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Congo calls in foreign group to save rare rhinos

Posted on: Tuesday, 18 October 2005, 11:55 CDT

By David Lewis

KINSHASA (Reuters) - Congo has called in a group of private conservationists to try to save its endangered northern white rhinos from poachers, including Sudanese gunmen on horseback, officials said on Tuesday.

The African Parks Foundation (APF), set up by South African conservationists and a Dutch businessman, will take over the management of Democratic Republic of Congo's Garamba National Park to try to preserve the rare rhino.

"The government has decided to outsource the management and financing of Garamba to APF for the next five years," Jose Kalpers, APF's representative in French-speaking African countries, told Reuters in Kinshasa.

The northern white rhino, believed to be the most endangered large mammal on earth, is found in the wild only in Congo's lawless northeast. It has survived decades of war-related poaching as rangers fought off gunmen from Sudan and Congo but less than 10 of the animals are believed to remain in the wild.

Local politicians blocked a move to airlift five of them to Kenya in February, where they were to be kept until their natural habitat had been made safe. They said Congo was a sovereign nation able to solve its own problems.

"We have found ourselves in real trouble. We have to get someone in to help save this site (Garamba)," said Benoit Kisuki, technical director at the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature (ICCN).

"We have had to explain that we are not selling the park to foreigners but that they (APF) are just coming in to manage it and protect the rhinos," he told Reuters.

Kalpers said that APF, set up to step in wherever government budgets could not cover the cost of maintaining national parks, would spend roughly 1 million euros a year reorganizing and equipping anti-poaching teams.

"We have to start immediately as the next dry season is in January, and this is when the poaching is at its peak," he said, adding APF had its own funds but would also look to other donors to help finance the Garamba operation.

Wildlife experts say poaching has intensified, exacerbated by Sudanese gunmen who began last year crossing on horseback into a part of Congo already awash with tribal militias, former rebels and traditional warriors.

The trade in rhino horns mostly leads to Yemen, where they are turned into handles for ornate daggers, and the Far East, where they are ground up, bottled and sold as an aphrodisiac.

Garamba is a United Nations World Heritage Site in a remote corner of the country where poorly equipped park rangers battle with well-armed poachers using sophisticated radio equipment who smuggle rhino horns out of the country in donkey trains.

Source: REUTERS

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