The Rwandan genocide of 1994 was responsible for the migration of 450,000 refugees into the Virunga Mountains. The refugees were displaced again in 1996 during the civil war which ended the Mobutu regime, followed by a second civil war in 1998.
Juichi Yamagiwa is a Japanese primatologist and former student of Dian Fossey. Fossey speaks highly of him in her writings and Yamagiwa has extensive conservation experience in DRC.
He writes in “Bushmeat Poaching and the Conservation Crisis,” that the killing of gorillas over the years since 1994 is due to the “tragic consequences of the social, political, and economic instability that developed in the region with the collapse of the Mobutu regime and the subsequent refugee crisis and civil wars.” He also says that “habituation of gorillas and promotion of tourism may not be the best solution for conservation of gorillas and the development of local communities.”
“It is plausible Yamagiwa writes in 2003, “that the habituation of gorillas [by conservation groups] facilitated the rapid poaching of certain gorillas.”
Who killed the mountain gorillas? Multi-national and strategic interests, including those of Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi, fueled by white supremacy and cloaked in the mantle of “conservation,” killed the mountain gorillas.
