Source: https://www.africanparks.org/the-parks/garamba
“We can only love what we know”-Aldous Huxley.
How can we ever expect people to care about a struggle they seldom see? The Garamba is our way of showcasing the fight for conservation, but more importantly what we stand to lose without those who continue to fight for it. Every conservation project from backyard cultivation to anti-poaching units in Central Africa serves a vital role in protecting our wildlife and each deserves a platform from which to be heard. we can only love what we know. The Garamba is named so after an area of Central Africa which has played a pivotal role in wildlife conservation and sits at the very edge of where we fear our planet is heading.
Covered in endless grassland savannah, dotted with swamps and dense forrest fed by the Garamba and Dunga Rivers Garamba national park is a place of true wilderness. The park sits in the heart of Africa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, one of the most hostile parts of Africa with the park sharing over 250km of its border with war-torn South Sudan. Declared a UNESCO world heritage site in 1980 it is one of Africa’s oldest national parks having stood for over 80 years. A reflection of its environmental significance and highlighting the need for its on-going protection. Garamba is currently managed by African Parks.
The park is home to a number of endangered species with extinction being a very real threat in Garamba. By the turn of the century, the park was the last stronghold for the northern white rhinos. Despite substantial support from the International Rhino Foundation (one of our recommended charities) poachers killed the last of those that remained in the wild by 2006. This led to the functional extinction of the species as the last male died in Dvur Kralove Zoo (Czech Republic) in 2018.
Garamba’s elephant population faces going down a similar path to the northern white rhino with fewer than 1,300 individuals left, a significant decline from the 22,000 the park was home to in the 1970’s. There are inconsistent but significant outbreaks in elephant poaching with poachers killing 22 elephants in a single day in 2014, and 68 in the space of 2 months in 2016. As the largest remaining elephant population in Africa, they remain a major poaching target.
Even more precariously the park houses 48 of the critically endangered Kordofan giraffe. As the only ones left in the entire DRC, it is no surprise the population finds itself at this size after significant declines from a much larger number estimated at 356 in 1993. A number of the Giraffes are currently fitted with tracking harness'. Keeping track of the population across the park is difficult but vital to their survival. Declining animal populations isn't an issue of insufficient breeding programs or a need for preventative measures.
Park rangers are fighting a war against poachers in which they are continually out-funded, outnumbered and outgunned.The threat here isn’t from opportunistic locals or disgruntled farmers. The anti-poaching teams are frequently up against uniformed militiamen crossing over from South Sudan, well-armed cattle herders from Central Africa and the Lord’s Resistance Army. The LRA are a prominent militarized rebel faction in central Africa, they are behind much of the poaching being conducted in the region. Militia groups are well known for targeting the parks wildlife as a means of funding their operations.
“The forces we are up against in Garamba are not poachers. They are highly militarized groups that happen to be killing elephants as a way of funding their war machines”
African Parks Co-founder, Peter Fearnhead.
Wildlife rangers are the only thing that stands directly between these factions and the extinction of Garamba’s wildlife. 13 rangers have been killed in the past three years fighting for the park. A firefight in April 2016 cost the lives of 3 rangers, with critical injuries to several others making this one of the deadliest engagements in recent history. These men are the unsung heroes of conservation. They don’t earn a lot of money nor do they donate huge sums to conservation, they put their lives on the line every-day to protect wildlife. To risk one’s life to protect the wildlife is no easy task.
“Don’t ask me why I protect this animal. Ask the poachers why they seek to kill them”
Mararv, Garamba Park Ranger
Garamba is one of the last bastions of true wilderness, right on the frontline of the conservation battle. This is where the future is decided, in these pivotal landscapes on the brink of the very thing we seek to prevent. The Garamba is a representation of these places, a showcase of our amazing wildlife and the incredible stories from those working hands on to protect endangered species. Knees deep in the bush or high up the mountains there is some incredible work going on around the world. And we want to take you there.
The world is changed by our example not by our opinion.
Be the change.
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