Rwanda's Heroic Park Guards Win Getty Conservation Prize
For
risking their lives to stay at their posts and guard endangered mountain gorillas
during the 1994 Rwandan civil war, the staff of Rwanda's
Parc National des Volcans will receive the J. Paul Getty Wildlife Conservation
Award. The $50,000 prize, administered by World Wildlife Fund, is one of the
largest awards given for outstanding achievement in the conservation of wildlife
and its habitats.
According to WWF President Kathryn S. Fuller, who announced the winner in
late January, "The past eighteen months have been a time of unspeakable tragedy
for the people of Rwanda. The Parc National des Volcans staff, through their
heroic efforts, have helped prevent a compounding of that tragedy while protecting
mountain gorillas---one of the world's most beloved and endangered species."
Guards Remain at Post
Roughly half of the world's 650 remaining mountain gorillas reside in the
Virunga mountain range of Rwanda and Zaire. Long beset by poachers, these
gorillas faced a potentially even greater threat to their survival last year
when Rwanda's bloody civil war spread to the Parc National des Volcans.
The park's troubles began when soldiers breached the park's perimeters and
ransacked and damaged its buildings. Later, when remnants of the deposed government's
army fled the country, they beat a destructive path straight through the park,
breaking into offices, destroying records and books and throwing computers
out windows.
Throughout the ordeal, park guards and administrators remained calm, refusing
to abandon their posts for the relative safety of neighboring Zaire. Park
guards, even without financial assistance, continued patrolling the grounds
for poachers so successfully that not one gorilla was lost during the conflict
(although one was later killed by a land mine), even as gorillas in neighboring
Zaire and Uganda fell to poachers.
Eventually, the deposed government army, in an effort to clear out as much
of Rwanda's population as possible, forcibly drove park staff into Zaire.
When the new Rwandan government finally gained access to the park, they found
a heap of buildings and infrastructure all of it needing to be rebuilt.
WWF Aids Rebuilding Effort
The International Gorilla Conservation Program, supported by a coalition of
conservation groups including WWF, is currently helping to rebuild the park,
supplying the Rwandan government with copies of destroyed files and working
with officials to strengthen the country's park system.
Although some of the original staff have since returned to the park, the tourist
revenues that once supported it have disappeared, and the park's needs remain
enormous. "In addition to rebuilding facilities, the national parks office
needs equipment, uniforms, raincoats, boots, rations, and field allowances,"
says Henri Nsanjama, WWF's Vice President for Africa.
"The Getty prize money will help defray some of those expenses, while at the
same time honoring a group of courageous conservationists as they resume their
task of protecting mountain gorillas and their forest habitat."
Full-text from WWF Focus Newsletter March/April 1996, Vol. 18, Number 2
