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President Kabila Pledges to Save Environment in The Democratic Republic of Congo

Tuesday, 17 February, 1998

GLAND- The commitment by President Laurent Desire Kabila to establishing a genuine conservation agenda for the Democratic Republic of Congo is a great step forward for restoring the economic and environmental viability of one of Africa's most biologically rich nations, WWF-World Wide Fund For Nature said today.

Mr. Kabila, who held a meeting yesterday with a WWF delegation following last week's visit to Kinshasa by WWF Director General Dr. Claude Martin, recognized the difficult situation for conservation as a consequence of Congo's recent civil war and committed himself personally to alleviating the structural and circumstantial problems that are ravaging the country's protected areas and bringing extremely endangered species like the northern white rhino ever closer to extinction.

Most of Congo's national parks are currently in a state of acute crisis. Among them, Garamba National Park, in the northeast of the country (where the world's last wild population of northern white rhinos is found), is in extreme difficulty due to the pressures brought by increased poaching and a general lack of resources to ensure adequate patrolling and other conservation measures.

Dr. Kes Hillman-Smith, WWF Project Executant at Garamba, discussed the current state of the park with President Kabila and Mr. Edi Angulu-Mabengi, Minister of Environment and Tourism. She stressed the urgent need to equip park rangers, continue with training activities, control the currently free movement of fire weapons in the region and obtain the cooperation of local leaders to protect the park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. "The President was very supportive and said he was keen to adopt a clearly defined environmental agenda to ensure the nation's unique natural wealth survives in the long term," she said. In terms of variety of animal and plant species, the Democratic Republic of Congo is probably the richest country in Africa. The country contains other unique species of plants and animals, like the okapi, the pigmy chimpanzee, and the eastern lowland gorilla, that are found nowhere else. After Brazil, the D.R. Congo is the country with the largest surface of tropical forests in the world, and it contains more than half of Africa's tropical forests.

According to WWF, the likely contribution of this natural wealth to the reconstruction of Congo is unmeasurable, but this biological diversity needs to be managed in a sustainable way. The conservation of the country's protected areas is essential to the recovery of the local tourist industry, an important generator of revenue and a potential creator of many jobs for the country's people, who could also benefit from adequate management of the forest resources and unique protected areas.

WWF is asking the international conservation community to support whenever possible conservation initiatives in the Democratic Republic of Congo, so that the exceptional natural riches of Congo can be preserved for future generations, contribute to its economic and social development, and be of real benefit to its people.

For more information,
please contact Javier Arreaza at
tel. +41 22 364 9550,
e-mail: jarreaza@wwfnet.org