The situation for 200 gorillas who still resist in a park in Congo is getting worse

By Vilma Gryzinski, for Veja Magazine (July 25, 2012)

Since Congo is probably the worst place on earth for humans to live, imagine for a few mountain gorillas that remain in the wild. Totally, there are about 700 animals remaining in the wild. About 200 of them are at Virunga National Park, where an already difficult situation worsed again in recent weeks, with the increase of the deadly activities of a number of armed groups that have transformed the country into a hell.

Gorillas, usually plagued by “illegal” hunters  – a concept difficult to be applied in Congo – and even shot by soldiers with or without uniform just for fun, are less protected after most of the park staff had to be moved to protect thenselves from further fighting. About forty obstinated people of the staff continued there. Among them, Patrick Karabaranga, one of the commissioners to treat of four orphaned gorillas, which can only survive with the help of caregivers, responsible for everything they need most: food, petting and lap, even if they are not babies anymore.

Mountain gorillas live in a beautiful and damned region of Congo, where the intractable disputes among ethnic groups, tribes, rival politicians, military ambitious and aggressive neighbors caused the last fifteen years to be called First and Second World Wars in Africa. Hunger, forced displacement, warfare, purges, riots, killings and constant practice of mass rapes have created devastation on a scale difficult to be measured – the number of dead people is estimated at somewhere between 1 million and 5 million. For the rare gorillas squeezed in the middle of so many disasters, there is only one certainty: they are hopelessly condemned. The fact of some of them have laps is a small victory of the human spirit.

Related news: https://www.projetogap.org.br/en-US/noticias/Show/4359,dr-congo-fighters-agree-to-gorilla-survey-in-virunga