February 26, 2009 8:26 PM
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Gorillas: Kings Of Congo
You can see the fires from the air. Robert Muir of the Frankfurt Zoological Society took 60 Minutes and Cooper for a tour.
"They're cutting down the forest. And they're smoking it out basically," Muir explains. "And they will continue to move further and deeper into the forest cutting down prime habitat."
It's being carried away bag by bag, step by step.
Women carry huge bags of charcoal for miles on their shoulders. Men wheel bigger loads to market on wooden bikes. It's a multi-million dollar business, illegal but backed by powerful interests -- businessmen, soldiers, and corrupt government officials -- a charcoal mafia. When rangers tried to stop the destruction of the forest, Rob Muir says the charcoal mafia killed the gorillas. It was a warning to the rangers to back off.
"First, in June, a female gorilla was found, killed, a bullet to the back of her heart execution style," Muir says. "They want to intimidate and scare the Congolese wildlife authority."
"The message was if you don't stop we can kill all the gorillas," he adds.
But the rangers refused to stop. "Determined not to give in to this kind of blackmail, if you like, continued, even upped their campaign to try and dismantle the charcoal production," Muir tells Cooper. "And then a month later the Rugendo family was decimated. I'm sure that the charcoal mafia were behind this."
Asked how one could solve the charcoal problem, considering it's used by everyone and they have no other source, Muir says, "Provide alternative fuel, butane, for example."
But butane requires special stoves and buying that equipment for every family would cost tens of millions of dollars.
"So it would need to be subsidized. I mean, we desperately need donors, the EU, the World Bank, someone like that to really come in and say, 'Hey we've got some money here,' you know, we appreciate this is urgent, you know, if we don't act now, we could lose the gorillas,'" Muir says.
Muir says two babies were orphaned this summer when charcoal makers killed their mothers. One baby was found clinging to its dead mother's corpse; the other had been pulled to safety by an older brother, but was starving without its mother's milk. Rangers rescued both orphans, and vets are still trying to nurse them back to health.
"Have you ever seen these mountain gorillas as under threat as they are now?" Cooper asks Muir.
"Never. I don't think I don't think they have ever been as threatened as they are currently today," he replies.
Just how threatened? No one knows, because the rangers haven't been able to see Congo's gorillas for more than three months.
Almost 200 mountain gorillas live in the Congo along the forested slopes of a volcano. The problem is there're more than a half dozen armed rebel groups fighting government forces in and around those forests, and the rangers who protect the gorillas have had to flee. That means Congo's entire population of mountain gorillas is now left unprotected and they're caught in the middle of a civil war.
Rangers tell Cooper that because they are cut off from the gorillas and cannot get to them, they don't know what is happening to the remaining population.
Congo may be a dangerous county for gorillas, but it's even deadlier for people. There's been fighting for more than ten years and more than a hundred rangers have been killed. At a rangers' post outside the park, their sign is pockmarked with bullet holes.
"Over 300 rebels would surround a patrol post during the night and just shoot it to hell. Heavy artillery, bombing," Muir tells Cooper.
Asked why, Muir says, "With no care for human life and they're after the rangers' equipment. Ammunition, rifles, they see the rangers as a soft target."
Muir says the rangers are outnumbered and outgunned. "This is probably the most dangerous park on the planet," he says.
So dangerous that all the rangers can do now is gaze at the forest from afar and hope for a ceasefire. But in that same forest, just a few miles from the fighting, across the borders in Rwanda and Uganda the rest of the mountain gorillas are safe for the moment, though they face yet another threat. There are so few of them, that Ebola or some other deadly virus could wipe them out. It's a tough trek to get to Rwanda's gorillas, but it is an extraordinary experience.
Copyright 2009 CBS. All rights reserved. "They're cutting down the forest. And they're smoking it out basically," Muir explains. "And they will continue to move further and deeper into the forest cutting down prime habitat."
It's being carried away bag by bag, step by step.
Women carry huge bags of charcoal for miles on their shoulders. Men wheel bigger loads to market on wooden bikes. It's a multi-million dollar business, illegal but backed by powerful interests -- businessmen, soldiers, and corrupt government officials -- a charcoal mafia. When rangers tried to stop the destruction of the forest, Rob Muir says the charcoal mafia killed the gorillas. It was a warning to the rangers to back off.
"First, in June, a female gorilla was found, killed, a bullet to the back of her heart execution style," Muir says. "They want to intimidate and scare the Congolese wildlife authority."
"The message was if you don't stop we can kill all the gorillas," he adds.
But the rangers refused to stop. "Determined not to give in to this kind of blackmail, if you like, continued, even upped their campaign to try and dismantle the charcoal production," Muir tells Cooper. "And then a month later the Rugendo family was decimated. I'm sure that the charcoal mafia were behind this."
Asked how one could solve the charcoal problem, considering it's used by everyone and they have no other source, Muir says, "Provide alternative fuel, butane, for example."
But butane requires special stoves and buying that equipment for every family would cost tens of millions of dollars.
"So it would need to be subsidized. I mean, we desperately need donors, the EU, the World Bank, someone like that to really come in and say, 'Hey we've got some money here,' you know, we appreciate this is urgent, you know, if we don't act now, we could lose the gorillas,'" Muir says.
Muir says two babies were orphaned this summer when charcoal makers killed their mothers. One baby was found clinging to its dead mother's corpse; the other had been pulled to safety by an older brother, but was starving without its mother's milk. Rangers rescued both orphans, and vets are still trying to nurse them back to health.
"Have you ever seen these mountain gorillas as under threat as they are now?" Cooper asks Muir.
"Never. I don't think I don't think they have ever been as threatened as they are currently today," he replies.
Just how threatened? No one knows, because the rangers haven't been able to see Congo's gorillas for more than three months.
Almost 200 mountain gorillas live in the Congo along the forested slopes of a volcano. The problem is there're more than a half dozen armed rebel groups fighting government forces in and around those forests, and the rangers who protect the gorillas have had to flee. That means Congo's entire population of mountain gorillas is now left unprotected and they're caught in the middle of a civil war.
Rangers tell Cooper that because they are cut off from the gorillas and cannot get to them, they don't know what is happening to the remaining population.
Congo may be a dangerous county for gorillas, but it's even deadlier for people. There's been fighting for more than ten years and more than a hundred rangers have been killed. At a rangers' post outside the park, their sign is pockmarked with bullet holes.
"Over 300 rebels would surround a patrol post during the night and just shoot it to hell. Heavy artillery, bombing," Muir tells Cooper.
Asked why, Muir says, "With no care for human life and they're after the rangers' equipment. Ammunition, rifles, they see the rangers as a soft target."
Muir says the rangers are outnumbered and outgunned. "This is probably the most dangerous park on the planet," he says.
So dangerous that all the rangers can do now is gaze at the forest from afar and hope for a ceasefire. But in that same forest, just a few miles from the fighting, across the borders in Rwanda and Uganda the rest of the mountain gorillas are safe for the moment, though they face yet another threat. There are so few of them, that Ebola or some other deadly virus could wipe them out. It's a tough trek to get to Rwanda's gorillas, but it is an extraordinary experience.
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