Starved by war, hungry Congolese turn to park animals for survival

KAHUZI-BIEGA NATIONAL PARK, Congo - Lubanga Bulabi and his 22-year-old son lived on game before their forest home was turned into a moneymaking goritia reserve. Now, hungry Batwa Pygmies of southeastern Congo say they have no choice but to resume their hunt for lowland gorillas and antelope that live in the national park.

The two men, barefoot and clothed in rags, were. caught last week in the dense forest of Kahuzi-Biega National Park on suspicion of poaching gorillas.

Fueled by Congo'g second war in three years, illegal hunting has come close to wiping out the gorillas, forest elephants and antelopes. Their southeastern Congo jungie habitat, tucked between the steep mountain peaks of Kahuzi and Biega and the rocky shores of Lake Kivu, once attracted thousands of tourist's each year, including Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

"This is a carnage," said park director Norbert Mushenzi. "If it continues, we may as well close, the park" Like other poachers in the area, Bulabi doesn't think he is , doing anything wrong. The 50-year-old Pygmy trekker is landless, jobless and must feed his  two children and wife.

In 1970 when the park was created, the government evicted Bulabi without compensation. Corruption, mismanagement and two wars have left in the park defenseless front, poachers and its infrastructure in tatters.

In many ways, the state of the, park reflects the stateof Congo, Africa's third-largest nation: no money, no jobs, no security. The result is an animal reserve struggling to pay its guards, and guides whose guns and uniforms, have been stolen by government and rebel soldiers. "The poachers are villagers who are living inside the park and hunt down animals for meat," said John Kahekwa, a ranger who says he guided Gates to one of six gorilla families in August 1993. Besides poachers, corrupt officials are said to be raising cattle on park land, depriving gorillas of precious habitat. 'The result is that only two gorilla families are known to remain.  A male whose silverback father was shot by poachers shied away from visitors on Friday and ran deeper into the forest, trying to hide among the bamboo.

The other gorilla families cannot be traced and are presumed dead Rangers said they occasionally came across a tuft of silver hair or bone.

In 1996, the park had 260 gorillas. Since April, 20 gorillas have been killed. for food, Kahekwa said Before that, the park had lost 94 gorillas, including the famed silverback Mushamuka, who acted in the 1988 movie "Gorillas in the Mist' about American researcher Diane Fossey.

Lowland gorillas are endangered though there are still 12,000 in band that stretches across central Africa. The western lowland gorillas, live in Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, the Central African Republic and the Republic of Congo. But it is their eastern cousins in the former Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, that are hunted as food.

The economy of the eastern Kivu region has come to a standstill because of the arrival of refugees from Rwanda following the 1994 genocide and two civil wars. Former Rwandan Hutu soldiers allied with pro-government fighters called Mai-Mai, have raided villages and killed cattle, forcing residents to hunt game to survive. In the meantime, Kahekwa wait for better days - and maybe even return visit from Gates.

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