From Virunga to Kahuzi-Biega
Without trees there is no rain, and without rain there are no rivers. Emmanuel Bahati Lukoo puts it that plainly. “If we can breathe fresh air, it’s because of all these forests and this biodiversity that we’re protecting,” he said. “Protecting the forests in the [DRC] means protecting people’s lives. It’s a huge responsibility.”
Lukoo is assistant park manager at Kahuzi-Biega National Park in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, and was previously a ranger at nearby Virunga, the oldest national park in Africa. He spoke as global decision-makers wrapped up the United Nations’ COP17 biodiversity summit this week, and his message was aimed squarely at them: the people on the front line of wildlife protection deserve far more recognition than they receive.
The region he works in holds an exceptional range of habitats, from tropical forests to extinct volcanoes, snowfields, swamps and lava plains. It is a haven for some of the world’s rarest species. Yet those same riches make it a target, both for armed groups fighting the national government and for impoverished communities struggling to survive.
Conservation That Feels Like War
Eastern Congo has been a conflict zone for a long time, and rebel groups take refuge in protected areas. As a result, park managers give rangers thorough paramilitary training so they can confront armed groups. Lukoo describes the training as grueling, and the work as something closer to soldiering than to the image of conservation elsewhere. “Nature conservation in the Congo isn’t the same as elsewhere. For us, it’s like being at war. When you go out on patrol, you don’t think about coming back,” he said.
He insists the mission is defensive. “Our mission isn’t to wage war against armed groups, but to defend when they attack,” he said. The core of the job is protecting the reserve’s boundaries, its habitat, and everyone who lives there against poaching and wildlife trafficking. “To take a baby gorilla and traffic it, you first have to kill the mother,” he noted.
The cost is real. In April 2018, Lukoo and five other rangers were ambushed by militiamen. He was the only one to survive. In 2020, 13 rangers were killed in an ambush in Rumangabo. “It would be a great act of cowardice to leave,” he said.
Charcoal, Logging and the Economics of Pressure
Armed groups are not the only threat. Deforestation and illegal logging have reached what Lukoo calls a particularly alarming scale in some areas, with trees cut to make charcoal, known locally as makala, and furniture. Illegal farming, expanding pastures and illegal mining add to the pressure.
He draws a sharp line between the motives of those who enter the parks illegally. Some pursue political or military objectives, or seek to control territory, trade routes and natural resources to finance themselves. Others live in extreme poverty on the edge of the park and depend on its resources. The two groups are linked: armed groups camp in protected areas and draw on nearby communities, sometimes by force, using young people to mine minerals and produce charcoal, which communities then carry to illegal markets before handing the money to the groups exploiting them.
Lukoo also points to politics. He says land disputes are common, that some communities see reserves as a problem, and that certain politicians back communities’ illegal activities to win votes, while others use armed groups to attack ranger posts. These are his own accounts from the field, and they describe a pattern rather than named cases.
A Park No One Can Fully Assess
The International Union for Conservation of Nature rates Virunga’s conservation outlook as critical. Lukoo says he cannot confirm the park’s true state because no scientific research is being carried out at the moment. A very large portion of the park, the south and the center, is occupied and no longer under park control. Rangers no longer go there. “Today, it’s a matter of survival, and protecting the animals has become very complicated. After the war, we’ll have to take stock,” he said.
That admission is significant. Conservation policy depends on data, and data depends on access. Where armed groups hold the ground, even the people charged with protecting a World Heritage Site cannot say what is left inside it.
Rangers’ Rights and a Football Pitch
Lukoo’s sharpest complaint concerns the rangers themselves. They face arbitrary arrests and attacks, spend 90 percent of their time in the forest far from their families, and are paid too little to live in cities where everything costs more. “Everyone talks about human rights and protecting biodiversity, but I’ve never heard anyone mention rangers’ rights,” he said. The children of rangers, he added, can end up on the streets when their fathers cannot pay school fees or die protecting the park.
His own response has been practical. In 2021 he helped start the Virunga Football Academy in Rumangabo, North Kivu, with about 50 young people, to rebuild trust between local youth and rangers. It now works in Goma, Kiwanja, Kirumba and Kasindi and has around 400 young people, aged 8 to 17, with more applying than it can take. He says young people’s involvement in illegal activities in Rumangabo has fallen. He has also written a memoir about his experiences.
Who Owns the Forest’s Future
Lukoo frames the forests as both Congolese heritage and a global good, and as a source of national income through tourism. His prescription follows from that: all parties must respect park boundaries, communities need affordable energy and real economic opportunities so they do not depend on the forest, and rangers need protection and decent pay.
Each of those is a decision for Congolese authorities and for the international partners who fund conservation. A biodiversity summit can set targets, but the forests of eastern Congo will be protected or lost on the ground, by people who go on patrol not knowing whether they will return. Congo’s control over its own natural wealth depends on whether those people are treated as essential workers rather than as an afterthought.
