Conservation

Welcome to Virunga National Park the oldest African park where you find the mountain gorillas and the active mount Nyiragongo which you can hike in 2 days from the Kibati patrol and you have to be fit enough to hike to the summit of the mountain.

Today, there are programs in the park that are taking place to save the Virunga National Park and still we welcome more organizations that are willing to do more conservation work in the park. Virunga National Park hosts the Senkwekwe gorilla orphanage sanctuary where the orphaned gorillas are looked after. More so the Congo Hounds program is in place where the park rangers and dogs are put on patrol to hunt for the poachers in the park.

• Senkwekwe Gorilla Orphanage Sanctuary

The Senkwekwe Gorilla Orphanage Sanctuary is the world’s only gorilla orphanage and is currently home to orphaned gorillas and many young gorillas survive independently so Virunga National Park management takes them to help raise and protect them during a particularly harsh poaching period in Congolese history. They continue to live at Senkwekwe today into the Democratic Republic of Congo.

• Congo Hounds Program

Congo hounds program is also referred to as man search dogs, that have been put in place to track, smell and enables them to pick up poachers’ traps and follow the movements of poachers, even when it is days old. This unique sense of smell, combined with their independent skills, makes Congo hounds program to work alongside rangers to track down poachers as new measure to promote conservation in the Virunga National Park.