The Fossey Fund’s Work in Congo

In addition to the Congo’s Virunga National Park, we support parks and nature reserves in a vast landscape further west, home to Grauer’s gorillas.

We operate in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in conjunction with Conservation International, and with other partners, most notably a network of ten nature reserves established and managed by local communities: the Union of Associations for Gorilla Conservation and Community Development (UGADEC).

The Virunga Mountains

Mountain gorillas inhabit the forested slopes of the Virunga volcanic mountain chain that straddles the border between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, in central Africa’s Albertine Rift. Two national parks protect the entire habitat, one on each side of the border. (A related but separate population of mountain gorillas inhabits Bwindi National Park in Uganda.)

Virunga National Park

The Congo’s Virunga National Park in the Virunga volcanic mountains, provides mountain gorilla habitat together with Rwanda’s neighboring Volcanoes National Park. Due to armed conflict, the Congo park guards are sometimes forced to evacuate, but persistence saves gorillas.   The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International supports the guards with training and funds, and conducts health programs, education and community development programs to help nearby communities just as we do in Rwanda.

The Tayna-Maiko-Kahuzi-Biega landscape in Congo

Beginning in 2000, the Fossey Fund initiated a program of community-based conservation in the eastern Congo a hundred kilometers west of the Virungas, which has expanded to include a unique eco-region of some 26,000 square miles. We work with a series of community-based reserves linking two national parks, in an area that is home to nearly the entire range of the Grauer’s (eastern lowland) gorilla and to many other rare, important species such as the forest elephant, okapi, and eastern chimpanzee.

An estimated 5,600 to 27,600 Grauer’s gorillas survive, mostly in a landscape stretching from Maiko National Park to Kahuzi-Biega National Park. Some new populations have been identified recently, though not enough to change their endangered status. They live at a variety of altitudes, not only in lowlands, but not as high up as the mountain gorillas.

Due to years of political instability, agricultural expansion, mining, poor economic conditions and other factors, conservation in the area has become critical and the Fossey Fund has committed to helping provide long-term solutions. The Fossey Fund is helping its partners create an integrated, legally protected, scientifically monitored and sustainable biodiversity corridor, to preserve the ecosystem and allow wildlife to live and travel safely throughout this vast landscape.

The Fossey Fund has rehabilitated Maiko National Park, and works closely with the community reserves to help them achieve recognition from the Congo government so they can have the same legal status as the parks while retaining their management role. Two reserves have already been certified as protected areas.

Community-based reserves to earn carbon credits

The two certified community-based reserves have been granted funding by the Walt Disney Company, in partnership with Conservation International, to develop a Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) forest conservation project that is expected to reduce as much as 200,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year starting in 2012. This conservation project will help to slow global warming, while earning additional funds for the communities in the form of carbon credits. The Disney grant will support the development phase of the project, which will be designed by local communities with the help of their partners, including the Fossey Fund. The majority of the funds will finance community management of the forests and expansion of sustainable livelihood practices among local villages

Health and education projects in the Congo

We work to protect gorillas in the Democratic Republic of Congo in a landscape that includes some of the most densely populated areas in Africa and some of the most troubled.  To help protect gorillas, the Fossey Fund also supports rural clinics, schools, an orphanage, and other community development projects for the communities associated with the nature reserves. These include the Tayna Center for Conservation Biology (TCCB), a unique university established by the communities to train the next generation of African conservationists. The Fund has designated the Tayna Nature Reserve’s principal population center, the town of Kasugho, as a model conservation village.

Caring for rescued gorillas

The Fossey Fund’s Gorilla Rehabilitation and Conservation Education (GRACE) center, on a site donated by TCCB next to the Tayna Nature Reserve, cares for Grauer’s gorillas rescued from poachers and prepares them to return to the wild.