11 June 2022 | New Scientist | 43A panorama of
deforestation in
Virunga National Park
in the Democratic
Republic of the Congo>D
OZENS of fires are visible from the air.
Flying above Virunga National Park in
the Democratic Republic of the Congo,
the jungle is so strikingly green that anything
else sticks out. The Congo basin, in which the
park sits, is home to the world’s second largest
rainforest after the Amazon, a place blessed
with natural wonders. But what I see below
isn’t natural: grey and brown splotches, burn
marks and squares of land stripped naked are
evidence of cultivation. And those fires are
mostly trees burning in makeshift kilns
to produce charcoal for fuel. This is what
deforestation looks like.
Virunga, known for its iconic mountain
gorillas, is a powder keg where conflicts over
resources and land cause many impoverished
communities to invade and exploit the park.
Deforestation, poaching, illegal farming and
an alphabet soup of active rebel groups make
it perhaps the most dangerous place on Earth
to practise conservation. Protecting nature
is often a pitched battle here: rangers are
heavily armed and more than 200 have
been killed in the line of duty.
Such dangers mean park staff do more than
monitor flora and fauna. They also explain
Virunga’s unique leadership and plans for
conservation. Park director Emmanuel de
Merode, an anthropologist and Belgian prince,
believes that the only way to save Virunga is to
give locals a reason to protect it. That means
jobs, and he is using a green hydroelectric
scheme to create them. Already providing
power for thousands of households and
businesses, the latest innovation is a hydro-
powered chocolate factory. It is a sliver of
success that shows the potential for change to
improve the prospects of people and gorillas.
Wedged against the Rwandan and Ugandan
borders in the far east of the Democratic
Republic of the Congo (DRC), Virunga
comprises around 7800 square kilometres
of tropical mountains, volcanoes and rolling
savannah. It is Africa’s oldest national park,
founded in 1925 when the country was still a
Belgian colony. Back then, the park was
named after Belgian monarch King Albert I,
who was so impressed on a 1919 visit to US
national park Yellowstone, that he created his
own version in the heart of Africa. The trouble
was, there were already communities living
there and, suddenly, people who had been
hunters for generations became poachers.
A whole way of life was marginalised.
A country around the size of western Europe
with more than 200 languages spoken, the
DRC has always been hard to govern. When
the Belgians left in 1960, it was incredibly
undeveloped, with fewer than 20 university
graduates. Conservation and quality of life
improved in the 1970s under President
Mobutu Sese Seko, then deteriorated in the
1980s as poaching and instability increased.
During the 1990s and early 2000s, war and
violence dominated the country. The DRC
is rich in resources, including gold, oil and
cobalt, yet today, three-quarters of people
there live on less than $2 a day.
By 2007, Virunga was reeling, its
biodiversity savaged and budget drained.
Things were so bad that some staff took to
pilfering the very park they had taken an
oath to protect. Ongoing conflict had already
slashed the gorilla population when photos
of a series of execution-style killings of these
animals emerged, causing worldwide outrage.
The park’s then director Honore Mashagiro
was accused of involvement, arrested and
sacked. In 2008, de Merode took the helm
with a reforming agenda, which included
raising funds to improve rations, salaries
and training for staff. Even when a rebel
group invaded the park, somehow de Merode
managed to keep his team motivated and
to negotiate with a rebel leader to allow
rangers to continue monitoring gorillas.
Decades of war and conflicts over land,
minerals and resources have left a mark on
Virunga’s wildlife. But it still hosts 50 per cent
of Africa’s terrestrial species. It is also one of
the last bastions of mountain gorillas. About“ Between
2001 and 2020,
Virunga lost
almost 10 per
cent of its
tree cover”
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