Gorilla Journal 34, June 2007

The Killing of Two Silverbacks by Rebel Forces in the Virunga National Park: A chronology of events

9th January 2007
Paulin Ngobobo, the Chief Warden of the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature (ICCN) responsible for Virunga's gorilla sector, received information that a male silverback had been shot and killed by Congolese rebels less than 600 m east of the patrol post at Bikenge. A farmer who had been working in a nearby field had been asked by the rebels to identify the animal and tell them whether or not it could be eaten. The farmer saw the dead silverback and told them that it was dangerous to eat. The farmer then informed members of the local association HuGo, established to deal with human-gorilla conflicts, who in turn reported the incident to the station of Rumangabo.

10th January 2007
A press release was put together by WildlifeDirect, FZS (Frankfurt Zoological Society), G4G (Gearing up 4 Gorillas) and GRASP and circulated throughout the international media.

11th January 2007
The ICCN and FZS visited the MONUC headquarters in Goma and made contact initially with the Civil and Military Coordination Officer. Robert Muir, FZS Project Leader, explained that a UN escort was needed into an area of the park currently occupied by Laurent Nkunda's rebel forces in order to investigate the supposed killing of a silverback mountain gorilla. He pointed us in the direction of the UN meeting hall where they were currently discussing and programming UN escorts for the following week. We joined the meeting and requested an escort on Monday 15th which was the earliest date that the UN could make one available. Despite the peculiar nature of our request, it was nonetheless met with understanding and agreement, and we were told to report to the Commander of MONUC's battalion at Rutshuru at 07.30 on the morning of the 15th.

15th January 2007
The FZS team and a journalist from MONUC's "Radio Okapi" spent Sun-day night at Rumangabo station with Ngobobo and 6 park rangers. Leaving the station at 06.00, we arrived at Rutshuru about 40 minutes later where we met Colonel Schmidt who welcomed us into his command centre. He asked us about our mission and then asked his translator to call the rebel commander Major Mboneza on the phone. He explained to the major that MONUC wanted to come in for two reasons. Firstly to repair the water system they had destroyed during the recent clashes with the FARDC, and secondly to accompany a group of conservationists who wanted to locate the dead mountain gorilla. The reply was clear and unequivocal. MONUC could come to fix the water system, but under no circumstances were the conservationists allowed to enter their territory to find the gorilla. We tried impressing on MONUC the importance of the mission and they tried again to call the Major to persuade him to reconsider, but he stood fast and said no, and that he would refer the problem to his superior (General Laurent Nkunda). We asked MONUC to follow this up and keep us posted, telling them that this was a top conservation priority of international importance and that we needed access within the next 24-48 hours.
Later, upon returning to Rumangabo, we learned that one of the gorilla trackers at Bikenge had come across a second body that had been recently shot and gutted about 200 m west of the patrol post. The intestines were lying beside the wild banana plant that the gorilla had been feeding on, and the remains of its body including its head had been discarded down a pit latrine. It was clear that our first wave of lobbying had not worked, in that not enough pressure had been put on Nkunda to take responsibility for the death of the first gorilla and to make sure that it did not happen again. Just in case access with MONUC would prove unworkable, we decided to develop a contingency plan. Ngobobo instructed two of his trackers to return to the drop pit and provide him with evidence of what they had seen. FZS provided a small digital camera and asked them to take photos of the body and the toilet in which the mountain gorilla remains had been dumped. They were to leave at first light the following day and were expected to be back by nightfall.
Returning to Goma, FZS received a phone call from the MONUC commanding officer informing us that we had authorization to go to Bikenge the following day under armed escort to try and find the gorilla bodies.

16th January 2006
At 05.30 we set off from Goma and reached the Rutshuru Battalion by 07.30. There was an escort of two vehicles waiting for us, and we were instructed to follow the first vehicle, heading for Rumangabo FARDC Commando Camp, where we were told we would pick up a military escort. This puzzled us because unlike MONUC, the FARDC had no access to the rebel area. Indeed their presence would only provoke an immediate attack on them, us and MONUC. However, we were told by the UN that this is what was going to be done, and when we pressed them further saying that we would not get into the target area with FARDC soldiers, we were told that we would go as far as we could, and if they started shooting at us, we would turn back.
We met the FARDC Colonel at the Commando Camp and it turned out that he and Ngobobo were good friends and had played in the same football team when they were young, but had not seen each other for more than 10 years. Ngobobo explained the nature of the mission to Col. Yav and what we hoped to achieve. This was followed by a rather interesting and somewhat worrying exchange of radio messages as the Colonel tried to establish the exact limits of the area under his control. After 15 minutes of talking to his various military posts, he declared that the patrol post was under rebel control and he could therefore not guarantee our security. However he did agree to provide us with a section of men under the command of a Sergeant Major known as "Cobra 1", and told us that they would accompany us to the very last military position before reaching rebel territory. After that, we were on our own. We asked our MONUC escort whether they could contact the rebels and notify them that we were coming. They said that they would do so, and sent a message back to the MONUC Battalion at Rutshuru requesting that they contact the rebel group to allow the patrol to gain access.
We arrived at the last military checkpoint having driven through a number of recently abandoned villages. We off-loaded Cobra 1 and his section and then continued down a small track that led down to a valley between two hills. The hill on the right was under FARDC control, the one of the left was under rebel control. At this point we carried out a radio check with MONUC Rutshuru and discovered that they had not yet been able to make contact with the Major. Apparently his phone was ringing but he was not picking it up. We decided to continue and see how far we could get. Once down in the valley we started crossing "no-man's-land" towards the park, the patrol post, and the rebel position. We got to within 500 m of the patrol post. We could see a rebel camp a few hundred meters away on top of a small hill to the left, the site where the first silverback had reportedly been killed. To the right was a small tree line which marked the location of the drop latrine and the remains of the second gorilla.
There was a local villager nearby and we stopped the vehicles and got out. While Ngobobo questioned him, the MONUC soldiers surveyed the area. The message came through on the radio that the MONUC Battalion still had not managed to make contact with the rebel troops. A couple of minutes later two of the MONUC soldiers saw a number of rebels approaching us from both left and right, and we decided it was time to make a hasty retreat. Back in FARDC controlled territory we left the MONUC patrol, asking them to continue their efforts to try and make contact with the rebels, and to let us know once they had confirmation that we could go into the area.
On the drive back, Ngobobo told us that according to the local farmer, the ICCN trackers had arrived early that morning and found the gorilla still in the pit latrine and had returned to the station with the head of the gorilla. The contingency plan had worked and we were relieved that there was now some tangible evidence to support such serious claims of mountain gorilla killings. Worryingly, the farmer had also informed Ngobobo that shortly after the ICCN trackers had left, two rebel soldiers passed through the village asking for their whereabouts.
Back at the station we debriefed the trackers, examined the head, and identified the individual as Karema, an 18-year-old solitary silverback.

• Name: Karema
• Family: Solitary
• Age class: Silverback
• Meaning of the name "Karema": Handicapped
• Identifying marks: Left hand amputated
• Lineage: Father Rugendo, mother Mukechuru (died of old age in 1991)
• Behaviour: Calm
• Personal History: Born in 1989, orphaned by his mother in 1991
  Habituation in June 1991 (Conrad Aveling)
  Disappeared from his family in February 2002, recovered in March 2002
  Became a blackback in March 2002
  Became solitary in July 2002
  Killed on the 11th January 2007 at the age of 18

17th January 2006
FZS was called at 06.00 by MONUC and told that they had managed to get a line through to the rebels the previous evening and that we had now been granted official access to the area, and we left at 08.00 for MONUC Rutshuru. From Rutshuru we took the road to Jomba with three UN vehicles escorting us. We again drove through the deserted villages and then past Runyoni, a small mountain and temporary home to one of the rebels' larger groups.
We saw hundreds of rebel soldiers silhouetted against the sky looking down on our convoy as we drove past. We then took the small track which led through the valley and towards the patrol post. Arriving at the patrol post it was clear that it had only recently been deserted. There was a stake that had been freshly spliced that morning and a small calf that had been shut in one of the rooms.
We then walked from the patrol post to the drop latrine, which was just meters away from the wild banana plant from which Karema had been feeding when he was shot. Inside the latrine we saw the butchered gorilla body, and then outside we found the skin from his back, the hair still silver-grey.
A message then came over MONUC's radio informing us that the Head of the Indian Batallion, Col. Ashok, was also on a mission in the area and wanted to meet us. We headed back up the track where we found three more patrol vehicles waiting for us. The Colonel asked us how MONUC could help and Ngobobo asked him whether MONUC could help organize a meeting with the rebels so that we could get them to recognize the neutrality of the park staff and the importance of allowing the rangers to work in safety. The Colonel agreed. The Colonel also asked whether ICCN would be interested in carrying out mixed patrols into the gorilla habitat to check on the status of the habituated groups. Ngobobo accepted the kind offer.
With the rebels still occupying the gorilla habitat there was real concern that more gorillas may be at risk and something needed to be done to bring the situation under international scrutiny. When rebel soldiers kill a mountain gorilla, an endangered species of such critical importance, there are global repercussions, and the attention of people around the world would focus on them.
WildlifeDirect immediately launched an international media campaign which had seismic effects on an unprecedented scale and immediate pressure was brought to bear on the rebel troops. Ngobobo was contacted several times by General Laurent Nkunda requesting that they meet, and on the 23rd January a meeting was held between the rebels (represented by Nkunda's Operational Commander, Colonel Makenga), ICCN and FZS, and was mediated by the UN. Makenga refused to accept responsibility for the killing of the gorillas and Ngobobo made it clear that he had not come to lay blame, but to impress upon him the enormous importance of the mountain gorillas and that, while they are occupying the gorilla habitat, they have de facto responsibility for them. Makenga gave his assurances that no further mountain gorillas would be killed. To date, 4 gorillas are still missing.

Robert Muir and Paulin Ngobobo

Robert Muir worked on a number of research and community based conservation programmes, and since 2004 he has been responsible for re-starting the Frankfurt Zoological Society's Virunga National Park Conservation Program, with a focus on ranger training and park communications as well as its continued support for gorilla and chimpanzee conservation.
Paulin Wilondja-as-Ngobobo has an university degree in rural development. After working for several gorilla conservation NGOs, he became principal conservator and chief warden of the southern sector of the Virunga National Park in May 2006. 

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