Militants kill two elephants in Congo national park: NGO

Agence France Presse

December 19, 2008

KINSHASA (AFP) — Members of a Congolese militia group have killed two elephants in the country's Virunga National Park, a local environmental organisation reported Friday.

"The situation is critical in the Virunga park where fighters from the PARECO movement killed two elephants the day before yesterday," said Bantu Lukambo, head of Innovation for the Development and Protection of the Environment (IDPE).

PARECO, the Coalition of Congolese Patriotic Resistance, is one of several militia groups operating in the environs of the Virunga National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The park has been the theatre of intense fighting in recent months, mainly between government forces or their proxies and rebels of the National Congress for the Defence of the People.

The park had a population of only 350 elephants in 2006, compared to some 3,500 in 1959, according to the Congolese Institute for Nature Conservation (ICCN).

"We are appealing to the government authorities and the international community to demilitarise the park, if we are not to see the total extinction of animal species at this site," said Lukambo.

He said that the park's hippopotamus population, found mainly near the Vitshumbi area along the shores of Lake Edward some 120 kilometres north of Goma, had migrated across the border into Uganda to escape the fighting.

"For the moment, there are no hippotamuses in the park. We are waiting for the end of the war in the hope they will come back from Uganda," said Lukambo.