12 Sep 2007 - Nairobi,
Kenya / Gland, Switzerland – WWF is working
closely with UNHCR, the UN’s refugee agency,
to prevent encroachment into the World Heritage-listed
Virunga National Park by displaced people
after several weeks of civil unrest in the
area, and to help them meet the huge demand
in fuelwood.
About 35,000 people have fled the heavily
armed conflict near Sake in the eastern
Democratic Republic of Congo over the past
week, according to the UN.
People fleeing the fighting in Sake, west
of Goma, the largest town in the region,
have spontaneously set up three camps for
internally displaced people in Mugunga,
a small town next to Virunga National Park.
However, one of them – the Lac Vert Camp
– is partly located within the park.
“With so many internally displaced people
near Goma looking for food, shelter and
fuelwood, we are facing a very difficult
situation,” said Marc Languy of WWF’s Eastern
Africa Regional Programme Office.
"One of the challenges is to avert
a fuelwood crisis that would put the park’s
forest under pressure while ensuring the
displaced people have all the necessary
commodities they need.”
WWF is working closely with UNHCR and ICCN
(Institut Congolais pour la Conservation
de la Nature) to find solutions to the problem,
under a programme funded by the European
Union.
While collection of wood within the park
is being regulated to meet the immediate
demand, several alternatives have already
been identified, such as sourcing of wood
from nearby plantations. Most of them are
located among the 10 million trees WWF has
planted in the past 20 years around Virunga
National Park.
“With an average of 12kg of wood per family
per day, we are looking at about 50 tonnes
of wood to be collected every day; it is
a real challenge for both humanitarian and
conservation NGOs,” explained Languy.
During meetings with UNHCR, WWF also provided
maps showing the park’s boundaries so that
the most suitable areas for settlements
can be identified.
While recent threats to mountain gorillas
— nine of them have been killed in the past
few months — seem to be coming slowly under
control, habitat destruction, and in particular
deforestation, remains the most important
concern, as it has far-reaching and long-lasting
effects on the park’s biodiversity.
“We don’t want history to repeat itself,
when in 1994-1995, in the face of another
humanitarian disaster, hundreds of thousands
of refugees fleeing Rwanda invaded Virunga
National Park and destroyed the forest.
It still has not recovered,” added Languy.
UNHCR is encouraging the displaced people
to move from the Lac Vert Camp to a new
camp that could accommodate up to 5,000
families. This is an encouraging sign that
will help reduce the damage to the park,
according to WWF.
However, WWF is concerned that some other
humanitarian NGOs are discouraging people
to move from the problematic camp to the
new one set up by UNHCR. WWF urges these
NGOs to respect national and international
law and not to build any infrastructure
within the protected area.
END NOTES:
• The three IDP camps in the Mugunga area
are Mugunga 1, Mugunga 2 and Lac Vert. UNHCR
set up a new camp, Bulengo, which could
accommodate people from the Lac Vert Camp.
• Virunga National Park is situated in
eastern DRC along the borders with Rwanda
and Uganda, stretching over 300km between
Lake Kivu and Lake Albert. Created in 1925,
it is the oldest national park in Africa
and also the most biodiverse, with over
700 species of bird and 200 species of mammals.
Over 60,000 people still live illegally
inside the protected area. Except for mountain
gorillas, which have shown an increase in
population in the last 20 years due to important
conservation efforts, most wildlife in the
park have heavily suffered from poaching.
The population of hippopotamus, for example,
has dropped from 29,000 in the mid-1970s
to fewer than 1,000 today.
• In times of peace, Virunga National Park
brings over US$3 million annually from tourism
revenues, mostly from visits to mountain
gorillas. The park is also an important
source of protein for local communities,
with over 20,000 fishermen providing up
to 15,000 tons of fish each year.
• WWF and ICCN (Institut Congolais pour
la Conservation de la Nature) have been
working together with local communities
around Virunga National Park since 1987
through the PEVi (Programme Environnemental
autour des Virunga) programme. The programme,
partly funded by the European Union, aims
to raise awareness on conservation among
local communities, based on rural development
activities such as agroforestry and buffer
zone management. It is also actively working
in demarcation and monitoring of the boundaries
of the national park and in the peaceful
removal of illegal settlers in many areas.
Kimunya Mugo, Communications Officer
WWF Eastern Africa Regional Programme Office
