explorer Oscar von Beringe promptly set about shooting them and sending the corpses back to Berlin, and ever since then the future of the great apes has hung in the balance.

Uganda and Rwanda currently enjoy a precarious peace, fostering successful ecotourism industries which have helped the gorilla population to increase slowly.

Across the border, in the volcano-studded mountains of the Democratic Republic of Congo, which descend from glaciers to steaming tropical jungle, some 190 silverbacks survive in one of the most contested, blood-soaked corners of Africa.

They face multiple threats – the war raging between rebel militias and the government; illegal logging and mining; a demand for "bush meat" in a war-torn region where many go hungry; and a burgeoning charcoal industry worth more than £20 million pounds a year.

The Congo Virunga population is down from more than 300 in less than years.

Last year, more than ten Virunga gorillas, most of them members of the well-known Rugenda family group, were slaughtered.

Dramatic photographs of four of the gorillas, believed killed by charcoal gangsters, shocked international conservation organisations and their supporters.

It took 17 game guards four hours to carry the giant corpse of Senkekwe, a 600lb alpha male, the leader of the Rugenda family, from the Virunga forests.

The region is dominated by the militias and various international mafias, whose lust for the eastern Congo's abundant minerals, timber and other natural resources is best served by the perpetuation of chaos.

In the most spectacular slaughter, one militia, the Mai Mai, led by anti-Tutsi warlords, butchered more than 29,000 of the 30,000-strong Virunga hippopotamus population for meat and ivory. During the mass killing two years ago, the waters of Lake Edward turned red. Once the home of the biggest concentration of hippos in central Africa, fewer than 600 survive now.

Paradoxically, the most recent fighting gripping the eastern Congo, in which the Tutsi guerrilla army of Laurent Nkunda has taken great swathes of territory from government forces and the Mai Mai, might give Virunga's mountain gorillas a respite.

Among the territories taken by Nkunda's fighters is the 3,000sq mile Virunga National Park, classified as a World Heritage Site in 1979 by the United Nations.

A deal mediated between Nkunda's insurgents and the Congo government of president Joseph Kabila in Kinshasa this week has allowed park rangers to return to gorilla areas of Virunga for the first time since the slaughter last year of the Rugenda family.

Under the protection of Nkunda's fighters, rangers and scientists from the Congolese Wildlife Authority this week found one gorilla family and began a month-long census which will give an idea of the status and health of the highly endangered apes now under Nkunda's control.

"We are extremely pleased that all sides in this conflict accept the importance of protecting Virunga's gorilla sector," Emmanuel de Merode, the park's Belgian director and the man who brokered the breakthrough deal, said.

"The survey will give us an accurate assessment of Congo's mountain gorillas and how they have been affected by the war."

Last month, Nkunda's forces pushed the war front line dozens of miles away from Virunga, making the area safer for the animals.

"It's a myth that nobody knew what was happening to (the gorillas]," said Benjamin Nsana, a 40-year-old park guide in the rebel zone who has worked with the gorillas for 15 years, during which time he has seen 150 fellow rangers killed. "We were here all along."

Nsana said he and other rangers who had stayed in place had continued to track seven gorilla families that have grown accustomed to human contact.

Pierre-Canisius Kanamahalagi, one of Nkunda's close lieutenants assigned to the Virunga, and the dozens of rangers who remained behind say they did so because they were genuinely concerned about the apes' fate.

"If we hadn't stayed, who would have?" asked Kanamahalagi.

However, most of the rangers still in place are sympathetic to the rebels, and many are Tutsis like Nkunda. Some 120 other rangers have fled.

While De Merode lauded the rangers who stayed, Kanamahalagi said they need help. Rangers working in insurgent territory have done their jobs with little compensation beyond a £6.50 monthly allowances from an American conservation group and sacks of maize and beans from rebel authorities. Nsana said all their GPS devices were broken. The foot and toes of one tracker were visible through a ripped, dirt-clad boot, said a witness.

The deal negotiated by De Merode marks an extraordinary collaboration, because the government-run Congolese Wildlife Conservation Society, which is supposed to manage the park, will be a state organisation remotely operating within a zone controlled by Rwanda-backed rebels who are unlikely to cede control for years to come.

De Merode said he has continually stressed the conservation authority's neutrality and the park's status as a UN World Heritage Site.

"Our agenda is simply to manage the park and protect the animals inside it," he said.

High up in the jungle-clad foothills of Mikeno, one of Virunga's many volcanoes, a family of eight gorillas this week showed no sign of hostility towards visiting humans, whose species has nearly wiped them out.

"You see it's safe for them here," Nsana whispered. "No fighting. No problem."


Humans still at risk despite the ceasefire

WHILE the wellbeing of Congo's gorilla population appears to have been secured for now, at least in the medium term, the fate of many people living in the east of the country remains more uncertain.

The large-scale fighting between the Tutsi forces of General Laurent Nkunda and government soldiers, which broke out in August, has been halted for the time being under a ceasefire agreement.

But the UN, which is preparing to send 3,000 extra troops and police to bolster its 17,000-strong peacekeeping force, has accused both Gen Nkunda's rebels and government forces of carrying out mass killings, rape and torture.

Gen Nkunda says he is protecting the minority Tutsis from Hutus who fled to Congo after Rwanda's 1994 genocide. Critics say he is more interested in power.

Yesterday, about 3,000 people massed in the de-facto rebel capital of Rutshuru to receive the largest distribution of aid since fighting engulfed the area a month ago.

The UN Children's Fund handed out soap, blankets and water containers. Over the next six days, the agency will distribute these supplies to nearly 100,000 residents, its spokesman, Jaya Murthy, said.

Cholera, a highly infectious disease, has spread across eastern Congo since the fighting began forcing more than 250,000 people to flee their homes for crowded, chaotic and unsanitary refugee camps. "This intervention is particularly critical," Murthy said. "With the frequent movements of people, that's how cholera spreads."

Outside the city of Goma, where 70,000 refugees have fled to a refugee camp in recent weeks, officials are preparing to move people to a more secure location.

UN officials say the site in Kibati, just three miles from a tense front line between soldiers and rebels, is not safe. In the past week alone, camp residents say soldiers have looted, and two women have been killed by stray bullets.

UN refugee officials said they were preparing facilities at a new camp north-west of Goma to accommodate 30,000 refugees.