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Even today rain forests are in danger. So are his animals. Especially animals, unusual animals that we humans are genetically very similar to: We are talking about the mountain gorillas in the Virunga National Park, which extends in a three-country border between the Congo, Rwanda and Uganda. Is it climate change, which threatens the great apes? Or is it the lifestyle of people in industrialized nations? Are they grown rich by capitalism big game and trophy collector? All wrong. The biggest threat to mountain gorillas is the destruction of their habitat: By poverty.

Approximately one million people live in or around the area, most of them on Congolese side. And – it is estimated – about 700 gorillas. The people there live under miserable conditions in an underdeveloped, civil war and corruption embossed country; energy infrastructure is not there. With us, the power comes from the socket. For residents of the Congolese province of North Kivu, where there is the National, he’s not at all. And so they go into the forest. Because wood is the only resource that can draw on them. They cut down the trees to produce charcoal. The energy they need to prepare their food. The only one they can afford. About the gorillas they are not concerned. But their hunger for energy, for heat and light, inexorably destroys the jungle of apes. However in Rwanda gorilla trekking could become a valuable source of income.

Of course there are biologists who study the gorillas. Of course there are rangers in the reserve, to deter poachers. But against the hunger of people for energy, you have no chance. A team of American CBS News reported in 2007 from the region and of the problems. And found: Gorillas shot. A group shot and burned as a warning to the rangers and scientists. A note of the “charcoal-industry” of the Congo: This is our Land. Do not try to hinder us. Otherwise we will kill all the gorillas.