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Web charity helps save Congo's gorillas
Donations made on the Wildlife Direct website pay the salaries of the park rangers who protect the endangered apes.
By Mike Pflanz | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the March 9, 2007 edition
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GOMA, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO - On a blackboard in a classroom in Stratton Elementary School in Colorado Springs, Colo., a montage of photographs and fact sheets has been pinned up under the heading "Silverback Gorillas."
Together, the 43 children in the second-grade class give $244 a month to support a rarely paid and poorly equipped wildlife ranger half a world away in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Joseph Aloma Major is a foot soldier in the war to save the world's critically endangered mountain gorillas, an employee of the Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature (ICCN), Congo's wildlife service.
Before the money started flowing from Colorado, directly donated online via a new charity website, WildlifeDirect.org, Mr. Aloma could barely do his job.
He had not been paid for several months. His patrol post had no fuel and no vehicle to put it in. And, until last month, he faced the danger of attacks from rebels commanded by dissident Army General Laurent Nkunda, whose troops controlled much of the land surrounding the park.
But now that Congo's government has signed a cease-fire with Mr. Nkunda's forces, the area is safe enough to patrol. And thanks to generous donations from people like Stratton second-grader Kori Hernandez, who donated her entire piggy bank (about $30), rangers like Aloma are now getting the money to make protection of the endangered gorillas possible again.
Risky area for gorillas and humans
The 3,000-square-mile Virunga National Park, a World Heritage Site in eastern Congo where Aloma works, is home to 100 of the world's last remaining 700 mountain gorillas.
For 13 years or more, it has been a hideout for a jumble of armed militia who have wreaked havoc across the region.
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