Kanyabayonga City

These villages are living near the Park by using resources close to them in different ways with real impact on habitat and wildlife.

Protection of the Park becomes then complex and violent as park managers and their partners face different threats towards their lives.

Managing these conflicts need committment and good willing of different actors after understanding these conflicts and different parameters.

Through the process of conflict analysis, mapping and strategy development, we’ve been able to start looking at different opportunities that can help reducing some of the conflicts starting with fishing villages as it can lead to other complex conflicts.

Needs from different stakeholders are increasing towards conflict resolution that we need to put more efforts even though some conflicts need political decisions.

ICCN Rangers

Help Virunga to survive!!!

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Virunga as a first National Park in Africa is facing several threats which need to be monitored so that people can measure the level and extents of different threats and apply a suitable strategy.

Rangers on patrols in Vitshumbi areas

In order to ensure its protection, Virunga Park rangers are in patrols everyday in different accessible areas of the Park. During their exercise, they collect data about animals, habitats and other specific information which may inform people about the ecosystem health.

To enable this, we have been working with ICCN (Park Authority) to establish a system whereby rangers collect data on the ground and entered into computer at station and headquarters levels so that the data can be processed and analysed to give out information.

To reach this level, there are different activities implemented and others which need to be covered. We’ve been able to train, equip and supervise the different stations in the system. Still, there is need of getting senior rangers to the different ranger posts to assess the way data is collected and ensure that outside data is collected (information about fishing, population in fishing villages, etc.). As the equipment going to the field is facing handling problems (rain, lost during gunshot exchange), there is need of having other supplies such as GPS, computers, etc.

At least, the system has shown the different changes all over the 4 years of the database. There is a decrease in some illegal activities and increase in encountering animals on the field.

Kobs in Virunga Park

Let’s hope for Virunga.

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One of its resources is African elephant (Loxodonta africana) inhabiting different ecosystems of the park from the forested areas to the savanna areas.

Elephants in Virunga have been killed in Virunga for the trophy. Due to the occupancy of the park by armed groups, elephants have moved to areas closed to ranger posts with limited movement. Once they want to move, they are killed and forced to stay in limited area.

In order to protect them form this daily threats, rangers have been trying to plan for daily patrols and observations. Three groups of rangers have been monitoring about 300 elephants in Kabaraza ranger station with limited food ration and basic field equipment.

Any help for these elephants is an input to Virunga conservation

Thanks to Antonio C., Nancy A. and Robert J.G. for their support to our work

Technorati : Elephant, Virunga, conservation, poaching

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The eastern DRC is facing armed crisis for about three decades now. Protected areas are among the vulnerable areas as they are used by armed groups as their shelter and source of food and income.

Virunga National park is suffering from that as a consequence of armed conflicts. The different armed groups in Eastern DRC have found their refuge into the Park and depend on its resources.

Main damage concerns:

• Poaching and massive killing of fauna:

­ this April; about 14 elephants have been killed by armed groups

­ in 2006, about 400 hippos have been killed by armed groups

­ number of Kobs are killed daily

­ charcoal making and illegal timber trade

• restricting access to park surveillance:

­ some of the armed groups have created some networks to facilitate illegal fishing in the Lake

­ they don’t allow rangers and conservation actors to access the area

­ they are allowing cultivation into the protected area

­ there are some gunshots exchange between rangers and armed groups

• illegal wildlife trafficking

In order to get the issue solved or reduced, there have been several initiatives at political and military levels to try some solutions:

­ Involve the army to support rangers and organize joint patrols in different areas

­ Involve different stakeholders from various areas to help conservation dedicated organizations to protect the park

­ Create some local networks to gather information about the different areas occupied by armed groups

­ Support park rangers in their daily patrols and provide them field equipments

All these activities are done and need to be done at daily basis. Due to the exceptional situation in DRC, there are daily cases that need support to avoid any political involvement in some of the park issues.

By Helping Virunga, you help to protect threatened species.

Thanks to Robert J. and Nacy A. for your support

Technorati : Democratic Republic of Congo, Patrols, Poaching, Virunga Nationl Park, wildlife trafficing

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Picture 1 – How do we carry firewood?

Surrounding communities as future threats to protected forests
Protecting Parks and forests is seen as a management purpose than a common benefit in Africa and especially in DRC.
The forest on community lands is reducing every day and year leaving behind the protected areas as lonely and isolated forested areas.
Even if the forest on community lands is finished, local communities and surrounding towns’ population will still need charcoal, firewood and timber and the only place to get these will be into the protected areas. That’s the future threat towards natural resource exploitation in the Virunga region.
And this is more serious when you consider the birth rates of the areas and their economic status!
More threats towards conservationist than how it is now!

Picture 2 – Deforested areas

Actions to be taken for both sides
In order to get this threat reduced, there is need of working on both sides – developing incentives in the community areas and actions for resources sharing with neighbouring communities on the community side and protection of resource with community on the other side.
Among solutions, get networks organized for community and individual plantations for timber products for communities.
To manage to get people committed to such activities, there is need of technical and financial supports.

Picture 3 –Need to work together to stop the deforestation of the park.

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Pic1.-Rangers going for overnight patrolling in Lulimbi sector/Virunga National Park

Why rangers do they go for patrolling?

They do patrols to discourage and arrest illegal collectors of resources such as poachers who enter into the park to kill wildlife. For poachers, they don’t care about the status of animal (they don’t care about the number of individuals which are still alive in the world), settlers and invaders who are occupying different habitats that are suitable for wildlife. they do patrols to make sure that the conservation law is respected and have data collected to enable monitoring of the park status.

What do rangers find in the bush?

During patrols, rangers in the field they might find armed poachers, settlers, armed groups people, alive wildlife, etc. Once in the field, rangers meet with armed poachers and people and they have to exchange boo lets. Because of this, there are some rangers killed or injured on duty. We’ve got about 100 rangers killed in Virunga since the 90s (civil conflict in DRC). They also have to destroy some illegal camps and arrest owners and take them to court or get them back to their villages after awareness sessions.

What data do they collect?

Once in the field, rangers collect information about wildlife seen, their sightings and dropping; dead induces, poaching signs and ecosystem status. This information collected is compiled as reports and used for management purposes.

Pics 2&3 - Top: Sighting of Okapi in Virunga Park and Below: Hippopotamus in Ishasha river/Virunga National park

Does field data used for action?

Data collected and entered into computers, the report is sent out to managers and partners to make sure that they are aware of different threats in the protected area. The report states also some of recommendations to be meant by different authorities if they want the park to be protected. This has been used to convince local authorities to support conservation efforts, but also to determine which areas must be targeted as priority.

Pic4- Political awareness meeting in Goma

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Mushroom in Virunga National Park

As in the previous information, Mont Hoyo is very interesting for both tourism and research. For tourism as it has some potentials described latter and for research as there has been no research in the forest as we know.

The plan was to survey the area in order to gather biological information and give some useful recommendations. As a forest reserve and following DRC law, it must be fully protected and no human activity is allowed.

In our visit to Mont Hoyo, we noticed that there are several illegal activities carried by local population and some armed people. It has been a plan to get the army responsible to know that there are some illegal activities carried by armed people (soldiers) and nothing has been done on their side. In order to ensure that there is no shooting from these poachers, some actions were planned to arrest the poachers without shooting as people in the area are still stressed by war.

We planned the survey and get military and political authorities to know that we are planning a survey. Even if the security situation has worsened in the neighbouring areas of Mont Hoyo, this plan has been used to arrest the armed poachers in Mont Hoyo.

They were called to join the researcher team for administrative purposes and guide them while the real purpose was to get them arrested. This has been done and they are under arrest.

The other case is, during the biological surveys conducted in Semuliki (Virunga Park); during the research work, several poaching materials are destroyed and removed and large area is covered and give an global picture of the status of the area to manager. E.g.: there have been a hundred of snares removed from the Park, some area not covered by ranger patrols have been covered and the local community sensitised during evening walk in the village.

Left: Rope snare sample found in Virunga National Park - Right: Ranger in research team getting GPS data

With the money gained from surveys, local communities are aware that, if the protected area is destroyed there will never be any research in the area and they may not get any visitor compared to other areas where they are helping protected area managers to conserve.

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The Mont Hoyo is located in Eastern DRC (E 1.24750 - N 29.80918) at 125 km far from beni town in Irumu territory, ranging from 1300 m to 1500 m of elevation.

Mont Hoyo is among touristic areas which had some socioeconomic impacts on local communities livelihoods. With different armed crisis and presence of different factions of militias, it has been abandoned by tour operators and ICCN (the Congolese conservation agency) followed by people displacement.

ICCN left the site in 1996 during the first liberation war led by Mzee Laurent Kabila and local population left the area in 2002. They are resettling now from the different IDPs (Internal Displaced People) camps.

Mont Hoyo has been created in 1947 and there is no clear idea about its richness in terms of fauna and flora a part from the tourism attraction about graves.

Information collected on ground states that there is some animals present there such as Okapi, warthog, porcupine, pangolin, chimpanzee, elephant, etc.

Mont Hoyo was among the best destination for visitors and there has been a wonderful guest house, some people who has visited it said.

Two main groups inhabit the surrounding areas of Mont Hoyo: Lesse group and Pygmies and their local economy depends on tourism. Nowadays, they are trying to resettle but there is no sign of economic activities. Their main activities are agriculture and hunting. The nearest market where they can go sell their goods is located at 25 km!

Pygmy camp (about 34 people) Pygmy with Deo

During our last travel to Mont Hoyo, we had to walk for 13.5 km two ways (=27 km) in order to reach the summit. The road is bad conditions and it cannot be used even by a motorcycle. There are about 13 small bridges to be rehabilitated and 1 long one (12 m).

During our travel, there is no where you can buy even a sweet or small snacks! But, everyone is praying so that ICCN can come back as it’s the only way the Mont can be reopened and revive the tourism activities.

Unfortunately, due to the absence of ICCN, who is lacking field equipments for rangers to be deployed in the area, there is a traditional and armed poaching going on against monkeys and duikers.

It’s a wonderful place where you can visit graves and get to know about Pygmies and their life. But there are some actions to be done before with support from everyone who wants this site to be renewed: bridges renovation, house renovation, field equipments for trackers (rangers), support to local communities, etc.

Mont Hoyo Guest house View of the grave

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Later on, I discovered that the people we were using are organised into a local association called OAN (Organisation des Amis de la Nature = Organisation for friends of nature). Among the activities they are conducting:

chimpanzee monitoring

local communities of Mwenda have been able to protect a patch of forest closed to Mt Ruwenzori (DRC) where occur chimpanzees. They have been following these cousins of human without any support (technical or financial). They are kin monitoring chimps even if they don’t have any field equipment, field ration during monitoring or data sheet, etc.

If supported, they can help to save these threatened species of which their numbers is going down everyday.

They have field staff moving in the field everyday hiking the base of Ruwenzori.

vegetable farming

Wildlife protection is the key of their activities but they add in some other activities that can support the wildlife related activities. They’ve got some farm to grow vegetables at small scale. It’s known that the small scale agricultural activities is enough to fulfil all the food needs for the household. But when it comes to diversifying economic activities, you need to increase and improve your techniques of growing food. Thus, this local organisation needs to get different agricultural inputs to make their activity important for conservation.

tree nursing

Our country (DRC) is among countries where citizen still depend more than 95% on natural timber resources for different options without alternatives or suitable techniques. For cooking or building, the main product to use is still timber. People have to look for trees to cut to fulfil these needs. In order to reduce and make people aware of the future danger, OAN has been trying to put in place some areas to make available trees for plantation in the village. Still, the area covered and the target is still not enough.

This has been made possible in combination with public awareness and sensitisation.

Charcoal made out of wood

information gathering about wildlife killing

protect wildlife doesn’t rely only on rangers or again on patrols. There is need of information gathering in order to get some targeted places chosen by poachers. This information can be made available through different channels. In this specific area (Mwenda), this local organisation is helping to provide information about different actors involved in illegal exploitation of natural resources within the Park. They collect information from different villagers and get information to managers through different ways, depending on how the manager is confident to them and dedicated to the protection of the Park.

So, it’s possible to protect protected areas and community forests with local organisations within the village by providing them capacity!

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As per now, the situation has worsened and became a threat toward conservation of the Park. At the creation of the Park, there were only two fishing villages and now there are more than 15 villages. These villages has also increased in size.

Nyakakoma fishing villages 2006

If fish was biological resource, it could be more important for local communities. In the region, fish is more important as it provides different benefits:

1. food for community in the fishing villages
2. food for surrounding communities
3. commercial activity for fishing population
4. opportunity for business of manufactured products

Beside these opportunities, fish is source of conflict between different stakeholders: conservation institution, marine and infantry forces, public services, local communities and administration.

The over fishing has led people to adapt themselves to the current situation and develop survival mechanism which implies fauna poaching, armed group creation, deforestation and encroachment.

We’ve been working with the different communities to solve this conflict.

Meeting with stakeholders

This has been done through a participatory process:

• conflict analysis
• strategy definition
• planning meeting
• set up a monitoring and evaluation team
• activity implementation

It appears that when interest of different groups are threatened, it become easy to get people involved into a resolution conflict process.

How do we go for fish?

The main interest is that local communities has noticed that fish stock has decreased and this has led to involvement of communities into the process.

Technorati : Fish, park, resource access

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