John Vidal in Nairobi - On the frontline of Africa’s wildlife wars
Across central Africa, militias have turned
the savannah into killing fields
Brigadier Venant Mumbere Muvesevese, a
35-year-old father of four, became the 150th ranger in the last 10 years to be killed
protecting lowland gorillas, elephants and other wildlife in Virunga national park last month. He and his young
Congolese colleague, Fidèle Mulonga Mulegalega, were surrounded by local
militia, captured and then summarily executed.
For Emmanuel de
Mérode, the Belgian head of Virunga, himself shot and wounded by militia in 2014, the two killings
in Africa’s oldest park, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, were yet
another atrocity in the brutal wildlife wars raging through southern Sudan, the
Central African Republic, Congo and parts of Uganda, Chad and Tanzania.
“These two rangers
were killed in situations that may amount to war crimes in any other conflict,”
he said. “We cannot sustain these kind of losses in what is still the most
dangerous conservation job in the world.”
Virunga has lost five
rangers so far this year. Speaking to the Observer from the
park’s fortified HQ in Goma, De Mérode said security had got worse in recent
months. “We lost people in January, too. We have a state of armed conflict, a
low-intensity war being fought over the exploitation of natural resources in
the park,” he said. “For the rangers it is not impossible to work, but it is
now very dangerous. We are training 100 new rangers now and there will be 120
more next year. We are still very committed and optimistic.”
The battle for central
Africa’s wildlife has exploded as heavily armed militia target elephants and
rhino and gun down anyone trying to protect them. Three rangers were killed
and two wounded in a shootout in the vast Garamba national park in DRC last week; others were killed in Kahuzi-Biéga park near the city of Bukavu in
March; in northern Tanzania, poachers killed British helicopter pilot Roger Gowerin January.
The five rangers shot
in Garamba were working for African Parks, a Johannesburg-based nonprofit conservation group
that sends South African and other military officials to train rangers in the
10 wildlife parks it manages on behalf of governments.
According to Peter
Fearnhead, African Parks director, Garamba is now the heart of the illegal
African wildlife trade. Its 300-odd armed guards combat helicopters and drones
and find poachers from as far afield as the Central
African Republic, Uganda, Sudan, Chad, Somalia, Kenya and Tanzania. “We have lost probably
30 people in Garamba alone in seven years. Hundreds of elephants are killed
every year. This is the last stronghold of elephant and giraffe in Congo, but
probably the toughest park in Africa. Every elephant
poached can turn into a firefight,” said Fearnhead. “Life for a wildlife ranger
is now very dangerous in some countries, probably more risky than being in a
national army.”
He said that rangers
often found themselves pitted againstformer combatants from the Lord’s Resistance Army, the Sudan
People’s Liberation Army, and former Janjaweed members from Sudan. “Last week we buried
three people but morale is as strong as ever. When [the rangers] were told that
their colleagues had been shot, they all wanted to respond. The poachers use
automatic weapons, even grenades. Being a ranger is not about chasing people
through the bush and arresting them. It’s war. The rangers put their lives on
the line every day, and are under real siege in Garamba. We are not militia but
it requires a militaristic response to defend wildlife. [Groups of militia] are
now bidding for contracts to get tons of ivory. It’s big business with groups
of armed people crossing multiple borders. These people have phenomenal bush
skills, with AK-47s. They shoot for the head. They are a total law unto
themselves.”
There have been more
than 30 shootouts, five deaths, several woundings and 43 elephants killed in
the last four months in Garamba. Last weekend, as President Uhuru Kenyatta of
Kenya was preparing to set fire to thousands of elephant tusks together
worth $100m in Nairobi, Erik Mararv, the Swedish manager of the DRC park, was
in hospital recovering from gunshot wounds.
The masterminds of the
poaching and human killings in these parks are powerful networks of criminals,
militias, state armies and corrupt politicians from half a dozen fragile or
failing central African countries. New players, say security analysts, have
expanded into the lucrative, illegal wildlife trade in the last decade.
Together, they have turned the savannahs of central Africa into killing fields
and are using the estimated $20bn raised each year from the sale of tusks and
rhino horn to fund war, terrorism and crime.
The scale of the
resulting slaughter has shocked conservationists, who until 10 years ago prided
themselves on their rangers’ bushcraft and tracking skills. In some places now
they find themselves thrust on to the frontline of an insurgency with next to
no resources to resist professional soldiers. “Incidents of
large-scale poaching on an industrial scale are now being reported,” revealed a recent study by the Chatham House thinktank in London. “In
one week, poachers linked to the Janjaweed from Sudan and Chad allegedly killed
more than 86 elephants, using automatic weapons. Poaching on such a scale is
not driven by opportunism or subsistence imperatives, but by armed non-state
actors and organised groups with wider links.”
When dozens of heavily
armed men on horseback rode into Bouba Njida park in Cameroon in 2012, the four rangers on
bicycles armed with old guns did not stand a chance. More than 350 animals were
killed in a few hours. No poachers were captured, but they cut pieces from the
ears of the elephants they had killed – an indication that they came from
Sudan, more than 600 miles away. A 2014 study for US
conservation group Born
Free, by US security analysts C4ADS, said ivory
was now the preferred currency for militants and rebels to buy weapons
and to bankroll conflict in central Africa... Read more:
