{"id":657,"date":"2026-04-06T09:01:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T09:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chabrok.com\/?p=657"},"modified":"2026-04-06T09:01:00","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T09:01:00","slug":"i-escaped-death-many-times-a-mans-life-long-work-protecting-gorillas-and-communities-in-the-congo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chabrok.com\/?p=657","title":{"rendered":"‘I escaped death many times’: A man’s life-long work protecting gorillas and communities in the Congo"},"content":{"rendered":"

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M<\/span>This gorilla hangs low on the forested slopes of Kahuzi-Biega National Park, whose canopy still protects one of the last bastions of the eastern lowland gorilla, or Grauer’s gorilla. It is a landscape of immense biological wealth and equally immense political vulnerability. For 54-year-old Dominic Bicaba, this was once home.<\/p>\n

His family was among those displaced when their ancestral land was incorporated into a park in the 1970s. Located in the lowlands of South Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), this reserve is home to elephants and a variety of other wildlife, but is best known as the primary habitat for the Grauer gorilla, the largest subspecies of primate known to grow up to 250 kg (39th) in weight. It is one of five great ape species found in the vast forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo, including mountain gorillas, which also live in other parts of the Great Lakes region, such as Rwanda and Uganda.<\/p>\n

For Bikaba, founder and executive director of Strong Roots Congo, conservation has always been linked to memory, dispossession, and survival.<\/p>\n

He grew up on the fringes of the park, close enough that he remembers walking through the woods as a child. \u201cMy grandmother used to take me to the forest, where I could see how gorillas lived,\u201d he recalls. His upbringing spans the world: along with his biological mother, he was raised by a Batwa (Pygmy) mother and grandmother. Much of his childhood was spent in the Batwa community, where cultural and spiritual life is deeply rooted in the forest.<\/p>\n

From them he learned about medicinal plants, wild animals, and what coexistence means in practice. \u201cMy grandmother taught me how to be a man, but my pygmy mother taught me how to coexist with the forest,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

<\/svg><\/span>A group of endangered Grauer gorillas (Gorilla Beringei Graueli<\/em>). The conflict in the DRC has had a devastating impact on their numbers.<\/span> Photo: Nature Picture Library\/Alamy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At the time, the Grauer gorilla was not yet classified as an endangered species. Gorillas and humans shared space in a cautious yet comfortable balance. “Sometimes they would come out of the forest and eat our crops. The baboons would come for our bananas,” Bikaba says. It was an uneasy approach, but not yet a catastrophe. War would change that.<\/p>\n

Bikaba began conservation work in 1992, at the age of 20, after completing his studies and responding to a call from community leaders to mediate tensions between park authorities and the people who had been displaced since the park’s opening. Two years later, the 1994 Rwandan genocide triggered a mass refugee influx into the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, sparking the First Congo War and then the Second Congo War in the late 1990s. The fighting continues today.<\/p>\n

The impact on wildlife is devastating. Before the conflict, the eastern lowland gorilla population was estimated at approximately 17,000 individuals. By 2016, research suggested there were about 3,800 left. “We don’t know what kind of situation the gorillas are in now. Perhaps after the war we may be in a better position to observe them and see what happened,” Bicaba said.<\/p>\n

<\/svg><\/span>Peddlers trade at the charcoal market in Mulhesa. Charcoal production contributes to deforestation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.<\/span> Photo: Victoire Mukenge\/Reuters<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

An IUCN report published in 2016 highlighted that widespread slash-and-burn and bushmeat hunting are contributing to the population decline, and that the country’s ongoing conflict continues to exacerbate the problem.<\/p>\n