Alternative Fuel Helps Gorillas!
Wednesday, January 27, 2010 at 11:00AMBlog by: John Huston
Agriculture Project Coordinator – MGVP One Health Program
One of the greatest threats to the mountain gorillas living in Virunga Massif (Dem. Rep. of Congo) is charcoal. This may sound odd at first, but let me explain the connection.
People need a fuel source to heat their homes and to be able to cook food and boil water, and, in this part of the world, they use charcoal. Charcoal is the primary fuel source because very few homes have access to electricity and very few families can afford it where it is accessible. Charcoal, however, is relatively cheap, and in this region of lush forests, it’s easy to get the raw materials necessary for manufacturing.
Burning charcoal and wood seems to make sense on the surface because, after all, it is a renewable resource. Unfortunately, the demands of overpopulation in this region have resulted in massive deforestation to create opportunities for the cultivation of food. There is some agro-forestry but an alarming proportion of the available charcoal is from trees that have been cut illegally in protected areas, the national parks of the Virunga Massif where mountain gorillas live.
Besides destroying wildlife habitat, the illegal park entries create opportunities for disease transmission between humans and non-human primates. Participants of the illegal charcoal trade utilize poaching as a source of food while in the forest. Many of the poor people of the region are exploited and forced to participate in transport of this illegal product from the forest to the urban areas of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Rwanda. The continuous demand from the human population for fuel has helped this illegal enterprise evolve to a 30-million-dollar business in the city of Goma, DRC alone.
One way to protect the gorillas within the forest is to improve the livelihood for people living nearby. We work closely with individual farm families in many communities near the Virunga Massif to help them shift from subsistence agriculture to more sustainable living. One effort involves the development of small business opportunities that will increase cash flow to the family.
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