Dakar, Senegal – Rebels in eastern Congo have killed and eaten two silverback mountain gorillas, conservationists said Wednesday, warning they fear more of the endangered animals may have been slaughtered in the lawless region.
Only about 700 mountain gorillas remain in the world, 380 of them spread across a range of volcanic mountains straddling the borders of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda in Central Africa.
One dismembered gorilla corpse was found Tuesday in a pit latrine in Congo’s Virunga National Park, a few hundred yards from a park patrol post that was abandoned because of rebel attacks, according to the London-based Africa Conservation Fund. Another was killed in the same area Jan. 5, said the group, which based its report on conservationists in the field.
The group blamed rebels loyal to a local warlord, Laurent Nkunda, for the latest killing. Nkunda is a renegade soldier who commands thousands of fighters in the vast country’s east who have in recent years attacked cities and clashed with government forces.
Silverbacks are older adult males and usually group leaders, though some are loners.
Paulin Ngobobo, a senior warden at the park, wrote online at wildlifedirect.org about finding the remains.
“We’ve learned a lot: The gorilla had in fact been eaten for meat. His name was Karema, another solitary silverback that had been born into a habituated group – meaning that he had grown to trust humans enough to let them come to within touching distance,” Ngobobo wrote. “We learned the remaining gorillas are extremely vulnerable – the rebels are after the meat.”
