Attackers killed 17 people, including 12 Virunga National Park rangers, in an ambush on a Saturday morning in late April 2020 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature (ICCN) said.
Three other people were wounded, one of them critically, the institute said. The rangers ranged in age from 23 to 40. A driver and four civilians were also killed.
According to the institute’s account, the rangers were returning to headquarters when they came upon a civilian vehicle under attack. They stopped to defend it and were then ambushed.
The institute blamed the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR-FOCA), which it described as a Congolese rebel group, and vowed to bring those responsible to justice under the law. It described the attack as “a ferociously violent and sustained ambush.”
Andrew Campbell, chief executive of the Game Rangers Association of Africa, said the attack killed more rangers than any other single incident on the continent. He called Virunga the epicenter.
“Congo is the most volatile area in terms of ranger deaths in Africa,” Campbell said.
Park Closed Over Virus Fears
Managers had shut the park to visitors when the ambush took place, worried that the novel coronavirus might spread from tourists to the great apes. Gorillas share 97 percent of DNA with humans and can catch human illnesses such as the flu. Visitors are normally kept at a minimum distance of 22 feet.
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature argued those distancing measures were especially important because gorillas may be susceptible to Covid-19.
Roughly 40 percent of Virunga’s revenue disappeared overnight once Covid-19 arrived and Congo sealed its border in late March 2020. A single gorilla trekking permit ordinarily cost tourists $400. Kinshasa, the capital, accounted for most of the country’s coronavirus cases at that point.
Virunga’s finances and the local economy had already taken an extremely serious blow, according to Emmanuel de Merode, an award-winning Belgian conservationist who directs the park. He said limiting human contact was the best way to shield the gorillas but carried heavy consequences for tourism, park operations and nearby communities.
Extreme poverty on less than $1.90 a day was already the lot of about 70 percent of Congo’s population, according to 2018 World Bank statistics. De Merode warned that pandemic-driven food price increases could fuel poaching by local armed groups.
A $2 Million Rescue Fund
Actor Leonardo DiCaprio founded Earth Alliance alongside Emerson Collective and Global Wildlife Conservation, and in May 2020 the group teamed up with the European Commission to start the Virunga Fund, seeded with $2 million.
A press statement from DiCaprio described an urgent need for money at the park to safeguard the mountain gorillas, to back rangers and the families of those killed in the line of duty, and to provide disease prevention.
Rangers Ambushed Again in 2021
Attackers ambushed rangers again on the morning of Sunday, January 10, 2021, while they were patrolling near Kabuendo. Six rangers were killed and one was injured.
In its firmest terms, UNESCO condemned the killings, paid tribute to the dead and offered condolences to their families and colleagues. The organization tied the ambush to an attack on civilians on April 24, 2020, and to a July 28, 2020 attack on the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, noting that assaults on park staff had amplified in recent years.
For two decades, UNESCO said, its World Heritage Centre had been working to strengthen protection for guards and staff, reinforce infrastructure and support affected communities, financed by the United Nations Foundation, the governments of Italy, Belgium and Spain, and the Rapid Response Facility.
A new project would also rebuild income-earning activities among communities near the World Heritage property, the organization said, with support from the International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage in Conflict Areas, to counter what it described as deepening violence.
Africa’s First National Park
Virunga was established in 1925 and stretches some 3,000 square miles. It was the first national park created in Africa, and it joined the World Heritage List in 1979 for its unusual range of rare and endemic species.
The park contains volcanoes, glaciers, rain forest and wetlands, and hundreds of species, among them hippos, elephants, chimpanzees and a quarter of the world’s endangered mountain gorillas.
The park also occupies one of the most dangerous corners of Congo. Dozens of armed groups are active in and around it, and many bankroll themselves by plundering and smuggling its resources; hundreds of rangers have died defending the place.
In 2014, unknown assailants shot de Merode four times. He survived.
In May 2018, assailants struck a party of two British tourists, their driver and escorting park rangers as the group traveled from Goma up to the park. A female ranger died, and captors seized the driver and the two visitors, releasing them after 48 hours.
Rebel groups had illegally occupied the area for years and killed many dozens of park workers, and the Congolese government responded by closing Virunga to all tourism until at least the end of 2018 and sharply limiting access. Eight months passed before the park reopened.
During that closure, Gorilla Doctors, a veterinary group that monitors habituated apes, could enter only under full military escort. The group worked out of the Bukima patrol post to check four groups: Rugendo, Humba, Munyaga and Kyakamwe. Grauer’s gorillas in Kahuzi Biega National Park, across Lake Kivu in South Kivu province, remained part of its ongoing work.