If you have seen the Disney movie Tarzan, then you heard about gorillas endangered by humans at a young age already. Unfortunately, despite so much progress in conservation in the last 100 years, the same gorillas of Eastern Africa are still in dire need of protection. The Virunga National Park is a UNESCO world heritage site in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and is (among other things), famous for its unique mountain gorilla population. Its variety of wildlife and abundance of natural resources also makes it a prime target for those trying to illegally benefit from these resources. Thus, the 8000 square km large park needs to protect itself from threats ranging from terrorist groups, poachers, illegal oil and coal extraction, over to the Covid19 epidemic, which conservationists fear could further endanger the gorillas, since they share 98% of DNA with humans.
The Virunga Foundation supports the park by providing a crowdsourcing platform to protect both wildlife and communities living in the park. Concretely, the Foundation will develop a public safety program providing real-time tracking and mapping, as well as decreased security response times via a low cost phone reporting solution. This project aims at changing the way that local people engage with authorities and respond to security threats, and improve the conservation of one of Africa's richest but most threatened national parks. It has been recognized that the collaboration of local communities is crucial to the conservation success, and a large focus was put on creating economic opportunities in the areas of Eco-tourism, Clean energy and Sustainable agriculture. Currently, this has already resulted in hundreds of new jobs, 4 hydroelectric plants and almost 20.000 tourists visiting every year. Electricity from renewable energy sources not only goes to communities outside the park, but of course also powers the park's operations.
The incredible work of the Virunga Foundation and of the National Park itself has received much praise and appreciation from around the world. In fact, the Foundation was one of the Google Impact Challenge winners of 2014 and just this May, Leonardo Di Caprio announced a $2 million dollar seed funding for a new fund to help the park in its critical work. Other digital solutions this supports are for instance anti-poaching aerial surveillance flights. These flights enable a 100% coverage of the protected area, compared to the 30% that rangers alone can take care of, and enable a much faster identification of illegal activities, as well as quicker help in emergency situations. In fact, this recent support comes in response to a terrorist attack on the local population resulting in the death of civilians and 12 park rangers and a driver. Sadly, this is not a terrible one-time occurrence, as the park's news webpage shows, where the most frequent posts are updates about rangers who gave their life protecting the park from poachers and terrorists.
If you want to donate to the park directly, you can follow this link. This way you can support efforts to keep wildlife safe with the help of new technologies of communication, as well as create value for locals with tourism and clean energy.