Park Predators - The Congo

Episode Date: August 30, 2022

An attempted assassination of the warden of Africa’s oldest national park reveals to the world the dangers and violence lurking inside one of the most beautiful landscapes on earth.Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit parkpredators.com  Park Predators is an audiochuck production. Connect with us on social media:Instagram: @audiochuckTwitter: @audiochuckFacebook: /audiochuckllcTikTok: @audiochuck

Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra, and the story I have for you today is probably the biggest and longest-spanning tale of predatory behavior I've ever heard about in a national park. It takes place in the Democratic Republic of Congo's Virunga National Park. The story is complicated because

there isn't just one perpetrator or isolated crime. This tale includes uncountable crimes, everything from murder, animal poaching, terrorism, bribery, and illegal resource mining. It's definitely a doozy, and the reason I wanted to cover it as the last episode of this season is because I think it's important that I use the platform this show has gained to feature cases in other countries, countries that admire and cherish their national parks just as much as residents of North America do, but who face obstacles and challenges far beyond what those of us in the U.S. or Canada could even imagine.

The first thing you need to know about the DRC is that according to BBC News Monitoring, it has a population of nearly 90 million people and is considered the most natural resource-rich country in the world. The United Nations has recognized DRC as the main home for vast deposits of diamonds, gold, copper, tin, lead, coal, oil, and other precious metals. Every year, billions of dollars worth of natural resources are mined in this country, and they're exported across the globe. But what's wild is that despite all that money being made, most of the people living in

the DRC are among the poorest on the planet. Injustices of slave trade and forced colonization back in the 16th and 17th centuries created deep divides in the nation, and in 1960, the country was hurled into a state of unrest, despite gaining its independence. Since 1997, ongoing civil war and rebellions over political elections have left the country marred by violence and murder. And caught right in the middle of all that turmoil is Virunga National Park, what many people consider to be heaven on earth in terms of its range of ecosystems and animal species. The park spans more than 3,000 square miles and has forest, savanna, volcanic, and jungle topography you can't help but marvel at. Seriously, go ahead, you can pause this episode and go google

it for yourself. But beneath and across all that beauty is a blanket of horrific violence that has left hundreds of Congolese park rangers dead and some of the rarest species of wildlife executed, all in the pursuit of April 15, 2014, 44-year-old Emmanuel Demirode was driving from the Congolese city of Goma back to his office inside Virunga National Park's headquarters, which was about 30 miles north of Goma back to his office inside Virunga National Park's headquarters, which was about 30 miles north of Goma. Emmanuel had made this commute many times, but this day was different. He suddenly stopped about 10 miles short of his destination. There, standing in front of him in the middle of the unpaved roadway,

were three men holding assault rifles. One of them had the barrel of his gun pointed directly at Emmanuel's windshield. This kind of threat was something Emmanuel knew was unavoidable. He'd yet to experience a full-on encounter like this, but because he knew he worked in a high-crime part of the country, he'd come prepared. He had an AK-47 rifle in his passenger seat, and he slowly inched his hand toward it to protect himself. Emmanuel was the director and chief warden of Virunga National Park, and ever since he'd taken the job six years earlier in 2008, he knew this day was bound to come. Virunga is Africa's oldest national park and touches borders with the DRC, Rwanda, and Uganda. Verbal threats on Emmanuel's life were

common. At nearly every turn in his work to conserve resources and animal species inside the park, as well as attempt to oust militia groups from the region, Emmanuel had seen Virunga met with extreme acts of violence, including the murders of dozens of park rangers. There were also major problems with ongoing poaching and illegal resource extraction. According to reporting by Men's Journal, within seconds of stopping his Land Rover SUV a few yards from the men with guns, Emanuel heard and saw the group fire their weapons. He barely had time to think before bullets flew through his windshield and engine block. Emanuel laid sideways on his front seat and slammed his foot on the accelerator,

attempting to bulldoze through the three men and their gunfire. But that effort didn't last, though, because several rifle rounds had punctured through the front end of the SUV, killing the engine almost immediately. After letting his vehicle roll to a stop, Emmanuel made a quick dash out of his driver's side door with his AK-47 in hand. He ran towards the cover of some nearby trees in the jungle, and while he was running away, his attackers kept firing, and they actually struck Emmanuel in the chest and stomach. About a hundred feet into the tree line,

Emmanuel stopped running because he was bleeding badly, and he looked back to see if he was being followed. No one seemed to be chasing him, but just for good measure, he fired every bullet out of his AK-47 in the direction of the roadway he'd come from, until the gun jammed multiple times. After that, he sat alone in the jungle, bleeding from his wounds for what felt like hours, but was actually closer to 30 minutes. His breathing became more and more labored, and Emmanuel began to worry that one of his lungs had been punctured. On top of that, he had a searing pain in his ribcage that would

not go away. When the effects of his injuries became too much to bear, Emmanuel felt sure that the rifle round he'd taken to his chest was wreaking havoc on his lungs. But until he could get some help, he didn't know for sure. So with the little bit of strength he had left, Emmanuel forced himself up and back out to the roadway he'd come from. The men who'd assaulted him were long gone, and the first car he saw, he flagged down. The driver didn't stop, though. It's just my assumption here, but I have to think that the driver was probably fearful of Emmanuel's appearance, covered in blood, and that's why they refused to pull over and help. But the next vehicle that came along was a guy on a motorbike, and he agreed to strap Emmanuel

to the back of it and drive him to a nearby village. The guy said a Congolese military truck would be waiting there. The location of the truck was back towards Goma, which is where Emmanuel knew he needed to get to in order to have any chance of receiving real medical treatment. According to Men's Journal, unfortunately, the military truck that was at the village was not equipped with medical supplies or gas, and it eventually broke down. Emmanuel was transported to another military truck after that, but just like the first one, that vehicle broke down too. So after several hours of being moved to and from different trucks and cars and bumping along rural roads in the Congolese forest,

Emmanuel eventually made it to a hospital in Goma. When he arrived, he quickly learned he needed to have surgery to remove the bullets in his chest and stomach. But the surgeon and the medical staff who were going to be operating on him were from different volunteer aid organizations, and they spoke different languages. Some of them only spoke French, and others only spoke English, so even though they were able to talk to Emmanuel, who was fluent in both of those languages, they were unable to communicate with one another. Emmanuel's only option to save his life was to become an interpreter for his doctors during his own emergency surgery. Just think about that for a minute. Can you even

imagine being wide awake while having bullets removed from your body and translating for the physicians about how they were going to need to work together to save you? Anyway, Emmanuel spent four days recovering in Goma before being flown to another hospital in Kenya, where he spent three more days recuperating. BBC News reported that doctors determined a bullet had pierced one of his lungs and another had shattered several of his ribs. Somehow, though, all of his vital organs had been spared.

And if that wasn't wild enough, by April 22nd, eight days after being shot, Emmanuel walked out of his Kenyan hospital room fully recovered and reportedly holding his own IV bag. News of his attempted murder hit local and global headlines pretty quickly. The Associated Press, BBC News, and The Guardian all reported that the circumstances surrounding the assault and who might have been responsible were suspicious, if not downright murky. Some sources speculated the ambush was the act of an independent rebel militia group just wanting to strike back at the park rangers of Virunga National for barring human activity within the boundary of the park. But

others suggested the attack had been a result of a larger, much darker plot. Several publications pointed fingers at suspected shadowy figures from large oil corporations that were hell-bent on extracting raw petroleum and other natural resources from Virunga. These individuals would have wanted nothing more than to see Emmanuel, a staunch conservationist, gone for good. Emmanuel himself didn't confirm or deny any such rumors, though. He released an official statement through the Park Service saying in part, quote,

Unfortunately, the attack is not an uncommon incident for Virunga National Park. Our rangers are targeted frequently due to their difficult work in protecting the park and its many valuable resources. They continue to face such risks to restore peace and the rule of law to the area and the people in their care. I have been made aware that a full investigation is now underway by the appropriate legal authorities, and I have confidence in the process that's been initiated by the Congolese authorities. For my part, I have no indication as to who may have engineered this attack and would respectfully ask that others

refrain from speculation prior to the findings of the inquiry. I hope to recover very soon. I am looking forward to getting back to my work with renewed vigor." End quote. Despite not outright accusing any one back to my work with renewed vigor, end quote. Despite not outright accusing any one particular group for what happened to him, Emmanuel remained adamant that whoever was behind the attack was not going to throw him off his mission. He intended to see all the park projects and conservation efforts he wanted to accomplish materialize. But the lingering doubt about who could have been behind his attempted assassination remained in the global press, and slowly but surely, bits of information started seeping out about what really had been going on inside Virunga National Park.

According to Damon Tabor's reporting for an article in Men's Journal, violence against park rangers and wildlife in Virunga really started escalating in the mid-2000s. In 2004, the guy who was the park's director before Emmanuel took over was reported to be corrupt. Some source material states that the old warden paid off his own rangers to purposefully ignore illegal charcoal mining and trading operations. to be corrupt. Some source material states that the old warden paid off his own rangers to purposefully ignore illegal charcoal mining and trading operations. In return for allowing militia groups to extract those precious resources, the warden and any complicit rangers would get paid on the side. Between 2004 and 2007, things had gotten so bad in the park that rare wildlife species were getting caught in the middle and being killed, most notably the native mountain gorillas that are iconic to the park. According

to BBC News, about 80% of the planet's remaining mountain gorillas lived in Burunga at the time. To this day, that's still the case. In 2007, multiple news outlets reported that a well-known male silverback gorilla that had been photographed by publications for decades, as well as four female gorillas that familyed with him, were massacred. The images of their sprawled-out, bullet-ridden carcasses were splashed all over newspapers worldwide and public outrage ensued. The Institute for Congolese Conservation of Nature, also known as ICCN, which is the overarching entity that the Virunga Park Rangers

are housed under, launched a formal investigation to figure out why so many gorillas had been slaughtered. After looking into the incident, what they found was pretty peculiar. They realized the people responsible for killing the primates were not killing them for their meat, fur, or to steal their babies, which apparently, when the babies are sold, it's at a very high black market price. But the poachers were executing the gorillas because the animals made the land where natural resources existed inaccessible. Basically, for charcoal smugglers to access the forests and get the resources they wanted, they had to eliminate the most dangerous threat in their path, which were families of wild gorillas. Emmanuel told National Geographic that the gorilla killings were also considered a targeted message to park rangers.

It was meant to discourage them from trying to protect the park and enforce anti-extraction laws. Essentially, the massacre was the militia group's way of saying, hey, if you don't stop preventing us from mining what we want and transporting it out of the park, we're going to kill the precious animals you love and are sworn to protect. It's a pretty messed up thing when you think about it. By August of 2008, public outcry over the guerrilla killings had reached a fever pitch, and the warden who'd been directing the park before Emmanuel ended up being loosely tied to the violent act. Most of the source material I found, though, says that that guy was never prosecuted. Thankfully, he did eventually get removed from his position as the park's director,

and just a few months later, Emmanuel took over as warden. Within a month of him accepting the role, things in the park went from bad to worse. A group of rebels stormed the park's headquarters and occupied it for several weeks. Eventually, the Congolese military bombed the buildings and a lot of the rebels were driven out, but they still held the high ground within the boundary of the park. For months, park rangers who fled the compound when it was attacked were forced to live in the jungle and most of them got sick or died from disease or

starvation. At that point, Emmanuel was forced to broker a deal with the warlord that was leading the rebel group. The arrangement that they came to allowed park staff to re-enter the forest and rescue any surviving rangers, as well as conduct a population survey of the remaining mountain gorillas. The warlord who'd taken over promised that militia groups would stop killing the animals, and for a short time, there was a slight sense of peace. But that peace didn't last for long, though. Eventually, more militia groups came into the region and began warring with one another for resource territory.

Once again, caught in the middle were native wildlife species and park rangers. Emmanuel had made it his mission after becoming the park's director to beef up rangers' ability to combat illegal activities, as well as violent fighters who crossed over into the park's territory. He ensured that Rangers received proper military training, had better equipment, could utilize aircraft during patrols, and were aided by military support when possible. Men's Journal reported that he raised Rangers' wages from $5 an hour to $200 an hour, and he equipped them with tactical gear that would help them survive firefights in the jungle. By 2012 gun battles between a militia group known as M23 and the park rangers waged daily. BBC news reported that hundreds of civilians were killed

in the crossfire and the violence got so bad that the park closed to all visitors for almost a year. In addition to bullets flying and bombs going off all the time, a new threat had emerged that Emmanuel told news reporters was one of even greater concern to him, big oil corporations. In 2011, a year before the violence had really gotten bad, Emmanuel had secured funding for a hydroelectric power plant

to be built on the park's eastern boundary. The goal of the project was to create power from the park's natural rivers and deliver it in a sustainable way to hundreds of thousands of impoverished Congolese people. The power plant would also create more jobs. Local residents would have an opportunity for employment that they never had before. The ability to work for legitimate wages instead of working for militia groups who were illegally siphoning resources from Burunga. But the Congolese people leaving the militia groups and getting real work

meant that the militia groups would dwindle. Several news outlets reported that those groups getting smaller in size and losing their grip of power over the jungle was a reality that big oil corporations interested in coming into the area did not want to see happen. BBC News and Men's Journal reported that starting in 2006, two large oil companies from Europe had been interested in drilling on land in eastern Congo. One was a French company named Total,

and the other was a London-based company called Soco International. Both companies had been awarded permits to conduct surveys on blocks of land in the Congo to see if oil reserves existed there. Portions of those blocks of land overlapped with the boundary of Virunga National Park. As anticipated, preliminary seismic surveys showed promising signs that lots of oil was beneath the lake in the northern section of the park, called Lake Edward. Thanks to resistance from environmentalist groups, by 2012, Total had pulled out completely and decided to stop its oil drilling efforts in Virunga.

Saco International, though, had not been so quick to volunteer to back off. The company reportedly spent millions of dollars to survey an oil reserve beneath Lake Edward. The reserve was said to house 2.5 billion barrels of oil, which Damon Tabor reported was more oil than existed in North America's largest reserve in Alaska. Essentially, it was a petroleum jackpot. While all this surveying had been going on between 2011 and 2012, Emanuel had heard reports from his rangers that white men had been mysteriously appearing at the park's entrances,

claiming to be from Saco or one of their subsidiaries. The men had told rangers that the Congolese authorities had authorized them to survey Lake Edward for oil, but Emmanuel and his staff did not like the men's approach or lack of legitimate paperwork proving their claims, so they repeatedly turned them away. work proving their claims, so they repeatedly turned them away. By the end of 2012, Emanuel had compiled a list of incidents involving suspected Saco spies and employees. During this time, he partnered with a British filmmaker to expose the company as a real threat to the National Park. According to the Netflix film Virunga, for a year and a half, the film's production crew, along with investigative journalists, wore hidden cameras and collected damning videos and audio of Sacco. A lot of the footage was with businessmen and

corrupt Congolese officials who met in secret to discuss how the company was willing to pay off rebel militia groups to create routes within the park that Sacco's mining surveyors could use. On the day Emmanuel was shot, April 15, 2014, he'd been returning from delivering his full investigative report to the National Parks team of lawyers in Goma about Sacco's actions. Now, whether or not the gunmen who attempted to murder Emmanuel that day in the jungle were hired by Sacco has never been proven. After the attempt on Emmanuel's life, though, the Netflix documentary released at the Tribeca Film Festival, and the whole world got to see the criminal and violent events that had been taking place inside the park. In the wake of the film's impact, Sacco released an official statement denying any accusations of bribery or involvement in Emmanuel's attempted murder. The company said, quote, According to reporting by The Independent, after 2015,

Emmanuel started traveling in an armor-plated Land Rover with several guards escorting him at all times. He rarely left the boundary of the park and only got to see his wife and children a few times a year at their home in Kenya. He told news reporters that even though the circumstances of his life and the demands of his position as the park's director weren't ideal, he was committed to his lifestyle because he believed in the work he was doing to conserve the park, and he believed that keeping violence out of the region was important. The nearly 800 park rangers who worked under him faced the same threats Emmanuel did, but they were definitely more on the front lines. According to a BBC News article published in 2014, since 1996, more than 130 park rangers had been murdered in the line of duty

while patrolling the park. Emanuel told the National Geographic Society that the total number of dead rangers was actually far higher than 130 because during the late 1990s and early 2000s, the park was not keeping track of when rangers would disappear into the forest, never to be seen alive again. He said that dozens of rangers died on the job or were killed by militia groups, and those deaths simply went unrecorded. Over time, the death toll of Virunga rangers has steadily climbed. In April and May of 2018 alone, at least eight rangers were gunned down in separate incidents while on duty.

An official statement from the park said that all of the dead rangers were between 20 down in separate incidents while on duty. An official statement from the park said that all of the dead rangers were between 20 and 30 years old. They each had children and families of their own. One of them, a female ranger, who was just one of 26 women working on the force, had been killed while protecting two British tourists and their driver, who were traveling near the northern border of the park. BBC News reported that those two tourist names were Bethann Davies and Robert Jeste. The couple had been the only people to survive the roadside attack, and they were kidnapped and held for ransom. The publication reported that eventually Bethann and Robert's captors released them, but park officials never

confirmed on record if their families or the British government ever paid ransom to the abductors. Immediately following that kidnapping, UK.gov posted a travel advisory warning all citizens to avoid traveling to the Congo until the Congolese government communicated that it was safe to do so. The advisory said, quote, the risk of kidnap or injury as a result of armed or criminal activity remains high. UK government staff being taken hostage in the summer of 2018, Emmanuel Desmarais closed Virunga National Park to all tourism. That move caused a major problem for the park, one that to this day remains nearly insurmountable.

By closing Virunga National Park in 2018, the park service lost nearly a quarter of its income that year. According to BBC News, just one mountain gorilla guided tour cost $400. And if you wanted to stay in the park at a designated ranger-protected shelter, you had to pay a minimum of $300 a night. So you can see where closing the park to tourism really created a deficit in Virunga's finances. A huge chunk of the park's budget supported sanctuaries for the mountain gorillas. Handfuls of orphaned gorillas whose parents had been poached or killed in the massacre of 2007 were living in sanctuaries run by park staff members. The cost to keep those havens running

was not cheap. On top of that, there were some reports that came out in 2019 that raised doubt about how park rangers and staff were treating residents who either intentionally or mistakenly conducted resource harvesting in the park. Here's how the articles I read explained it. Basically, because there was constant threat of violence towards rangers and ongoing smuggling of natural resources, some conservation researchers said there had been a noticeable shift in how park staff interacted and dealt with people they'd catch illegally accessing natural resources in the park. According to a blog by the Knowledge Management Fund and Knowledge Platform Security and Rule of Law, surveys conducted in 2019 with residents living

in 11 villages surrounding the park showed that most citizens who were impoverished said the park's enforcement efforts had gotten harsher and harsher over the years. The article said that locals lamented about how the park rangers were arresting people nearly on suspicion of being associated with militia groups or illegally extracting resources. Fines for infractions had skyrocketed and arrests had gotten more and more physical. Park officials repeatedly denied those claims, though, and said that upholding the human rights of Congolese citizens during arrests was always a priority. Whatever the case may be for how park rangers interacted with locals, the fact remains that rangers have still been dying in

record numbers inside the park. According to a press release from park officials, in 2019, 13 rangers were killed by rebels in an ambush attack while on patrol. A year after that, in 2020, while the park was closed to visitors due to COVID-19, at least seven rangers were slaughtered in two separate blitz attacks. Caught in the crossfire were handfuls of civilians. As recently as 2021, the death toll has continued to rise. At least six rangers were killed while on duty in the park in January of that year, and violence against non-park staff has continued as well. According to BBC News,

Italy's ambassador to the DRC, a 43-year-old man named Luca Atanasio was brutally murdered on February 22, 2021, when a group of rebels ambushed his vehicle. Luca was traveling right outside of Goma to a small village near the park as part of a UN food program convoy. News reports stated that six armed fighters surrounded his entourage and began firing assault weapons. The rebels shot Luca, who was riding in the passenger seat of a Humvee, and they killed his bodyguard and driver. Italian authorities told news outlets that the motive for the attack

appeared to be an attempted kidnapping, but instead of grabbing Luca and using him for ransom, the militia group had killed him, likely by accident. The United Nations said that the terrorists behind all of the killings, Luca's murder, as well as all of the murders of the Rangersangers, were suspected people who belonged to what's

called the Maimai. Maimai is a term for more than 100 different rebel militant factions that are all products of civil wars in eastern Congo as well as Rwanda. These groups are adding to and subtracting from their numbers all of the time, so it's very hard for authorities to keep track. As of 2021, Virunga National Park has roughly 690 male and female rangers who work to protect natural resources, animal species, tourists, and innocent civilians. Every day their efforts are met with violence and casualties. Something that stuck with me after researching and writing this story is just the sheer bravery of these men and women, and definitely the bravery of Emmanuel Desmaraux. According to The Independent,

Emmanuel could have had a completely different life for himself if he wanted to. His family is made up of Belgian aristocrats, and he comes from unlimited wealth. According to some sources, he's technically considered a prince far down the chain of Belgium's noble bloodline. But instead of living in one of his family's many estates and castles or pursuing a career in a lucrative trade, he's chosen to work in the jungles of the Congo, fighting for people and animals that he loves. He's a white man who, since the early 1990s, has been operating in a world that looks and feels entirely different than his upbringing. Globe Newswire reported in 2016 that since Emmanuel took over as the park's director,

the mountain gorilla population in Burunga has doubled in size. He's a man who's accomplished a lot, faced true predators head-on in multiple dangerous arenas, and he's lived to tell about it on the world stage. For that, I think he deserves some serious credit. Park Predators is an Audiochuck production. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?