'Explorer: Gorilla Murders' Premieres Tuesday, July 1, 2008 at 10 p.m. ET/PT on National Geographic Channel.
Brent Stirton, South Africa, Reportage by Getty Images for Newsweek.
EPA/Brent Stirton/Getty Images for Newsweek
If you love animals and care for your fellow human beings, watching this show will be terribly upsetting at times. It is hard to stomach the suffering on the large scale the rare mountain gorillas and the Congolese people are enduring, and there are no easy solutions presented. Poverty, greed, corruption and tribal warfare ensure it.
Dead female, pregnant
A grisly execution-style murder of a family of six mountain gorillas was discovered by the Congo Park Rangers, who find themselves targets of the charcoal syndicate and warring tribes in their quest to preserve the battered ecosystem of the Virunga National Park. Outnumbered, the park rangers, more than 110 of whom have been killed in the past decade are the outgunned heroes of this sad story.
Park rangers
Congo's (DRC) Virunga National Park is in real danger of disappearing.
The dirt poor Congolese refugees need the charcoal for cooking, and millions of them line the edges of the park in makeshift tents as bandits strip the forest of trees to make their fuel.
The park rangers are constantly in the midst of deadly crossfire between militia groups and the Congolese Army. To the chagrin of the rangers, the Congolese army are complicit in the wholesale trading of the illegally made charcoal, the trading of it, and the protection of the gangs that are responsible for it.
Because of the surging refugees, the demand for the illegal charcoal grows. The gorilla murders are just collateral damage to these bottom line bandits; the gorillas impede the process.
Stirton
Last July, photojournalist Brent Stirton smuggled out a photograph that shocked the world when it was published in Newsweek. The photo was of a dead 500-pound male gorilla named Senkwekwe, one of six endangered mountain gorillas who had been murdered. It was Stirton’s recording of these crimes which lit the flame of fury in the media.
The mountain gorillas were murdered by gunshot and left for dead, the male with his hand frozen in place over his heart, in the act of beating his chest to scare off the humans as he tried in vain to protect the clan females. The up close footage of these Gorillas’ death masks and their corpses will wreck you.
Nat Geo Explorer producers claim an estimated 720 of these primates remain in the wild, and this is one of the worst recorded massacres of mountain gorillas since scientist Dian Fossey began battling poachers 40 years ago in the very same region.
Fossey was murdered in 1985 for doing this work. Her skull was halved by a machete tool that poachers used while she slept in her bed.
The opening footage of this documentary has Stirton describing the rangers' emotional state as they wrapped the faces and private areas of the dead gorillas in leaves in an attempt to give them some dignity in their deaths as they carried the bodies out of the jungle.
"I didn't expect to feel ... what I felt when I saw this procession. But it was as if the best of Africa -- the most dignity that they could assemble in the face of tragedy -- was present in this procession. It was such a senseless death...." shared Stirton.
National Geographic Channel's "Explorer: Gorilla Murders" reports from eastern DRC, one of the most dangerous places on earth, with the full untold story behind the massacre.
Stirton, a South African war photographer with a long history in the region is interviewed, along with key park rangers. The Explorer crew examines the location when the murdered gorillas were found and returned to the park to investigate who was behind the killings.
Additionally, Stirton's and writer Mark Jenkins' reporting is the July cover story for National Geographic magazine.
Grade: A
This is compelling programming and not to be missed, but not for young children.
Brent-Stirton's-website
Gorilla Facts courtesy of Nat Geo:
Gorillas are vegetarian, dining primarily on leaves, stalks, shoots and fruit.
Male gorillas beat their chest to intimidate outsiders, often in an effort to protect their families. Females perform chest-beating as well, but males are usually louder due to air sacs in their throats and chests, which amplify the sound.
Like many chimps, orangutans, and bottlenose dolphins, some gorillas can recognize themselves in a mirror, suggesting self-awareness.
Stretching east-west about 50 miles, the Virunga Mountains are volcanic, and feature eight major volcanic peaks. It’s no surprise that the name “Virunga” means “volcanoes.”
UNESCO designated the Virunga National Park a World Heritage site in 1979.
A newborn gorilla weighs only about four and a half pounds and is completely dependent on its mother for survival.
The World Wildlife Fund reports that 97% of households in the city of Goma have no electricity and rely on charcoal or firewood for cooking.
Thanks to the gorillas, Virunga is the most popular peacetime tourist spot in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
A mountain gorilla can eat up to 60 pounds of vegetation a day.
More than half the world's 700 or so remaining mountain gorillas are found in Virunga.
Gorillas “knuckle walk,” walking on four limbs supported on the knuckles of their hands.
Virunga National Park was created in 1925 and covers more than 3,000 square miles. Back then, the human population in the area was relatively small, which is hardly the case today.
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