Friendships Rescue DRC’s Gorilla Reserve from Ruin

Aug 5, 2016 | Eugene Yiga
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Launched in 2013, the Virunga Alliance invests at least 30% of the Virunga National Park revenues into community development projects such as clinics, schools and better roads. The area’s high rainfall, coupled with its high mountains, means rivers are high in energy that can be converted into electricity. Director of the park, Emmanuel de Merode, believes a hydroelectric park, such as one inaugurated last year, could potentially cover 60% of the park’s running costs for the next 80 to 100 years. More than that, he believes that for every megawatt of electricity generated on a programme started in 2010, between 800 and 1,000 jobs can be created. Indeed, since the park reopened to the public in 2014, with the goal of generating $38m per year by 2020, many have come to admire its natural beauty.

The park has about 300 habituated mountain gorillas, with visitors able to spend up to an hour with the creatures. "The gorillas now represent one of the greatest successes in modern conservation; a population that, when I was a teenager, my parents described as a species I would never see when I grew up," De Merode says.