Baraza

Category: National Parks and protected areas, Uncategorized, enforcement | Date: Jan 06 2009 | By: Maina

The partnership that manages Garamba National Park which consists of the Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature (ICCN) and the African Parks Network, has issued a press release about the attack on the Park headquarters by Lords Resistance Army of the Ugandan rebel, Joseph Kony on which Paula reported in her post earlier today. Garamba park rangers were poised to start blogging at WildlifeDirect presently, but before that, we at Baraza would like to help them convey this urgent message.

Rangers at Nagero Station that was attacked (Photo (c) African Parks Network)

Press release
6 January 2009

On 2 January 2009, the headquarters of Garamba National Park, located in Nagero, Democratic Republic of Congo, have been attacked by the Ugandan rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army.

Despite strong resistance by the park rangers together with elements from the Congolese Armed Forces, numerous casualties and material damages have been incurred. A first report mentions 8 people killed, including two park rangers and two wives of wardens, and 13 injured, most of them by bullets. An unconfirmed number of rebels have also been killed or wounded.

Several essential buildings of the headquarters have also been destroyed, along with many items of transport and communications equipment, and stocks of fuel and food rations.

“The headquarters in Nagero are in a state of havoc” mentions the Chief Warden Bernard Iyomi who directed the resistance during the attack and who narrowly escaped death. “The heroic behaviour of our rangers and wardens has prevented an ever heavier death toll”.

It will take several days before these first figures are confirmed, once the management team has completed the final assessment.

Military and humanitarian assistance is being rapidly deployed in order to secure the area and to help the populations displaced by the attack.

“We strongly condemn this attack launched by the LRA, and request the military authorities of the region and the international community to continue their involvement in solving this problem caused by the rebel group for so many years” says Mr Cosma Wilungula, the head of the Congolese Institute for Nature Conservation (ICCN).

“Our immediate concern is for the safety and wellbeing of our people, particularly those that are injured. Thereafter we will immediately begin rebuilding the administrative base and staff morale, both of which are essential for the continued management of this important park” adds Mr Peter Fearnhead, the Executive Director of African Parks.

Background information

Garamba National Park (NP) is located in the north-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo along the border with Sudan. The park was established in 1938 by a Belgian royal decree as one of the first national parks in Africa, and has been associated with the elephant domestication centre created in the 1920s in Gangala-na-Bodio. The park has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1980.

Garamba NP is surrounded by three game hunting reserves – Azande to the west, Gangala na Bodio to the south and Mondo Missa to the east. The total area of the Garamba complex is 12427 km², including 4900 km² for the park itself.

The Garamba complex still harbours populations of elephants, giraffes, buffaloes, hippos and numerous other species of ungulates. The presence of the Northern white rhinoceros still needs to be confirmed.

The ICCN (Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature) is the governmental authority in charge of the management and conservation of protected areas in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The ICCN controls a network that accounts for about 10% of the total land area of the country, including 7 national parks (among them 5 World Heritage sites) and numerous reserves.

African Parks Network is a private foundation based in Johannesburg (South Africa) and specialised in the management of protected areas. African Parks is currently active in 5 national parks and reserves across Africa. African Parks has officially assumed the management mandate for Garamba National Park on 12 November 2005, in partnership with ICCN.

Besides African Parks, Garamba National Park currently receives financial assistance from the European Union, the Spanish, Italian and Belgian governments, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Technical or scientific support is also provided by UNESCO, IUCN (World Conservation Union), United Nations for the Environment Programme and Fauna & Flora International.

Contacts :

For ICCN (Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature) :
Pasteur Cosma Wilungula, Administrateur Délégué Général
pdg.iccn@yahoo.fr
+243 998 97 6686

For African Parks Network
Dr. José Kalpers, Country coordinator for DRC
jkalpers@gmail.com
+254 737 576232
+32 495 141348

Tags: African Parks Network, DRC, Garamba Nationa Park, ICCN, LRA, rangers, Uganda

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Category: Gorillas, enforcement, wildlife | Date: Jan 04 2009 | By: Maina

When rebels loyal to renegade DRC general, Laurent Nkunda, invaded and occupied the Virunga National Park in 2007, most rangers fled. Some 30 rangers however remained behind and continued their work under the new ‘administration’. Late last year, the rebels advanced pushing their front further towards Goma. Rumangabo, the Virunga Park headquarters fell to the rangers after a fierce battle with government forces. More government supported rangers fled. Now the Virunga Park was under what seemed to be total control of the rebels.

A month or so before the rebels seized Rumangabo, Emmanuel de Merode, a Belgian national, had been appointed by the DRC government in order to restore the park authority’s [Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature-ICCN] credibility after the previous director, Honore Mashagiro, was fired and arrested on charges that he had participated in the charcoal and deforestation racket that resulted in the murder of 5 gorillas of the Rugendo family in July 2007.

Emmanuel got working immediately and negotiated an agreement that would allow the government supported rangers to return to their duty stations as neutral protectors of Virunga’s 200 or so gorillas and other wildlife. Emmanuel has started deploying his rangers into the park - which remains under control of rebels - and hopes to have 41 rangers in their stations and re-establish five 24-hour patrols.

One of the priorities for the rangers upon their return was to re-establish contact with the habituated ‘tourist groups’ of gorillas and to conduct a census. Surprisingly, despite 14 months without ‘care’ the gorillas have prospered. There are infants in most of the families so far visited and the final count of gorillas is expected to be higher than the current official number.

The same cannot be said about other wildlife. The hippo population for instance has plummeted from an estimated 30,000 to around 300

The rangers who stayed behind under Nkunda now claim that they are conserving the gorillas better than the government. They have accused ICCN rangers of being corrupt and greedy. They claim that more gorillas were killed when the government was in control than during their time. “The gorillas are safer now than they were before,” Pierre-Canisius Kanamahalagi, one of about 30 rangers who stayed behind, is quoted in the LA Times. “It was during the government control that so many were killed.”

The truth is that mountain gorilla populations have grown in the Virunga. There is even the discovery of a new family. The question is: is it because or despite of the rangers that work under Nkunda?

The ICCN has doubts about the ‘rebel’ rangers’ qualifications and political motives. “These rangers are not fully trained in gorilla-monitoring,” De Merode says in the LA Times report. “They’ve been a little cavalier.”

Park officials also have accused the rebels of attacking some rangers, often because of their ethnicity. Tutsi rangers, who are part of the same ethnic group as rebel leader Nkunda, were allowed to remain in the park, some say, though others were chased away.

The new arrangement where these two groups of rangers will work together is very desirable for the gorillas. The concern is that there is a heavy air of suspicion and second-guessing between the two. Will the good intentions of the two groups eventually win over their suspicions and rivalry? Will the gorillas and other wildlife fare better than before?

Tags: DRC, gorilla, gorilla protection, ICCN, Laurent Nkunda, rangers, rebel

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Category: Uncategorized | Date: Dec 14 2008 | By: baraza

We have all been inundated with images of the conflict raging in the Congo and how it has affected the Virunga National Park, rangers, gorillas and the forest not to mention other species.

Well today’s news  is both good and bad. The good news is that a new offensive against the Lords Resistance Army (LRA) has just been launched in Garamba National Park, also in Eastern Congo. For years the LRA which is led by Joseph Kony have been terrorising northern Uganda, southern Sudan and Congo, killing and maiming thousands of people. They are famed for the abduction of children leading to a nightly migration of children from villages into small towns where they sleep on the streets in huddles - for safety in numbers. Kony and his top commanders are accused by the International Criminal Court (ICC) of raping, mutilating and murdering civilians as well as forcibly recruiting child soldiers. Kony wants the charges dropped and has stalled peace negotiations with the Uganda’s government demanding that arrest warrants for him and his associates are dropped before any agreement can be struck.

The Ugandan news paper The New Vision, Reuters, BBC and Al Jazeera all report that yesterday morning, Uganda, South Sudan and DR Congo attacked the LRA in Garamaba forest in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The attack was backed by the American government and other Western powers. Initial reports say that the attack was successful, and Kony’s  main camp was set on fire.

The bad news? This fight is taking place inside a national Garamba Park.   is n’t any old park, it is a world heritage site, and home to the worlds last northern white rhino. It is also famed for its African elephant domestication programme started in the 1960s. Our thoughts are with our friends in Garamba who are working in extremely tough conditions.

Bull fighting called

I wrote earlier about a planned bull fight in Nairobi to celebrate the ‘Obama circuit’. Well, a public protest in Kenya seemed to have been quite effective and the fight was called off as it contravened Kenyas  Animal Welfare Act. I feel jubilant about this - perhaps the worlds and concerns of Kenyans matter to our authorities? Well I’m holding my breath on that one.  Today I was stopped on the highway by protestors against two much more nationally important issues, our politicians, though some of the most highly paid in the world, refuse to pay taxes, and they have just passed a bill in parliament to muzzle the press who have been condemning them for their greed.  The minister of information and communications who is accused of illegally taking tens of thousands of dollars in allowances, pushed the bill through. He is a trained journalist but obviously doesn’t like it when his illegal actiosn get exposed. Kenyans are outraged and protests are being met with force, over 40 journalists have been arrested and another 70 people were arretesd wearing for wearing T-shirst saying Yes to Members of Parliament paying taxes. As usual our president is silent on the matter though he will make the final decision. Muzzling the press will affect all of us, and our ability to get stories out whether about corruption, illegal trade in wildlife, or issues affecting our parks.  I came away from the protest feeling quite angry at how things seem to be going backwards when it comes to freedom of the press press. We’ve seen how it has held Zimbabwe back and kept us from getting up to date information about what is happening on the ground in all spheres.

Tags: DRC, garamba Park, Jospeh Kony, LRA, Nairob Bull fight, wildlifedirect

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Category: Somalia, poaching, wildlife trade | Date: Nov 11 2008 | By: Maina

Yes, it’s hard to believe, but two websites are reporting that military helicopters are leaving the battleships anchored off the Somalia coast to combat Somali pirates, and getting into the mainland to hunt wildlife illegally .

According to a report published today in one of the websites (Garoweonline.com), foreign choppers, which the the local Somali elders have not properly identified, arrived in three separate days and left with live specimens of ostrich and deer. The choppers were later seen landing in warships offshore. Although the elders have not been able to infallibly identify whose warships these are, one was seen to be flying the American flag.

In the other site (Mareeq.com), a reporter, Abdi Guled - despite writing in very bad English - almost certainly believes that the choppers bear the American banner. According to Guled’s report, the local authorities in the pirate infested central Somalia region are colluding with the purported hunters. Apparently, the local chiefs have signed contracts with foreign agencies to transact this illegal business.

The report on Garoweonline says that a local elder in the Maduq region of central Somalia, Mr Mohamed Hussein Warsame, has been interviewed by reporters from the BBC Somali Service about the trade. I have searched for the report on BBC website but I have not yet found it. AllAfrica.com, an aggregator of African news has also carried the report from Garoweonline.

While these might be outrageous allegations, we cannot rule out the possibility of this happening. We have seen foreign military and work forces getting involved in illegal activities in their outposts before. We have all heard the Chinese workforce in Africa being blamed for the escalation of ivory poaching in DRC, Zimbabwe and other states with dysfunctional governments.

If indeed this is happening, then it would be quite a shame. I hope the alleged BBC reporters who have the story can publish it so we can quote from a source perceived to be less biased. A source with a global voice. I hope other independent or big media house journalist can do an independent investigation into that matter. As long as they don’t get kidnapped by Somalia gunmen.

Tags: battleships, DRC, hunting, Madug, pirates, poaching, Somalia, US troops, wildlife, wildlife trade, Zimbabwe

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Category: Uncategorized | Date: Nov 01 2008 | By: baraza

Over recent weeks there’s no doubt that rebel leader Laurent Nkunda’s and his CNDP troops have expanded their control creating even graver threat to the human population and the Virunga National Park. In this article in the International Herald Tribune describes the taking of Kibumba, formerly held by UN peace keepers and the Congolese military

“Kibumba is clearly theirs. Rebel soldiers were working with village elders on Friday to assess the damage caused by the departing government forces, who residents said picked clean dozens of homes and robbed the local bank, cracking open the safe and stealing the villagers’ savings. But Nkunda’s troops may have committed similar abuses.”

The EU has now decided not to send troops to the Congo or to reinforce MONUC but to handle the issue through diplomatic channels.

The United Nations is calling for a summit to be held in Nairobi, a neutral city. Indeed Nairobi has been the hub for peace talks for Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia and the Congo in the recent past.

But will it work?

This quote from the Special Representative of the Secretary General in the DRC says it all

“It is not the peace agreements which make peace. It is of course the will of the signatories which makes peace.”

An online vote on the Monuc website reveals that 76% of voters do not believe that the Amani program will bring about lasting peace.

While Lindsey Hilsum of Channel 4 explains the history of the conflict rooted in the Rwanda genocide and raises an issue that so far has hardly touched the agenda – the struggle for resources as the root cause of the ongoing conflict.

“In 1994, a racist government told Rwanda’s majority Hutu people to massacre their Tutsi neighbours. It was genocide.

“When a new Tutsi-led regime took power, the Hutus, many of whom had taken part in the killing, fled to the Congo.

“War followed them: Rwanda’s Tutsi-led government pursued the Hutu genocidaires, who were hiding in the Congolese bush.

“The government of Congo joined forces with the Hutus. Four million died in the subsequent conflict.

“At one point five African countries were involved in the war in Democratic Republic of Congo. Local Tutsi rebels fighting Congolese forces were backed by troops from Rwanda and Uganda.

“The Congolese government then called on Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia, all of whom sent troops.

“The result was plunder and slaughter. Until a peace deal was signed, foreign armies, local warlords and government soldiers fought for control of mines producing tin, copper, coltan and cassiterite - valuable minerals.

“As foreign armies withdrew, new local warlords emerged, including Laurent Nkunda, a Congolese Tutsi backed by Rwanda. Last year, he celebrated a peace deal with the Congolese government.

“But now, he’s breached that. He says he’s trying to defeat the last of the Rwandese Hutu genocidaires, to protect the Tutsis. Others say he just wants power and money.

“Now, UN peacekeepers fear the conflict will spread, drawing in neighbouring countries once more.”

To be effective, the proposed Nairobi summit meeting has to be different. There have been peace talks, agreements, and ceasefires in recent years, yet none seem to have brought about lasting peace.

One analyst Elizabeth Dickenson writing for Foreign Policy writes in a short well armed piece

“The DRC sounds like a basket case — a mess of groups and interests fighting over land, pushing civilians back and forth in an endless humanitarian trap. This week’s violence is part of a long story that even most historians struggle to recount, one that began with the end of colonization, erupted after the Rwandan genocide, accelerated with the fall of President Mobutu Sese-Seko in 1997, and has seen the world’s largest United Nations peacekeeping force on the ground for the last 10 years. The International Criminal Court opened its first case against a warlord from the Congo conflict.

There is just one reason this war keeps going: Congo is one of the best-endowed countries in the world, with rich reserves of gold, cobalt, zinc, uranium, copper, and yes, oil. The former Belgian colonizers, the current Congolese government, the Rwandan government, the Ugandan government, and all the rebel groups that each party supports are funded and motivated by that wealth.

This is not a war of the innocent and the evil. It is a conflict of buyers and sellers in which the world is intimately involved. “

And she closes with

“Discussion and promises of peace can only stop the hemmorhaging for a short while. Until economics are part of the mix, Congo will continue to steadily bleed to death”.

The conflict is devastating the human population, destroying the natural assets of eastern Congo as valuable minerals are stripped, as well as destroying the environment in which now one million refugees are ekeing a living off. This will leave a lasting impact that is unlikely to attract global attention.

The view about the role of minerals in the conflict is shared by Patrick Alley co-founder of resources protection organisation Global Witness, called on the United Nations to take tougher steps to confront the problem.

Demand from resource-hungry countries like China had made it easier for African nations to sidestep schemes designed to stop insurgent groups from using profits from commodities to fund wars, he said.

Alley, a driving force behind efforts to outlaw the trade in “blood diamonds”, said a much broader approach was needed which banned the use of all natural resources to fund conflict not just by rebel groups but also governments.

It would need to be backed up by the threat of U.N. sanctions, he said.

“If you look at the biggest wars in Africa over the last decade-and-a-half they have all been resource wars and they have been characterised by some of the worst human rights abuses,” Alley said, citing a decade of conflict in Democratic Republic of Congo which has killed some 5 million people.

It’s hard to imagine how our colleagues in eastern Congo can operate and keep the Virunga National Park alive through this crisis. But they are trying to defend that great world heritage and the 200 mountain gorillas that live there.   They have launched an apppeal for humanitarian support for rangers and their families on gorilla.cd and we continue to raise fund for them on the gorilla protection blog here.

Tags: CNDP, Congo, DRC, north kivu, Virunga National Park

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