If you’ll remember back at the end of October I posted that Anderson Cooper was in Congo interviewing the Virunga National Park Rangers for an upcoming “60 Minutes” episode. He interviewed Director Mushenzi, Innocent, Diddy and Augustin Kambale. I’m not sure if he was able to get in touch with Paulin Ngobobo for an interview, though.
The episode airs this Sunday, December 9 at 7 p.m. ET/PT.
You don’t want to miss this in-depth look at the hardships faced by the rangers who haven’t been able to track the habituated gorilla families in more than three months. The situation in DR Congo is the worst humanitarian crisis in Africa at the moment. Sexual violence against women and little girls is carried out by Nkunda’s rebel troops and the Congolese army. You can read more about that in the Manioc Valley blog, as well as read a touching and desperate open letter that was written by the “Women of North Kivu” and sent to Human Rights Watch.
CBS has posted a preview of Anderson’s visit to a habituated gorilla family in Rwanda and it’s quite stunning. Here’s the description of the program from the CBS News e-mail message:
We begin Sunday’s broadcast with a closer look at one of the worst tragedies in the animal kingdom this past year: the intentional massacre of 10 rare mountain gorillas in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Only about 700 are left on earth, most live in a forest that straddles Rwanda, Uganda and the Congo. The mountain gorillas in Rwanda and Uganda are relatively safe, but those in the Congo are threatened by a civil war and by charcoal dealers who want to turn their forest into charcoal. Rob Muir, of the Frankfurt Zoological Society, says it was those charcoal dealers who killed the gorillas because their human protectors are trying to stop them from cutting down trees. “They want to intimidate and scare the Congolese wildlife authority. The message was: ‘If you don’t stop we can kill all the gorillas.’” CNN’s Anderson Cooper climbs high in the jungles of Rwanda to see some of the remaining gorillas up close.
Set your timers and Tivos and don’t miss this program!
Also, please donate to my Gorilla Protection campaign – the button is in my sidebar. This money is collected to buy firewood for about 4,000 Congolese people who’ve been displaced from their homes by the war between the FARDC (DRC army) and dissident general Laurent Nkunda. They are very near the Park’s borders, they have no food, no water, nothing. Wildlife Direct is working to supply these people with wood from a sustainable yield forest so they can build fires to stay warm and not destroy the forest habitat of the endangered mountain gorillas. They need your help. Wouldn’t a donation to help these people and the gorillas be a great Christmas gift?
s.
Filed under: endangered species, Mountain gorillas, Virunga National Park Rangers
