Virunga National Park suffered extensive damage by armed bands of soldiers and refugees from neighboring camps, who harvested some 36 million trees from the park and hunted gorillas and other animals. Garamba National Park, near Sudan, experienced raids from Sudanese soldiers who hunted endangered wildlife using automatic weapons, while Okapi Faunal Reserve, home to the Ituri Forest and more species of monkeys (13) than anywhere else in the world, was ravaged by refugee migrations and marauding bands of militias, who looted and stole conservation equipment and killed park staff.

One of the most important centers of plant and animal diversity in the Congo rainforest is the lowland Ituri Fores

This entry lists major infectious diseases likely to be encountered in countries where the risk of such diseases is assessed to be very high as compared to the United States

leads to malaise and irregular fevers and, in advanced cases when the parasites invade the central nervous system, coma and death

cattle and wild animals act as reservoir hosts for the parasites.

Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever - tick-borne viral disease; infection may also result from exposure to infected animal blood or tissue;

Lassa fever - viral disease carried by rats of the genus Mastomys

Rift Valley fever - viral disease affecting domesticated animals and humans;

transmission is by mosquito and other biting insects; infection may also occur through handling of infected meat or contact with blood;

Leptospirosis - bacterial disease that affects animals and humans;

infection occurs through contact with water, food, or soil contaminated by animal urine;

aerosolized dust or soil contact disease acquired through inhalation of aerosols contaminated with rodent urine:

Plague - bacterial disease transmitted by fleas normally associated with rats;

Rabies - viral disease of mammals usually transmitted through the bite of an infected animal, most commonly dogs; virus affects the central nervous system causing brain alteration and death; symptoms initially are non-specific fever and headache progressing to neurological symptoms; death occurs within days of the onset of symptoms.

over 50 per cent of Africa’s tropical forests.

orests and woodlands cover half of the DRC’s total surface area of 2.3 million km² and play a critically important role in maintaining global climatic cycles.

 DRC contains 80 per cent of the world’s reserves of columnite-tantalite (coltan) and 10 per cent of the world’s copper.

Approximately 70 per cent of the population lives under the poverty line.

Fewer than 720 mountain gorillas struggle to survive

Improving livestock disease control and product safety

killings took place in the Virunga National Park between February 7 and 25.

IDPE accused "soldiers of the 15th and 18th Brigades of the FARDC" (the DRC army) of poaching and said they were acting "under orders from officers"

charged a fee to local poachers, charcoal burners and fishermen in a protection racket.

Virunga Park, on the north-eastern border with Uganda, is a base not only to army units but to warring militia groups and rebel forces, all of whom kill animals for food and chop down trees to make fire.

includes Lake Edward, which in 1980 had the world's biggest population of hippos, numbering about 27 000.

FARDC corporal was killed by a hippopotamus while on a clandestine fishing trip.

Virunga National Park is classed as a World Heritage Site by Unesco and it is the oldest game reserve in Africa. It is home notably to 200 mountain gorillas and a small population of plains gorillas, a species strongly faced with the threat of extinction.