Congo-Kinshasa: UN Experts to Probe Killing of Highly Endangered Mountain Gorillas

[leftchick]

Source: UN News Service

A United Nations-supported expert mission leaves for the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) tomorrow to investigate the apparently senseless slaughter of mountain gorillas, a highly endangered species living only in national parks on the country's north-eastern border with Uganda and Rwanda.

"There is grave concern for the mountain gorillas as the latest killings are inexplicable," said the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which is organizing the 10-day mission with the World Conservation Union (IUCN), a union of governments, government agencies, and non-governmental organizations.

"They do not correspond to traditional poaching where animals are killed for commercial purposes. Furthermore the killings have taken place despite the increased guard patrols and the presence of military forces in the area," it added in a statement.

Seven mountain gorillas have been shot and killed this year, four of them last month, in the DRC's Virunga National Park, more than during the conflict that wracked Africa's Great Lakes region in the late 1990s. Some 700 of the large animals, inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage in Danger list, are estimated to still survive in the tri-border areas, about 370 of them in Virunga.



Read more: http://allafrica.com/stories/200708100784.html

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Help here.....http://www.wildlifedirect.org/blogAdmin/gorilla

[JuniperLea]

1. Oh, dear GOD!

How could anyone kill such a beautiful creature without feeling like they were killing a human being?!?!?

This is so sad.

[Barrett808]

2. k & r

[MasonJar]

3. It breaks my heart to even look at those pictures. I have given an

ongoing donation to an organization which is supposedly trying to help these magnificent and innocent animals. Why is man so cruel and inhumane? It is the animals that are humane; we should be reclassified.

[leftchick]

4. I agree

humans are the worst thing to happen to Earth. :(

[Yupster]

5. Some of the few remaining troupes

need to be removed to safer grounds. One place I would suggest is the island of Kauai in Hawaii. There is a triple growth rainforest there that can be easily protected and is as safe as anywhere I can think of. It looks just made for gorillas.