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