Life of Virunga Rangers

Life of Virunga Rangers

Life of Virunga Rangers: Unlike other parks in Eastern Africa and the DRC, the rangers in Virunga have more work and this put their life to risk more than any other rangers.

With a history of insecurity in the DRC and other rebel activities, rangers here almost give up their lives just for the sake of conservation.

Virunga is well gifted with a lot of natural resources and key to these is oil and oil mining is a key activity in the park and it is believe that in the near future 80% of the park land may be taken over by mining companies.

With the money that oil companies have they also play a lot of politics in diverting animal distribution in order to take up the lucrative areas and in this they are willing to go an extra mile to remove any thing that comes in their way including killing the animals and this they can only do after killing the rangers.

There is a lot of poverty in the DRC and this promotes poaching more so of the gorillas. Rangers monitor the gorillas all week long unlike other parks that have good security and only locate the gorillas in the morning before the trackers trek them.

This poses great threat to their lives as they are targeted by poachers and in most cases they have been killed.

Poachers usually have better machinery because they have been well facilitated by the people that have market for these animals.

Rangers on the other hand have poor equipment and most of which is just donated. Some of them even go to the field to battle with poachers that have guns yet they do not have guns.

Of recent a fund has been setup for people to donate towards improving the lives of the rangers in Virunga and you too can contribute towards conversation through this call.