It was a routine patrol around 7:30 a.m. Sunday when six rangers working in the Virunga National Park in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo were ambushed by a local militia group. The attack is the latest in the part of eastern Congo where some of the world’s last mountain gorillas are located.
“It’s devastating,” Parkman’s 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.”
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And for those left behind, it’s a cruel blow to morale.
The attack is the deadliest since April last year when 17 people – including 12 rangers – were killed in the worst episode of violence in the park’s history. De Merode himself survived an assassination attempt after he was 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 took place while rangers patrolled the central sector of the park, near a newly built electric fence intended to prevent intrusion into the protected area . Rangers were very successful with that – it kept the militia out of the area – but the success put a target on their heads.
The armed fighters were not poachers, but militias who fought for control of natural resources and land. Park rangers are regularly attacked as part of the ongoing war for power in the eastern part of Congo. Dozens of armed groups are active in the region, many remnants of militias that have fought in the civil wars over the past three decades, resulting in millions of deaths due to conflict, famine 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 is not word of mouth survival – the Virunga forest is rich in natural resources such as charcoal, forests, fishing from the lake, animals and land. De Merode said it was a lucrative venture for the militia.
“The park is very rich in resources and we lose about $ 170 million a year with these illegal activities,” he said. “This is what draws the militia to the park. Our job is to protect the park, but it also means that they are cut off from large sums of money and regularly bring them into conflict with rangers whose job it is to keep the reserve and its to protect the flagship species, the mountain gorillas. ‘
The attack was blamed on the Mai-Mai, an umbrella term referring to the numerous militias waging armed conflict in the region. They fund their activities with the illegal looting of resources and are small but well armed.
The Virunga Game Reserve is one of the oldest parks in Africa, home to beautiful landscapes, incredible biodiversity and of course the majestic mountain gorilla. The park offers a rare opportunity to see these creatures up close.
Prior to the global coronavirus pandemic, the park was well on its way to becoming an economic asset. In an effort to reduce the violence, authorities have created about 12,000 jobs, and at least 11% of these new employees are former military. The authorities hope it can put an end to the conflict if they can give fighters a sustainable job.
But the parks have experienced a series of devastating blows in recent years: a recent Ebola outbreak, the coronavirus pandemic and now another brutal attack. The lack of tourism of this deadly cocktail of events has wiped out the industry. De Merode said he did not know how much longer they could last financially.
“It could be weeks,” he said. “At best a few months.”