Conflict and Conservation: How War Is Devastating the DRC’s National Parks
By Erika Pietrzak, November 11, 2025
War and poverty are tearing through the DRC’s national parks, driving poaching, corruption, and the loss of endangered species. Amid the devastation, a few protected areas like Garamba offer rare hope for recovery.
Armed conflict, poverty, and the demand for illegal wildlife products drive massive levels of poaching in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) forests. Endangered species, tourists, and national park employees alike are in danger every minute they are within the park’s borders, particularly in the eastern side of the country. Poaching, combined with habitat destruction from illegal logging and agriculture, has led to significant biodiversity loss in the Congo Basin, which is home to Africa's highest concentration of species.
The Congolese rainforests are the world’s second-largest tropical rainforest area. The DRC “is the most biologically diverse country in Africa and one of the most important biodiversity centers in the world, encompassing more than half of Africa’s tropical forest.” The country is home to many rare and endangered species, with 450 species of mammals, 1150 species of birds, 400 species of fish, and over 15,000 species of plants. 6% of mammals and 10% of plants are endemic, meaning they only occur within the country. As a result of their unique biodiversity, 8 percent of the country’s landmass is legally protected.
A "wartime economy" around illegal resource trafficking and poaching has formed due to the conflict in the eastern part of the country, boiling over into neighboring Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi. In areas occupied by rebels, park patrols are often blocked, allowing poachers free rein. Combined with funding shortages and staffing problems, park capacity to prevent illegal poaching is extremely limited. Since the resurgence of the M23 (March 23 Movement) rebel group in 2021, there has been a 50 percent decline in wildlife in the Virunga National Park. Early 2025 saw the Wazalendo rebel group and the M23 bring new clashes to the Park, “leading to poaching and illegal trade” by April. Between 2022 and August 2024, 50 percent of species in the Virunga National Park were lost.
Because of their ability to overexploit the forests’ inhabitants, as the conflicts prevent proper management, lucrative black markets abroad drive the trafficking of high-value illegal wildlife products such as ivory and pangolin scales. An estimated 175 million USD per year is generated by trafficking in Kivu, with more than 100,000 people receiving their livelihood from these illegal activities. Every month, the Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature (ICCN) seizes illegal possession of protected wildlife species, ivory, and furs. Yet, corruption and inadequate storage feed the seized items back into the hands of black-market sellers. Traffickers have also begun to forge permits quite realistically, leading some to go through the cracks of law enforcement.
Source: Mongabay
Many local communities rely on subsistence hunting or the commercial bushmeat trade for both income and protein, producing an especially unsustainable pressure on bonobos, gorillas, and pangolin species. This stress has worsened as militia groups sell hectares of land (which are not theirs to sell) for $30 to gain acceptance and credibility with locals, pushing locals farther into the forests and protected land. Residents in these areas are “accused of facilitating poaching, often under the protection of armed men, sometimes in civilian clothes.” Some park poachers also team up with locals to better sell their illegal bush meat more efficiently and with more legitimacy in rural areas.
These precious forests have seen their ecosystems and wildlife destroyed in recent decades. All this illegal poaching, combined with habitat loss from mining and civil unrest, has caused a 77 percent decline in mountain gorilla populations from 1995 to 2016. National Park employees state that this does not mean a 77 percent death rate, but combines the killing of animals with displacement into neighboring, safer countries to protect themselves and their families/herds. Along with population decline, the Virunga National Park has lost 13 percent of its surface area.
Anyone who enters the park is in danger. Almost 200 employees at the Virunga National Park have been killed by armed groups. A record number of animal traps were found in 2023 due to ramped-up monitoring efforts and increased conflict. As a result of the danger and road blockages, even the intense efforts to monitor illegal hunting and deforestation have come up short in the areas most affected by conflict. Ongoing conflict, alongside high crime rates, kidnapping risks, and a lack of government capacity to ensure security, makes tourism in these parks unsafe, especially in the eastern regions.
One light in the dark forests is Garamba National Park, which used to be referred to “as ground zero in Africa’s poaching wars.” The 5,133 square kilometers of Nation Park, which is also a World Heritage Site, saw almost every species inside the park’s decline from the 1970s to 2010s, particularly during the 1990s before poaching was curtailed in the early 2000s. However, in 2016, “African Parks overhauled law enforcement and implemented systems to match the level of threat, providing improved security for the park’s wildlife and surrounding communities.” In the 18 months that followed, elephant poaching was cut in half. Seeing this change, the director of the ICCN stated that they “are committed more than ever to combating poaching and to our partnership with African Parks, which is creating a safer landscape and a brighter future for countless people and wildlife in the region.”
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