Gorilla habitat may be extinct by 2020 – Due to guerrillas

Gorilla habitat is disappearing fast due to militia and organised crime.

March 2010. Gorillas may have largely disappeared from large parts of the Greater Congo Basin by the mid 2020s unless urgent action is taken to safeguard habitats and counter poaching, says the United Nations and INTERPOL-the world's largest international police organization.

Habitat disappearing faster than ever
Previous projections by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), made in 2002, suggested that only 10 per cent of the original gorilla range would remain by 2030. These estimates now appear too optimistic given the intensification of pressures including illegal logging, mining, charcoal production and increased demand for bushmeat, of which an increasing proportion is ape meat.

Ebola virus
Outbreaks of Ebola hemorrhagic fever virus are adding to concerns. These have killed thousands of great apes including gorillas and by some estimates up to 90 per cent of animals infected will die.

The new report says the situation is especially critical in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) where a great deal of the escalating damage is linked with militias operating in the region.

Militias in the eastern part of the DRC are behind much of the vast amounts of illegal trade which may be worth several hundred million dollars a year.

The Last Stand of the Gorilla
The Rapid Response Assessment report, entitled The Last Stand of the Gorilla - Environmental Crime and Conflict in the Congo Basin, says militias in the eastern part of the DRC are behind much of the vast amounts of illegal trade which may be worth several hundred million dollars a year. It says that smuggled or illegally-harvested minerals such as diamonds, gold and coltan along with timber ends up crossing borders, passing through middle men and companies before being shipped onto countries in Asia, the European Union and the Gulf.

The export of timber and minerals is estimated to be two to ten times the officially recorded level, and is claimed to be handled by front companies in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi.

Militias, bribery & corruption
The illegal trade is in part due to the militias being in control of border crossings which, along with demanding road tax payments, may be generating between $14 million and $50 million annually, which in turn helps fund their activities.

Meanwhile, the insecurity in the region has driven hundreds of thousands of people into refugee camps. Logging and mining camps, perhaps with links to militias, are hiring poachers to supply refugees and markets in towns across the region with bushmeat.

Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), said: "This is a tragedy for the great apes and one also for countless other species being impacted by this intensifying and all too often illegal trade. Ultimately it is also a tragedy for the people living in the communities and countries concerned. These natural assets are their assets: ones underpinning lives and livelihoods for millions of people. In short it is environmental crime and theft by the few and the powerful at the expense of the poor and the vulnerable," he added.

Mr Steiner said he welcomed the involvement of INTERPOL and called on the international community to step up support for the agency's Environmental Crime Programme. He also underlined the importance of strengthening treaties such as the Lusaka Agreement on Co-operative Enforcement Operations Directed at Illegal Trade in Wild Fauna and Flora, which operates in eight Eastern and Southern African countries in support of CITES.

MONUC
The new Rapid Response Assessment report also recommends a greater role for MONUC, the UN peacekeeping operation in the DRC operating mainly North and South Kivu. Strengthening its mandate in terms of support for park rangers and control of border crossings, in collaboration with national customs and international bodies, could go a long way to reduce the revenue-raising activities of militias and their role in the illegal trade. This in turn would bring a peace dividend for the people of the region.

More than 190 Virunga park rangers have been killed in recent years in the line of duty, with the perpetrators thought to be militias concerned about a loss of revenue.

David Higgins, Manager of the INTERPOL Environmental Crime Programme, said: "The gorillas are yet another victim of the contempt shown by organized criminal gangs for national and international laws aimed at defending wildlife. The law enforcement response must be internationally co-coordinated, strong and united, and INTERPOL is uniquely placed to facilitate this."

"We are committed to combating all forms of environmental crime on a global scale. INTERPOL is mandated to do so by providing law enforcement agencies in all our 188 member countries with the intelligence exchange, operational support, and capacity building needed to combat this world-spanning crime."

The report, issued during the UN's International Year of Biodiversity, is based on scientific data, new surveys including satellite ones, interviews, investigations and an analysis of evidence supplied to the UN Security Council.

It has been compiled by UNEP and partly updates its assessment of 2002 entitled ‘The Great Apes-The Road Ahead'.

Underestimated threats
The 2002 report said at the time that around 28 per cent, or some 204,900 square kilometres of remaining gorilla habitat in Africa, could be classed as "relatively undisturbed".

"If infrastructure growth continues at current levels, the area left by 2030 is estimated to be 69,900 square kilometres or just 10 per cent. It amounts to a 2.1 per cent, or 4,500 square kilometre, annual loss of low-impacted gorilla habitat across range states including Nigeria, Gabon, Cameroon and Congo," the report said at the time.

Christian Nellemann, a senior officer at UNEP's Grid Arendal centre who was lead author of the 2002 report and who has headed up the new one, said the original assessment had underestimated the scale of the bushmeat trade, the rise in logging and the impact of the Ebola virus on great ape populations.

Gorillas may disappear by 2020
"With the current and accelerated rate of poaching for bushmeat and habitat loss, the gorillas of the Greater Congo Basin may now disappear from most of their present range within ten to fifteen years," said Mr Nellemann.

"We are observing a decline in wildlife across many parts of the region, and also side-effects on poaching outside the region and on poaching for ivory and rhino horn, often involving poachers and smugglers operating from the Congo Basin, Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda, to buyers in Asia and beyond," he added.

Ian Redmond, Envoy for the Great Ape Survival Partnership, established by UNEP and the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), said clamping down on ape meat in the bushmeat trade would not harm local people.

"Ape meat is only a tiny proportion of the million tonnes of bushmeat consumed each year in the Congo Basin, so removing it from the diet of consumers would not greatly affect their protein intake - but it would assist in halting the current decline in gorilla populations being subjected to hunting and who, given their complex social structures, are so sensitive to the killing of individuals," he added.

Ray of light - 750 Endangered Eastern lowland gorillas found
The report does, however, contain some positive news. A new and as yet unpublished survey in one area of the eastern DRC, in the centre of the conflict zone, has discovered 750 critically endangered Eastern lowland gorillas.

Mountain gorillas
The other good news is that the mountain gorillas in the Virungas, an area which is shared by Rwanda, Uganda and DR Congo, have survived during several periods of instability. And this is the result of trans-boundary collaboration among the three countries, including better law enforcement and benefit sharing with the local communities.

190 Virunga Park Rangers killed
This is also due to the efforts of courageous park rangers who last year, for example, destroyed over 1,000 kilns involved in charcoal production in the Virunga National Park. But this has come at a price - over 190 Virunga park rangers have been killed in recent years in the line of duty, with the perpetrators thought to be militias concerned about a loss of revenue.