“I learned long ago that conservation has no victories, that one must retain connections and remain involved with animals and places that have captured the heart, to prevent their destruction. I am sometimes asked why, given a world that is more wounded and scarred, I do not simply give up, burdened by pessimism. But conservation is my life, I must retain hope.”
And so, Covid-19, the climate crisis and the fracturing of civil society bring us to Garamba, Virunga, Mgahinga, Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, Parc National des Volcans and the mountain gorilla. The largest and arguably most charismatic of the great apes is down to no more than a few dozen family groups, confined to pockets of green — ecological hotspots — in the green-limned volcanic mountains Central Africa.
Mountain gorillas, it has been confirmed, are descendants of ancestral apes found throughout Africa and Arabia at the start of the Oligocene epoch, some 25-35 million years ago. The fossil record provides evidence of hominoid primates in East Africa about 20–30 million years ago. The fossil record of the area where mountain gorillas are found today is particularly poor and so the species’ evolutionary history is not clear. What is clear is that the mountain gorilla predates humankind, and so humankind — it would seem to me — has a special responsibility to its genetic antecedent.
By now, it’s clear the coronavirus crisis has thrown a wrecking ball through the entire concept of ecotourism, a major funding source of conservation efforts throughout the developing world, no more so than in countries like Uganda, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where corruption is rife, human conflict is the norm and the tax base was never much to begin with. Some governments are better run than others, and Central Africa has been graced with some of the best run parks in the African parks system — but as funding dwindles, conservation efforts can't help but follow.
That’s why recent reports last month from Garamba National Park, a 5,200 km² (2,000 square mile) protected area in northeastern DRC, have proved so encouraging. In these uncertain times, even the most modest glimmer of light is a beacon of hope.
Garamba is not as well known — or visited by tourists — as Volcans or Bwindi Impenetrable but it has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site and has been managed by the NGO African Parks together with the Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature (ICCN) since 2005.
In a May 13 op-ed piece in the UK Independent, former CITES Secretary General and present-day African Parks special envoy John Scanlon noted that Garamba — several hundred miles north of a dwindling Ebola outbreak and well off the tourist circuit — is a model story of how low and middle-income countries in the developing world with limited ability to invest in nature conservation can survive, if not thrive exactly, despite the odds. Garamba, which will probably never appeal to free-spending, well-to-do travellers from the Americas, has clung to life instead by relying on grants from donor countries and individual philanthropists.
Survival in this case is decidedly unsexy: The funds go toward community outreach and enforcement of park regulations.
With an ever-growing world population — pandemic or no pandemic — most of the world's remaining wilderness areas will only survive if they find a way to pay for themselves, which means people who live in the area, on the outskirts of parks like Garamba, Bwindi and Virunga, must be given a reason not to hunt and trap endangered animals to feed their own families.
The results of a hands-on approach to park management in Garamba without the benefit of paying tourists have been striking, Scanlon reports: Elephant poaching is down 90% in four years (yes, you read that right) and the number of critically endangered Kordofan giraffes has stabilized. (Giraffes are hunted for their hide, meat and tails, which is why they’re vulnerable whenever area villages are victimized by conflict and people go hungry.)
Community outreach isn’t just a feel-good buzzphrase. More than 90% of Garamba’s paid employees are DRC Congo nationals; the park supports two local schools and a number of mobile health clinics. Clean drinking water has been provided to more than 20 villages, and 7,000 people.
A working national park that doesn’t have the cachet or name recognition of a Serengeti or Maasai Mara is about more than dramatic scenery and charismatic wildlife. To work properly, it also has to be about the health, development, safety and security — personal security and food security — of the people who live there.
Despite everything, Rwanda has already proven a success story in its own right. Prior to the outbreak of Covid-19, Rwanda’s mountain gorilla populations were in recovery and even growing, one family group at a time. Tourist revenue in 2019 alone generated some $20 million USD; the government of Rwanda kicked in another $10 million to conservation efforts, a quarter of that to Volcans National Park. Tourism — and good parks management — in turn create jobs, Scanlon noted. And not just any jobs. Decent jobs.
The revenue stream will not hold steady in 2020, Scanlon notes: The gorilla population can only continue its recovery after decades of decline if the protected areas are maintained and conservation programmes continue to be adequately funded during and after the pandemic. This will require a collective effort by businesses, government oversight and foreign donors. The tourists and the jobs will not return if the gorillas disappear, not even in Rwanda.
There are more gorillas in the mist, today. It’s a rare conservation success story. Let’s keep it that way.
©Gabriel Gach-Pixabay