Elephants return to Virunga National Park

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Savanna elephants have returned en masse to Virunga National Park, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It’s a development that has stunned park staff and signaled a turning point in Virunga’s quest for stability in a region beset by violence for decades. In August nearly 600 elephants crossed into Virunga from neighboring Uganda’s Queen Elizabeth National Park. More than six months later, they’re still there, suggesting they feel secure in their new home.

“There has been no greater expression of Virunga coming back to life,” says park director Emmanuel de Merode. “I arrived to the Congo 30 years ago, and I’ve never seen anything like this.”

“The apparent surge of elephants in Virunga is very encouraging, because it means that Virunga must be safer than it used to be,” says Iain Douglas-Hamilton of Save the Elephants, whose team affixed 15 radio collars to elephants in Virunga in 2015 to help the park staff monitor them.

The size of this herd, which de Merode and his colleagues have mostly ogled from a surveillance plane, is extraordinary, he says. Historically, small groups of elephants have shuffled back and forth between the parks, but in recent years, they’ve mostly stayed away. Now de Merode was able to look out the cockpit window and see elephants speckling the grasslands in every direction.

https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/environment-and-conservation/2021/04/elephants-return-to-conflict-ridden-national-park

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