“For me, the 100th anniversary of Virunga National Park is the fruit of resistance. A peaceful resistance led by local activists [and] environmentalists,” says François Kamaté, environmental activist and founder of the local branch of Extinction Rebellion located in Rutshuru, on the edges of the park in Central Africa. Originally called Parc National Albert, Virunga National Park (PNVi in French) was created on April 21, 1925, in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) by the royal decree from Belgium, its then-colonizing nation. Virunga was the first national park in Africa. It was initially created to protect wildlife and the environment from human encroachment. “The idea, at the time, was to keep nature under wraps and avoid any form of human intervention. In other words, no fire, no logging, no intervention on animals, we let nature evolve,” says Jean-Pierre d’Huart, former scientific curator of the Virunga Park and co-editor of a book dedicated to the park’s centenary. More than just a place for research, the park became — during times of peace — a major tourist attraction in the region, especially due to its population of mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei). Located in the Albertine Rift, on the border with Rwanda and Uganda, Virunga has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979. Covering an area of 790,000 hectares (1.95 million acres), the park is renowned for its rich fauna: In addition to mountain gorillas, it is home to endangered wildlife like chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and the extremely…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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