no more magilla gorilla...

[Guest guest]

Beneath a pair of extinct volcanic peaks in eastern Congo, on the

edge of a verdant tropical rain forest, an enormous silverback

gorilla named Chimenuka lounges on his back, two feet propped against

a tree.

 

The burly animal shows little interest in a small team of machete-

wielding Pygmy trackers, park rangers and armed guards who've come to

check on him - until they take one step too close.

 

In a second, the 400-pound gorilla springs upright, beating his

chest, grunting and charging forward, forcing his guests to cower

before slipping away on all fours into a curtain of thick underbrush.

 

Encounters like these once lured tourists from around the world to

the misty highlands of Kahuzi-Biega National Park, where gorilla

tourism was born in the 1970s. But a decade of turmoil, a 1998-2002

civil war and fresh fighting this summer have decimated the region's

eastern lowland gorillas and driven tourists away.

 

Today, not even the experts really know how many gorillas are left.

 

" It's tragic. Nobody has been able to conduct a full survey in a

decade, " says Innocent Liengola of the Wildlife Conservation

Society. " Most areas are too insecure to visit. "

 

In late October, the New York-based organization resumed a head-

counting operation in Kahuzi-Biega that was called off in April when

Liengola and his colleagues were forced to flee amid volleys of

automatic weapons-fire - a firefight, authorities said, between

rebels from neighbouring Rwanda and a local pro-government militia

called the Mayi Mayi.

 

Eastern lowland gorillas, the tallest apes on Earth, live only in

Congo and inhabit a broad band of forests stretching from Lake Albert

near the Ugandan border to the northern tip of Lake Tanganyika on the

frontier with Burundi.

 

Conservationists say a deadly combination of poachers, refugees,

miners and combat have devastated the gorillas' habitat and

population, but by how much, they can only speculate.

 

The Atlanta-based Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International believes the

apes' numbers have plummeted 70 per cent in the last decade - to

5,000 from around 17,000 in 1994.

 

Patrick Melman, a Dian Fossey researcher in the eastern Congolese

city of Goma, acknowledges the figures are only " an estimate, " but

says they are based on data available, including that from Kahuzi-

Biega, where park rangers and researchers visit dozens of gorillas

daily.

 

Founded in 1970 and declared a UN World Heritage site a decade later,

Kahuzi-Biega was supposed to be a protected sanctuary. In practice,

the park " hasn't had more of a chance than anywhere else " in eastern

Congo, Melman says.

 

Speaking at the Wildlife Conservation Society's offices in Bukavu,

Liengola waves a finger across a digital map of Kahuzi-Biega on his

laptop computer, indicating dangerous areas he and park rangers

avoid. The screen is splattered with red blotches - no-go zones were

militiamen or guerrilla fighters are active.

 

Bukavu, the starting point for tours of Kahuzi-Biega, was itself

ravaged by fighting between rebels and government loyalists this

summer.

 

Despite Kahuzi-Biega's status as a park, Pygmies have regularly

trooped in illegally to hunt for bush meat to feed their families.

 

But things took a dramatic turn for the worse in the aftermath of the

1994 genocide in Rwanda, when millions of refugees, soldiers and

militiamen fled across the border and cut down huge swaths of forest

to survive.

 

The crisis deepened with Congo's own wars - first in 1996-97 and

again in 1998-2002. The fighting led to a severe breakdown of

authority and opened the gorillas' habitat up to the Mayi Mayi, as

well as miners in search of gold, coltan and other precious minerals.

 

Miners and militiamen cut down trees to put up makeshift houses for

their families. They also hunted game, including great apes, for

food.

 

The impact has been devastating.

 

In 1996, the Kahuzi-Biega's highlands boasted 258 lowland gorillas.

Today, it is believed about 130 remain, park director Iyomi Iyatshi

says.

 

Though closed from 1998 to 2000, the park's highlands have remained

open throughout most of the region's troubles - for whoever is

willing to pay the $250 US fee.

 

At full capacity, eight tourists a day could visit each of the three

separate gorilla families habituated to human visits.

 

But the dusty visitor books at Tshivanga, the park's headquarters,

show an average of just five visitors a month - mostly UN

peacekeepers, aid workers and missionaries from Bukavu.

 

" We can't really talk of tourism now, " Iyatshi says. " People aren't

coming. They're afraid of the war. "

 

In the short-run at least, that might be better for the park's

inhabitants - particularly the 50 or so habituated gorillas.

 

" It has always been the habituated gorillas that were most at risk of

being killed, " says Liengola, the Wildlife Conservation Society

official. He says apes cannot easily differentiate between armed park

guards and armed fighters or poachers, who can sell baby gorillas for

as much as $30,000 on the black market.

 

" The strategy now is to habituate less to tourists, so they learn to

avoid contact with human beings, " Liengola says.

 

The Wildlife Conservation Society hopes to expand its census next

year into the rest of eastern Congo - if the security situation

permits.

 

The first stop will be Kahuzi-Biega's forested lowlands, a vast,

lawless area that comprises 90 per cent of the park. For years, park

rangers were afraid to enter the area because of militia activity,

but last February 30 rangers were posted at two stations on the

lowlands' outskirts for the first time.

 

Up in the highlands, 40-year-old ranger Robert Mulimbi pulls back

branches to get a better look at Chimenuka's troop, which he checks

in on every day.

 

Relaxing on a bed of leaves, a mother cradled a four-month-old baby -

a black ball of fur with large dark eyes - Chimenuka's only son. Two

other babies were born in July.

 

" We're not tracking gorillas outside the park, " Mulimbi says. " We

have no idea about the rest. "

 

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2004/11/21/724828-ap.html