Conflict nearly wiped out its large animals, but local determination is bringing Upemba park back from the brink

Ranger Sylvain Musimi had just risen from his morning coffee around the campfire when the rebels opened fire. It was a chilly early morning in mid-January, during rainy season in Upemba national park. Sixteen suspected members of the Bakata Katanga militia, faces daubed in white war paint, surprised the party of four rangers only 5.5 miles (9km) from Upemba’s base camp.

Musimi, 50, was shot four times in the thigh, but managed to flee into the bush. A younger colleague, who was nearer the campfire, was shot dead.

“I could have chosen another job,” says Musimi, standing inside a derelict villa in Lusinga, which rebels destroyed in 2004, when insecurity was much worse. “But I wanted to become an ecoguard for the good of my country, and so my children could see animals in the park one day.”

Upemba, which lies in the south-east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), once teemed with wildlife. At its height, tens of thousands of elephants were thought to roam the park, which was Africa’s largest when Belgian colonial administrators created it in 1939. Lions, zebras and other mammals were abundant. Upemba still covers a huge area – larger than Lebanon – comprising wetland, savannah and twisting fingers of gallery forest, which cluster around rivers. However, it was in this wilderness that Bakata Katanga rebels took refuge in 1998.

The presence of the militia, which seeks independence for Congo’s mineral-rich Katanga region, turned large sections of the park – as well as territory outside it – into a no-go zone that locals used to call “the triangle of death”. It also led to a poaching spree. Many of Upemba’s rangers, who went unpaid during the turbulent Congo wars of the late 1990s and early 2000s, turned to poaching themselves in order to survive.

“We were forced to kill the animals,” says Girlage Kappia, a 62-year-old ranger who was born in the park, adding that it hurts him to reflect on the park’s former glory.

The years of government neglect and militia conflict almost wiped out the large animals. By the late 2000s, the lions had vanished. Elephants were hunted until only about 150 remained. And the number of zebras in Upemba – the only place in the DRC where they are found in the wild – fell to a perilously low 35.

Instability and violence have long plagued conservation efforts in the DRC, where armed groups use unbroken expanses of jungle or savannah as hideouts. Rwanda-backed M23 rebels control large sections of Virunga national park, which is renowned internationally for its mountain gorillas.

“Upemba isn’t known by anyone – we don’t have gorillas,” jokes the Upemba site manager, Christine Lain, from her office in Lusinga, situated on a high-altitude plateau.

Despite trying circumstances and limited resources, however, Upemba has managed to pull itself back from the brink. “Step by step, we have been able to find funding,” says Lain, who describes finding snares around Lusinga only a few years ago – a sign that rangers were setting them to poach animals. That has all but stopped. “We have also been able to recover a ranger force that had lost hope,” she says.

Current numbers, although preliminary, are encouraging. The size of the elephant herd is up to about 210, a figure that appears to be increasing every year; the park is due to collar them this month so they can be tracked. Zebras, too, have bounced back from near-extinction, to an estimated 200 animals.

Trekking across the spongy grasslands near Lusinga you now see a huge range of wildlife. Threatened wattled cranes pick at the ground, troops of baboons lollop across the plains, and oribis – a type of antelope – bound through the tall grass.

“You can’t go a kilometre without seeing an antelope,” says Dr Ruffin Mpanga, the park’s head of biomonitoring. “It’s a source of pride.”

Better finances have helped to pay the ranger force and fund a light aircraft used to monitor the reserve. Lain says their priorities are now to boost ranger numbers from 200 to 500 over the next five years, and to compile accurate data about animal species left in the park. Far in the future, there are plans to reintroduce lions.

Upemba’s progress has been gradual, but it could mark a rare conservation success story for the DRC. Still, threats continue to loom over the park. Poachers remain active, with distant plumes of smoke or the remains of impromptu campsites in the park pointing to their elusive presence.

Mining is also due to begin at one of the world’s largest lithium deposits, in Manono, about 190km from Lusinga. The access road, which is under construction, runs alongside the park boundary, portending an increase in traffic and subsequent habitat destruction. The prospect of oil drilling is a further danger. In 2022, the Congolese government launched an auction for 30 oil and gas blocks. One of those blocks covers most of Upemba, despite it being a protected area.

Between June and July, a group of five scientists conducted a biodiversity survey in a small section of the park – the first of its kind since a comprehensive Belgian-led scientific expedition in the 1940s. The team spent weeks collecting samples of insects, lizards, small mammals and plants, under the watchful eye of park rangers wielding AK-47s.

It is too early to draw conclusions about how well preserved the park’s ecosystems are, according to the scientists, with several more research trips required. “We do believe the place has a wealth of biodiversity,” says Dr Chad Keates, the head scientist at Hankuzi Explorations, the NGO that organised the latest expedition. “The park is definitely in need of more detailed work on animals and plants, across the different seasons. But the first sampling we did definitely showed very strong promise.”

Upemba’s managers hope the results of the biodiversity surveys will eventually enable them to make a cast-iron scientific case for protecting the long-neglected, relatively unknown park. “There’s very few pollutants and the water is presumably pristine,” says Keates.

In the future, the rangers hope to conduct biomonitoring work themselves. But for now, protecting against militants and poachers remains their most pressing concern. In some of the park’s remote river valleys, militants affiliated with Bakata Katanga continue to hold sway. About 45% of Upemba is under control, according to Lain, who nevertheless says this figure could rise as new rangers are trained.

Violence can flare up suddenly. Two rangers have been killed already this year: one in the morning attack on the camp in January, and another in June.

Musimi, the survivor of the January attack, says he’s proud of the direction the park is taking, and casts the rebels as wreckers. “This is a national park and they can’t take what they want,” says the ranger. “This is the only wealth we have.”