UN Launches Projects to Help Mountain Gorillas

Habitat destruction is a very serious threat to the mountain gorilla. Desperately poor people are devastating Virunga National Park in search of wood. This pressure has only increased with refugees from the many wars that have raged over the years.

From the UN News Centre....

The 2009 Year of the Gorilla (YoG) partnership is supporting a project enabling local residents in areas endangered by increasing demands for fuel – not least the Virunga National Park, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) – to buy low-cost, fuel-efficient stoves.

Other measures needed to target the reduction of charcoal production include solar cookers, tree-planting on farms and the widespread use of fuel-efficient stoves, UNEP said in a news release.

Further cause for concern to the agency is the signing of land deals by many gorilla range States with foreign companies for agriculture, including bio-fuel production.

There is a certain irony in that last sentence. The much-lauded production of biofuel is actually creating its own environmental hazard.