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| Location: |
Africa - Eastern Africa - Sudan |
| Subject: |
Distribution - Records |
| Species: |
White Rhino |
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But the bulk of the population before 1963 was in the Garamba National Park in north-eastern Congo, in the Uele area. There, since 1938, it had been virtually undisturbed, and, thanks to the continuous research which characterised the Congo national parks before 1960, population figures are known for several periods (see the Table on page 264).
The Garamba National Park was established in 1938 primarily to protect both the square-lipped rhinoceros and the giraffe Giraffa carnelopardalis, which do not occur elsewhere in the Congo. The rhino was rare in the park, with probably not more than 100 animals. But with total protection numbers began to increase at an accelerating rate, indicating an astonishingly high rate of reproduction. In 1950-52 there were 250-300; in 1956, 730; in 1960, 1190, and in 1963, when the last count was made before rebel forces from the Sudan invaded the Garamba and occupied a considerable part of the Congo, the figure was 1202. For the next three years there was heavy fighting in and around the park, and nothing was known about the wildlife situation.
In April-May 1966 I was invited as representative of IUCN, to accompany the Congo Minister of Agriculture on a three-week inspection tour of the provinces devastated in the fighting (CurryLindahl 1966, a, b, c; Oryx, August 1966). This mission, the first visit of a Central Government Minister to the Uele, Kibali-lturi and Northern Kivu regions after liberation, (although eight isolated rebel pockets were still operating), gave high priority to conservation problems. The many conflicting reports made it difficult to get a clear picture of what precisely had happened in the Garamba, and the followling account combines what I saw myself with information mainly from national park officials and other trustworthy sources.
The Invasion
Up to 1963 poaching had increased very little following independence. Poachers from the Sudan often raided the park's northern sector, but the Sudanese authorities and the park rangers had some control. In 1963 the situation changed abruptly when well-armed rebel forces from bases in the Sudan occupied the Garamba completely, and later the whole northeastern Congo. The park conservators and rangers were helpless against the rebels. The leaders, with plenty of money at their disposal, paid their soldiers astonishingly high wages so it was not difficult to get new recruits, and 77 rangers deserted to the rebels; nineteen who remained loyal soon had to flee into the bush. The national park was literally abandoned, and then proclaimed an open hunting area for all local people.
The square-lipped rhino with its confiding habits and mild temper was an obvious victim, and in 1966 nobody could give even an approximate figure of how many had been killed. National park officials said between 100 and 200, and 37 skulls had been found in the national park that year. However, PFre Plafilet of the Catholic Mission in Bunia told me that in April-May 1965 he had seen at least 200, possibly as many as 400 rhino horns at the headquarters of the territorial administrator at Faradje, nearest town to the Garamba. They had been prepared with an oily substance, probably against termites and ants. Stacked upright and close together they covered almost the whole floor of a terrace I measured to be 10.5 x 3 m. M. Albert Couillier, Chief of the Police of the Kibali-Ituri province, whose boundaries march with those of Garamba on the eastern and southeastern sides, told me that in February 1966 he saw about 100 rhino horns on the same terrace. People in Faradje said that the mercenaries were more occupied hunting rhinos than fighting rebels. But the German mercenaries stationed at Faradje since the end of March 1966 claimed it was the Sudanese poachers and A.N.C. soldiers under Congolese command who had massacred rhinos and other game in the park.
The Territorial Administrator was away when I visited Faradje, but his assistant told me that all the rhino horns kept at Faradje had been sequestered and sold. Rhino horns were still kept in a store house belonging to local authorities, but the man who had the keys was said to be absent. Through a window I saw about 50 large horns.
These three reports reveal that at least 350-550 rhinos had been killed and their horns had passed through Faradje; to this number must be added rhinos killed by rebels, mercenaries and Sudanese poachers. A year later about 500 square-lipped rhino horns were found in Mombasa harbour awaiting dispatch (illegally) to the far East.
Conditions in the National Park
During an eight-hour drive in the southern sector of the Garamba, on May 6, 1966, I observed 19 rhinos, and at every stop we saw them. Some were close to us and did not seem to be panicked by the three cars. I got the impression that there must be a fairly good population in this sector, of which I visited only a fraction. But the northern sector was empty of rhinos and other game (except one lelwel hartebeest), and so were the western and eastern peripheries of the national park. In a flight on May 11, in a small single-engine aircraft, covering almost all the rest of the park, together with PFre Plaillet and Mr. Maurice Nelis, we counted only 28 rhinos, all in the southern sector. Square-lipped rhinos are relatively easy to detect from the air in the Garamba savannas, where almost every rhino has one or more cattle egrets perched on its back; resting in the shade under a tree, on the other hand, they may remain unobserved from the air. So it was a very rough and perhaps optimistic estimate that 100 rhinos survived in the Garamba in 1966, especially when compared with the result of our counts (19 + 28 = 47 rhinos). If, however, the estimate was approximately correct, 900-1100 rhinos had been killed since 1963.
The figures obtained on May 6, 1966, along the Nagero-GarambaRiver road indicated an extremely high concentration of animals, except for giraffe, compared with Verschuren's figures (1958) along the same road in 1951. His maximum firures for one day's count were rhino 5, elephant 41, buffalo 40, giraffe 40, lelwel 15, kob 24.
Recommendations
Our recommendations to the Minister of Agriculture, which were accepted, strongly urged the goverrunent to arm the national park rangers, patrol the park boundaries constantly, particularly along the Sudanese border, make a census of all larger mammals as soon as possible, ensure that all military personnel received strict orders to respect the regulations of the national park and, when necessary, to defend it, and treat all sequestered rhino horns as the property of the central government and not, as at that time, of the local authorities.
However, the difficulties in the Garainba continued, chiefly due to the chaotic situation prevailing in the Sudan where a guerrilla war ravaged the area along the Congo border, and Sudanese poaching continued. During my stay in May 1967 at the Ministry of Agriculture in Kinshasa an urgent cable from the park's Conservator asked for help against armed rebels who had again invaded the park and were killing several rhinos daily, taking only the horns. 1 immediately saw the Minister of Agriculture and the Secretary General of the same ministry, and soldiers were sent to drive out the poachers, with strict orders to respect the national park.
In 1969, Dr. Jacques Verschuren was appointed Director General of the New Institut National Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature, which is responsible for the administration of the Congo national parks. Early in 1970 he reported (in litt.) that he estimated the population of the square-lipped rhino in the Garamba at about 50 individuals (Oryx, May 1970), later reduced, after further incursions by Sudanese poachers to only 20-30 animals. In April this year came news that the latest white rhino count showed 252 animals, but according to Dr. Verschuren (in litt. & verbally) this figure is far from being correct. Hence the situation is still very critical, when it is remembered that the animals in the Garamba and Murchison Falls National Parks, about 50 individuals altogether, and the 80 - 100 in the Ajai Sanctuary, in the West Nile Province, may be the only surviving populations of the northern race anywhere.
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War and the white rhinos
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