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The Enforcement Issue: The Democratic Republic of Congo’s Gorillas Are Failed By Insufficient Laws


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The Democratic Republic of Congo (the ‘DRC’) is one of just a handful of locations where gorillas still roam freely in the wild, and is home to the Grauer’s Gorilla subspecies, only found in the eastern DRC. “Gorillas share 98.% of their DNA with humans, making them our closest cousins after Bonobos and Chimpanzees”[1]. Yet, despite their shocking intellectual and emotional similarities with us, gorillas have been decreasing in number for decades. WWF states that a 2010 UN report suggested that gorillas are likely to disappear entirely from large parts of the Congo Basin by the mid-2020s[2]; we are 5 years from this point in time.

The Causes of Gorilla Population Decimation: The main causes for the depletion of the gorilla species, especially in the DRC, are due to a combination of factors. In the DRC mining and logging companies clear land inhabited by gorillas for their commercial exploits and “local people cut down trees to make room for agricultural fields and livestock”[3]. As only 17% of the gorilla population lives in protected regions, gorillas are left largely at the mercy of such habitat loss and pushed into ever smaller enclaves, unnatural for largely territorial animals. Furthermore, gorillas suffer from the bushmeat trade in the Congo, particularly from miners and from the exportation of juveniles for the exotic pet trade and into zoos[4].

The Legislation: Gorillas are protected in national Congolese law, such as Order Number 3863 Decree of 18 May 1984: Determining the Integrally and Partially Protected Animals Provided for in Law 48/83 of 21/04 1983 Defining the Conditions for the Conservation and Exploitation of Wildlife, where the gorilla is listed as a protected species. In Act 37-2008 of 28 November 2008 on Wildlife and Protected Areas, Article 27 states: import, export, possession and transit on national territory of strictly protected species and their trophies are strictly prohibited unless special permission from the administration of water and forests, for needs of scientific research or breeding purposes is obtained. There are also anti-corruption laws found in Act 5-2009 Law on Corruption Articles 12 and 17, preventing bribery and corruption in illegal wildlife poaching and trafficking.

Gorillas are also protected under international legislation, such as the Convention in International Trade in Endangered Species, the Convention on Migratory Speciesand the United Nations Convention against Corruption, which under the Constitution of Republic of Congo (2002) Title XVII Article 184:Once published, a regularly ratified or approved treaty or agreement has a superior authority over national laws, provided that, for each treaty or agreement, it is reciprocally applied by the other Party.”

Despite all of this legislation to protect gorillas in the DRC, enforcement of them is severely lacking. Essentially, “in the Republic of Congo, the laws exist, but their application is incomplete and people have grown accustomed to this.”[5]The result is that the laws are routinely ignored, are systematically undermined and that judicial enforcement of punishment is slight enough to not act as a true deterrent. The result, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) suggests Grauer’s Gorilla numbers have fallen 77% in the last two decades, with fewer than 4,000 now remaining”[6] as the causes of gorilla decimation are allowed to continue under the absent minded eyes of Congolese law.

Enforcing Change for Gorillas:

Despite a bleak prognosis, there are organisations trying to galvanise the role of the law in trying to save the DRC’s gorillas. With the help of the likes of the Aspinall Foundation and Port Lympne Reserve, the Project for the Application of the Law for Fauna (‘PALF’)was established in 2008 in the DRC to “enforce wildlife laws, provide deterrents to killing wildlife and monitor illegal wildlife trade along with other detrimental activities”[7]. PALF’s mission, therefore, is to ensure that deterring prison sentences are handed down to wildlife criminals and for closer follow up of judicial procedures, from the investigations and operations, to trials and all the way to the sentencing and application of penalties[8]. PALF have succeeded in gaining the attention of local Congolese press and the successful prosecution of a handful of wildlife traffickers and poachers. However, they have noted: “there is still a long way to go in the court system. Many sentences being handed down are suspended sentences, but we are fighting for even stricter application of the law”[9].

Conclusion: Gorilla species are declining at alarming rates due a combination of deadly human factors. Despite laws being in place, from national and international bodies, designed to protect gorillas and to prevent the loss of their species, the lack of enforcement of these laws and their punishments has meant that they have been largely ineffective in doing their job. Only with the help of organisations like PALF, pushing for a more active role of the law and stronger legal enforcement will the gorillas stand a chance of survival. It would be devastating to lose one of our closest cousins simply because the law had failed to protect them.





 
 
 

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