Desperate for Fuelwood, Congolese Eye Virunga National Park

NAIROBI, Kenya, September 14, 2007 (ENS) - About 35,000 people have fled the armed conflict that has broken out in North Kivu province in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC, over the past week, according to United Nations personnel in this central African country.

The global conservation group WWF is working with the UN refugee agency to prevent encroachment into nearby Virunga National Park and to help displaced people meet their needs for tons of fuelwood every day without deforesting the park.

"With around 35,000 internally displaced people near Goma looking for food, shelter and fuelwood, we are facing a very difficult situation," said Marc Languy from 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," he said.

People fleeing the fighting in Sake, west of Goma, the largest town in the region, have set up three camps in Mugunga, a small town next to the Virunga National Park, designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.

A displaced persons camp in Muguna, near Virunga National Park (Photo by Julien Harneis)

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR, is urging the displaced people to move from the Lac Vert Camp to a new camp that could accommodate up to 5,000 families. WWF says this is an encouraging sign that will help reduce damage to the park.

"With an average of 12 kilograms of wood per family per day, we are looking at about 50 tons of wood to be collected every day; it is a real challenge for both humanitarian and conservation NGOs," explained Languy.

UNHCR spokesperson Ron Redmond said today that most of the 35,000 Congolese refugees who fled into Uganda last week amid renewed fighting and escalation of violence in North Kivu province have now returned home. They gradually crossed the border as the fighting between the DRC Army, renegade troops and local militias died down, he said.

Yet, Redmond acknowledges that UN personnel are not sure how many displaced people there are in the area.

"Inside North Kivu province, the situation remains tense and unstable," said Redmond. "Our access to many areas in Masisi and Rutshuru districts is limited due to the volatile security situation. We fear that just a fraction of the most recent displacement in the North Kivu is known to us."

"Estimates are that since December 2006, the number of newly displaced in North Kivu has surpassed 220,000 and continues to grow," Redmond said. "In total, there are more than 650,000 IDPs [internally displaced persons] in this eastern DRC province. We continue to closely coordinate the overall emergency response with other UN agencies and NGO partners."

Boy cooks pototoes with a fire of sticks in a Muguna camp. (Photo by Julien Harneis)

Thursday, the UN refugee agency transported 288 refugees who registered to be relocated to a refugee settlement at Nakivale, Redmond said. "We have prepared the Nakivale refugee settlement for the new arrivals and the provision of water, setting-up of sanitation, health and communal kitchen was finalized yesterday."

WWF is providing maps showing the park's boundaries to UNHCR personnel so that the most suitable areas for IDP settlements can be identified.

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 the plantations are located amongst the 10 million trees WWF has planted in the past 20 years around Virunga National Park.

Virunga National Park is situated in eastern DRC along the borders with Rwanda and Uganda, stretching over 300 kilometers (200 miles) 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, including the critically endangered mountain gorilla.

Virunga National Park August 2007 (Photo by Y. Kaboza courtesy UNESCO)

Nine of the Virunga mountain gorillas have been killed in the past few months, alarming conservationists around the world.

The recent threats to the park's mountain gorillas seem to be coming slowly under control, says Languy, but 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," he said.

Languy says WWF is concerned that "other humanitarian NGOs are discouraging people from moving from the problematic Lac Vert Camp to the new one set up by UNHCR."

Languy would not name the other organizations, but said WWF urges them "to respect national and international law and not to build any infrastructure within the protected area of the park."

WWF is working with UNHCR and the Institut Congolais pour la Conservacion de la Nature, the national conservation agency of the DRC, to find solutions that will protect the park under a program funded by the European Union.

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2007. All rights reserved.