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Gorilla Industry Exposed (Again) in Central Africa
By Georgianne Nienaber (about the author) Page 2 of 3 page(s)
An August 16 communication by Katembo that challenged the activities and agenda of Richard Leakey's newly formed Wildlife Direct and other NGOs in Central Africa prompted direct retaliation.
"I have now worked in the Virunga for almost 15 years and my experience of the last 2 years is of deception," Vital Katembo wrote on August 16, 2007, responding to communications from Wildlife Direct director Emmanuel De Merode. "Are we saving wildlife or are we trying our best to save so called wildlife direct managers and experts? You are not new to learn that good people can do evil and this is so obvious in the conservation arena… Conservation in the Virungas is the last stand of oppression, corruption and colonialism."
An email from ICCN Executive Director Cosma Wilungula Balongelwa,
circulated privately on Saturday, August 25, 2007, makes it clear that Mr. Katembo was specifically being targeted by powerful conservation forces aligned with officials working for the Congolese state and ICCN. Mr. Wilungula's email specifically cited a previous communication by Mr. Katembo sent to Emmanuel De Merode of Wildlife Direct and certain former affiliates providing funding from the U.S.
The list of recipients of the ICCN email include top level expatriate personnel and in-country officials working for the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International, UNESCO, Africa Wildlife Foundation (AWF), WorldWildlife Fund (WWF), Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), Wildlife Direct, UNDP, the German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GTZ) and the USAID (U. S. Agency for International Development) funded Central Africa Regional Program for the Environment.
The response by the I.C.C.N. Executive Director Wilungula suggests that the
ICCN is beholden to powerful Western organizations whose interests—often hostile to the environment—have been served through bribery, extortion and corruption, at the expense of the environment, the wildlife, the Congolese state and the millions of Congolese people who have suffered, or continue to suffer, various forms of western corporate exploitation.
The racket of organized conservation crime in Central Africa has been maintained throughout the colonial period, into and through the decades of dictatorship under Mobutu Sese Seko, and into the Congo war years. Conservation and development are euphemisms for plunder and private profit in Africa.
Investigations by independent journalists revealed that big name NGOs were targeted in another email sent by Wildlife Direct and told to distance themselves from the whistleblower, Vital Katembo. These organizations included the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International, the Gorilla Organization, World Wildlife Fund, Wildlife Conservation Society, Conservation International, and Fauna and Flora International. These organizations claim to work closely with I.C.C.N. in Congo. How could they possibly not know what was happening on their own turf?
Independent media also exposed Richard Leakey's Wildlife Direct, a highly militarized mercenary group launched out of Kenya. Wildlife Direct operates under the mantle of the Africa Conservation Fund, a tax-exempt (501-c-3) registered with the Internal Revenue Service. Walter H. Kansteiner III has been a board member since the founding of ACF in 2004. Kansteiner has been a constant presence behind the scenes in Congo's war since 1996. His background and experience are not in conservation. He has worked on a strategic minerals task force at the Department of Defense and was Executive Vice President of a commodity trading and manufacturing company specializing in tropical commodities in the developing world. Kansteiner is also on the board of Moto Gold, a company operating in Eastern DRC.
Back in June and July of 2007 Washington Post reporter Stephanie McCrummen apparently traveled from Goma to the park with security from Richard Leakey's organization Wildlife Direct, but she refused to answer simple questions about her relationship with the elite mercenary firm. McCrummen and the Washington Post peddled the line that the "beleaguered" Congo wildlife rangers—who have been blogging from the wilderness to support Wildlife Direct's web site and help raise funds abroad—"have not been paid in a decade." This set the stage for a massive infusion of funding from a Western public sympathetic to gorilla conservation. National Geographic News and Newsweek followed with major features that completely misrepresented the truth of gorilla conservation and the scandals involving big NGOs in both the "conservation" and "humanitarian" sector.
The Newsweek cover feature, “Gorilla Warfare: Even after 10 years of war, rangers are stunned by the mysterious killings of great apes in Africa's oldest park,” appeared on line on MSNBC.com July 29, 2007, with a dateline denoting its imminent appearance in the August 6 print issue. The story romantically describes rangers with “billowing green ponchos” and “AK-47’s,” not the Washington Post’s previous fiction of rusty machetes. Newsweek is a part of the Washington Post Company.
As accompanying photos clearly show, the Congo Rangers were not ill equipped. Their well-oiled weaponry and mercenary training begs the question why they could or would not protect the gorillas. The gorilla killings began when Wild Life Direct appeared on the scene early in 2007.
One of the rangers, Paulin Ngobobo, 43, is photographed backlit and quite elegantly dressed, as if for a Vanity Fair or GQ portrait. He is “a devout Christian” says Newsweek, seemingly grooming him for the next Conde Nast Traveler Environmental Award—given in 2005 to Central African hero Pierre Kakule of Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund fame in the Virungas—or the National Geographic Society/Buffet Award created by “philanthropist” Howard Buffet. The Newsweek portrait of debonair Congo ranger Paulin Ngobobo stands in sharp contradiction to the starving rangers described by the Post’s Stephanie McCrummen a few days earlier.
Another series of articles by independent journalists pointed to a massive infusion of USAID funds being used for clandestine guerrilla operations in the war-torn Great Lakes region.
Some 6 to 10 million people have died in Congo due to warfare and plunder of natural resources since 1996. Recent estimates by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) count 5.4 million dead with 45,000 people dying monthly or 1500 people daily. The IRC is an organization whose interests in the region indicate that it is actually UNDER-counting Congolese deaths in its highly funded "mortality surveys."
Independent media that published reports regarding conservation corruption in DRC include, OEN, COA News, and ZNET.
Georgianne Nienaber is an investigative environmental and political writer. She lives in rural northern Minnesota, New Orleans and South Florida. Her articles have appeared in The Society of Professional Journalists' Online (more...)
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
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