It was a routine patrol around 7:30 am on Sunday when six rangers working in Virunga National Park in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo were ambushed by a local militia. The attack is the latest in the part of Eastern Congo where some of the world’s last mountain gorillas live.
“It’s devastating,” Parks director Emmanuel De Merode told CBS News as he left the funeral for one of his six rangers. “The families of these men have lost breadwinners and have no safety net.”
STRINGER / REUTERS
And for those who are left behind, it is a hard blow to morale.
The attack is the deadliest since April last year, when 17 people – 12 of them rangers – were killed in the worst episode of violence in the park’s history. De Merode himself survived an assassination attempt after being shot several times in the chest and abdomen in 2014.
The Congolese Institute for Nature Conservation, the agency that manages protected areas in the country, says the latest attack occurred while rangers patrolled the park’s central sector, near a newly constructed electric fence designed to prevent intruders from entering the protected area. area. Rangers have been extremely successful with it – it kept the militia out of the area – but that success has put a target on their heads.
The armed fighters were not poachers, but militiamen vying for control of natural resources and land. Park rangers are regularly attacked as part of the ongoing power struggle in the eastern part of Congo. Dozens of armed groups operate in the region, many remnants of militias who fought in the civil wars of the past three decades that have resulted in millions of deaths from conflict, hunger and disease.
Jerome Delay / AP
Militia groups hiding in the Virunga Forest believe the parks have taken too much land for animals and conservation – land they need to survive. But it’s not hand-to-mouth survival – the Virunga Forest is rich in natural resources such as charcoal, forests, lake fish, animals and land. De Merode said this is a lucrative business for the militia.
“The park is very rich in resources and we are losing about $ 170 million a year through these illegal activities,” he said. “That’s what draws the militia to the park. Our job is to protect the park, but that also means cutting them off from large sums of money and regularly coming into conflict with rangers whose job it is to protect the reserve and protect its flagship species. the mountain gorillas. ”
The attack has been attributed to the Mai-Mai, an umbrella term that refers to the numerous militias waging armed conflict in the region. They finance their activities through illegal looting of resources and are small but well-armed.
The Virunga Game Reserve is one of the oldest parks in Africa, with beautiful landscapes, incredible biodiversity and of course the majestic mountain gorilla. The park offers a rare opportunity to see these creatures up close.
Before the global coronavirus pandemic, the park was well on its way to becoming an economic asset. In an effort to reduce violence, authorities have created about 12,000 jobs, and at least 11% of these new workers are former militiamen. Authorities hope that if they can give fighters a permanent job, it can end the conflict.
But the parks have taken a series of devastating blows in recent years: a recent Ebola outbreak, the coronavirus pandemic and now yet another brutal attack. The lack of tourism due to this deadly cocktail of events has decimated the industry. De Merode said he doesn’t know how long they can last financially.
“It could take weeks,” he said. “A few months at the most.”