Conserve Virunga

Category: Surveys, Uncategorized | Date: Oct 10 2007 | By: admin

Hello everyone, I am Deo Kujirakwinja, just call me Deo! I work for the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) on the Virunga Conservation Project.

I was born and studied in Goma and have been working for Virunga National Park since 2003. I conduct biological surveys, this is me during a recent survey.

First, let me tell you about this amazing Park. Virunga Park is contiguous to 11 protected areas and reserves in Rwanda and Uganda. This is one of the most special places on the planet, its called the Albertine Rift. In a recently conducted by WCS in which I participated, we found a high level of biodiversity in the gallery forests and woodlands, including chimpanzees, bongos, buffalo, elephants, leopards, and several types of monkeys, including a subspecies of colobus monkey found only here. We also recorded a high diversity of birds, reptiles, and amphibians, as well as some plants that may be new to science. In our two-month expedition we discovered 6 new species!!!! These include a bat, a rodent, two shrews and two frogs. I believe that this forest contains some interesting new species because it has been isolated from much of the Congo Forest block for at least 10,000 years. But due to poaching, we hardly saw any large mammals.

To effectively manage the area, there is need of collaboration with other managers to tackle regional threats. This has been one of my favourite jobs in the northern and eastern Virunga for transboundary resource management collaboration activities which has improved relationship between Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) and the Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature (ICCN)

My job involves ranger-based monitoring system: in order to get the status of the forest, I have been helping ICCN staff to launch the surveillance data gathering and management system for the whole Park. This involves capacity building actions including field based training for staff involved in Ranger-based monitoring and technical support.

As you all know from the gorilla blog, a consequence of civil war in DRC has been destruction of park infrastructure (ranger post), looting of field equipments and it is a hard work to re-establish the infrastructure and get rangers motivated and equipped.

I’ve been leading biological surveys in Virunga Park and other forests in Eastern DRC. Some people wonder why I do this in such a difficult area. Well, I am committed to contributing to better conservation of wildlife in DRC, particularly in Virunga National Park.

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