<
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/aug/20/drc-wildlife-reserve-upemba>
"Ranger Sylvain Musimi had just risen from his morning coffee around the
campfire when the rebels opened fire. It was a chilly early morning in
mid-January, during rainy season in Upemba national park. Sixteen suspected
members of the Bakata Katanga militia, faces daubed in white war paint,
surprised the party of four rangers only 5.5 miles (9km) from Upemba’s base
camp.
Musimi, 50, was shot four times in the thigh, but managed to flee into the
bush. A younger colleague, who was nearer the campfire, was shot dead.
“I could have chosen another job,” says Musimi, standing inside a derelict
villa in Lusinga, which rebels destroyed in 2004, when insecurity was much
worse. “But I wanted to become an ecoguard for the good of my country, and so
my children could see animals in the park one day.”
Upemba, which lies in the south-east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
(DRC), once teemed with wildlife. At its height, tens of thousands of elephants
were thought to roam the park, which was Africa’s largest when Belgian colonial
administrators created it in 1939. Lions, zebras and other mammals were
abundant. Upemba still covers a huge area – larger than Lebanon – comprising
wetland, savannah and twisting fingers of gallery forest, which cluster around
rivers. However, it was in this wilderness that Bakata Katanga rebels took
refuge in 1998.
The presence of the militia, which seeks independence for Congo’s mineral-rich
Katanga region, turned large sections of the park – as well as territory
outside it – into a no-go zone that locals used to call “the triangle of
death”. It also led to a poaching spree. Many of Upemba’s rangers, who went
unpaid during the turbulent Congo wars of the late 1990s and early 2000s,
turned to poaching themselves in order to survive."
Via
Fix the News:
https://fixthenews.com/ritual-technology/
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
