Virunga National Park
More actions
| Virunga National Park | |
|---|---|
| ActiveGrown here in 2000 or later | |
| Geography | |
| Country | Democratic Republic of the Congo |
| Province/State | North Kivu |
| Coordinates | -0.40, 29.50 |
| Landscape | |
| Area | 7,800 km² |
| Terrain | Forest and volcanic slopes of a national park; the park boundary |
| Growing history | |
| Documentation | |
| Appellations | 0 |
| Accessions | 0 |
| Conservation | |
| Populations | none documented yet |
Virunga National Park is a cannabis growing area in North Kivu, in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, drawn on the boundary of the national park. In 2017 National Geographic reported that people from a Bambuti village an hour's drive from Goma grew cannabis in secret inside the park, tending it on early-morning treks into its forests.[1] Six years earlier the park's rangers had said that a Rwandan militia based in the park sowed cannabis on forest land cleared for charcoal.[2] A map of the illegal charcoal trade in the park, published by GRID-Arendal in 2014, names cannabis growing among the park's illicit trades with timber extraction and gold mining.[3]
Geography
The reports place the growing in the south of the park, near Goma. From the village visited in 2017 a group walked three hours into the park's forests, below the volcano Nyiragongo.[1] The trouble the rangers described in 2011 was in the volcanic Nyamulagira sector of the park, away from the sector of the mountain gorillas. A patrol there, in the Kibumba area, found a charcoal kiln and many cannabis plants.[2]
The crop and its growers
The Bambuti community visited in 2017 had been evicted from the area when it was made a park in 1952, National Geographic reported. Its members still went into the forest to gather honey, potatoes and medicinal plants. One of a dozen members trained to know the plants looked for cannabis, which they say their ancestors grew. In the forest the plants also grow wild; the Bambuti harvest plants and seed from them when their village stock runs low. They call cannabis bangi.[1]
The plants were dried in the sun in the village and used as medicine or sold. A handful of plants sold for about 500 Congolese francs; a family's plants brought from 8 to 100 United States dollars a week. Ground seed mixed with water was taken for stomach-ache; a tea of the boiled leaves was taken for coughs, parasites, fainting, flu and fever.[1]
In 2011 National Geographic reported that the rebels behind the illegal charcoal trade in the park appeared to have turned to growing cannabis. The warden of the southern sector, Innocent Mburanumwe, named the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a Rwandan militia living in the park, and said of the two trades, "The same people are involved". Once the charcoal had been taken out, the rangers said, the land was cleared and sown with cannabis, usually by the FDLR, whose men came back to harvest and dry it and to sell it or trade it for uniforms, ammunition and guns. "The charcoal trade is destroying the forest, and the marijuana comes in after it," said LuAnne Cadd, a spokeswoman for the park.[2]
Enforcement
Mburanumwe said in 2011 that an operation against the charcoal and cannabis trades in 2009 had been very successful. The FDLR, he said, had since reorganised. In March 2011 two people were caught with cannabis plants grown in the forest. The patrol that found cannabis in the Kibumba area had been sent to look for charcoal kilns; it came under fire from men believed to be FDLR fighters. The ranger Magayane Bazirushaka was killed. The park's director, Emmanuel de Merode, said that the rangers were planning new operations against the cannabis trade.[2]
The Bambuti interviewed in 2017 said that members of their community had been arrested or killed by the park's rangers on their journeys into the forest. De Merode, by then the park's chief warden, said that the rangers made about 20 arrests a week of people hunting or gathering in the park, that his staff could not recall arresting any indigenous people in the past year and that no killings involving them had been recorded. In the village, the growers said, Congolese soldiers sometimes bought their cannabis and sometimes seized it and fined them.[1]
Accessions
No accessions documented yet.
Recent news
No recent news items.
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Strochlic, Nina (22 March 2017). "Why Pygmies are dealing weed to survive in the Congo". National Geographic. Retrieved 21 October 2026.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Lovgren, Stefan (29 April 2011). "Marijuana trade threatens African gorilla refuge". National Geographic. Retrieved 21 October 2026.
- ↑ Pravettoni, Riccardo (2014). "Charcoal business in Virunga area". GRID-Arendal. Retrieved 21 October 2026.