Kahuzi-Biega
Staying Power at the Edge of the Possible
Between 1995 and 2016, the Grauer's gorilla — the world's largest primate, found only in the DRC — declined 58 percent. Not slowly. Not gradually. A collapse in a single gorilla generation, as armed conflict and criminal networks tore through the forests of eastern Congo.
When the wars came, most international conservation organisations withdrew. Most never returned. The conservationists, rangers and gorilla trackers at Kahuzi-Biega stayed. They kept showing up — through conflict, through the years when the lowland sector of the park, ninety percent of its area, was effectively beyond reach. Many of those same people are still here today.
An Irreplaceable Place
Kahuzi-Biega sits in the Albertine Rift — a geological fault line running down the spine of Central Africa that has created one of Earth's most extraordinary concentrations of unique life.
Two dormant volcanoes anchor its nearly 6,000 square kilometres: Mount Kahuzi at 3,308 metres, Mount Biega at 2,790 metres. Between them lies one of the few places in Africa where high-altitude montane forest still connects seamlessly to vast lowland rainforest – a living bridge now increasingly rare across the continent.
The biodiversity is staggering: 136 large mammal species, 335 bird species, and over 1,100 plant species. A significant proportion of these exist nowhere else on Earth.
If this forest is lost, the species that evolved here cannot be restored elsewhere. The ecological relationships that took millennia to develop cannot be recreated.
The iconic species is the Grauer's gorilla – the world's largest primate, found only in the DRC. An estimated 1,571 Grauer's gorillas live in and around Kahuzi-Biega – roughly 23 percent of the remaining global population. This is the last great stronghold of a subspecies that declined 58 percent in a single gorilla generation between 1995 to 2016, hunted relentlessly across a landscape gripped by instability.
WCS has worked alongside ICCN — the Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature — at Kahuzi-Biega since the 1990s. Through protracted conflict, through the years when ninety percent of the park was beyond reach, through the poaching crisis that emptied forests across the region, this presence never broke. It is the foundation on which everything that follows was built.
The Corridor
The path they use is a narrow corridor of forest connecting the highland and lowland sectors of the park — a living bridge that makes Kahuzi-Biega irreplaceable, and that the gorillas depend on to survive.
That bridge is under pressure. The corridor is thinning.
But the DRC government has made a clear commitment: this country is a solution to global biodiversity loss. That commitment is being brought to bear. WCS and ICCN are working alongside the government to hold the line — protecting the passage the gorillas have always used, and ensuring the bridge that connects this park's two worlds remains intact.
The Weight of History
The story of Kahuzi-Biega is inseparable from the story of the Batwa (also known as Wambuti) - the Indigenous forest people recognized in Congolese culture as ‘premiers citoyens’, first inhabitants, yet systematically excluded from their ancestral lands.
Belgian colonial rule imposed formal change in 1937 when the 600-square-kilometre Zoological and Forest Reserve of Mount Kahuzi was created. In 1970, Kahuzi-Biega National Park was established. When it expanded from 600 to 6,000 square kilometres in 1975, an estimated 6,000 to 13,000 Batwa were displaced — removed from forests their ancestors had managed for centuries.
For the Batwa, the forest is ancestry — identity, the very foundation of what it means to be Batwa. Their ecological knowledge – understanding the rhythms of the gorillas, which paths they traveled, which seasons they foraged – was woven into the ecosystem's function as deeply as the trees themselves. Their displacement was not just a loss of land. It was a violation of their fundamental rights. And the ecological knowledge that came with them was lost to the park at the same time.
Recognizing this history, in 2019 through collective efforts, communities and the government developed what became known as the Bukavu Roadmap – a framework for reconciliation and co-management that was put in place before WCS signed the Public-Private Partnership. The roadmap represented what communities said they wanted. WCS's role has been to help deliver on those commitments.
The People Who Stayed
Many protected areas would have collapsed under these conditions. Many did. But Kahuzi-Biega didn't. The park survived because of the people who refused to leave.
Rangers and gorilla trackers - many from the communities surrounding the park, many who had grown up in these forests, many Batwa representatives - continued patrols despite ongoing risks. They knew the land because it was their land. They stayed when international attention shifted elsewhere and other organizations withdrew.
Their commitment - born of connection to place, to community, to a future they could envision even when others couldn't - is what prevented this landscape from being lost entirely.
Technical partners like WCS, working alongside the governmental authority ICCN, maintained skeletal operations through the most challenging years. The government continued to pay rangers salaries while GTZ (German development cooperation) provided supplementary funding. UNESCO coordinated emergency support.
WCS has been active in Kahuzi-Biega for more than two decades, staying when others left. Not because it was safe. Not because success was guaranteed. But because walking away would have meant abandoning both the wildlife and the communities whose futures depend on these forests.
WCS has been active in Kahuzi-Biega for more than two decades, staying when others left. Not because it was safe. Not because success was guaranteed. But because walking away would have meant abandoning both the wildlife and the communities whose futures depend on these forests.
A Paradigm Shift
The momentum for change came from multiple directions at once. In November 2022, the DRC government passed a first-of-its-kind law protecting the rights of Indigenous peoples — legislation that seeks to redress historical injustices and ensure Indigenous peoples play a central role in the management of forests and natural resources.
That same year, WCS and ICCN entered into a new Public-Private Partnership to jointly manage the park - but critically, this agreement built upon the Bukavu roadmap that communities and government had already established. The roadmap articulated what communities wanted: acknowledgment of historical wrongs, meaningful participation, shared benefits, and a genuine voice in how their ancestral lands are managed. WCS committed to support the DRC government in delivering on these community-defined priorities.
For the first time in African legal history, a regional human rights body declared that excluding Indigenous peoples from protected areas violates both human rights and conservation objectives and recognized the Batwa as stewards of their environment. It issued 19 specific recommendations: recognise Batwa land rights, provide compensation, ensure Indigenous participation in conservation decisions, and give Batwa priority employment in the park.
Most critically, it established legal precedent across all 55 African Union member states. What happened at Kahuzi-Biega is no longer only a local case. It had become a continental decision which could transform the foundation of conservation across the continent.
The Batwa themselves have made clear they are ready to take up this responsibility.
Building Something New
The changes are concrete — and growing.
Batwa representatives and members of local communities now sit on the park's Board of Directors, with a genuine voice in decision-making. A mandatory percentage of tourism revenue is dedicated to improving livelihoods in villages around the park's boundary. A grievance-redress system gives communities formal power to challenge decisions and seek resolution without confrontation.Education programmes have enrolled hundreds of Batwa children who had never attended school before.
These are not peripheral benefits — they are the foundation that sustains conservation.
Rangers receive training in human rights alongside wildlife protection. Developing ways for the Batwa to re-establish connection with their ancestral forests requires meaningful dialogue and innovative approaches – applying free, prior, and informed consent to develop joint solutions with the Batwa community.
Early Signs of Progress
Three years into the co-management model, the evidence is becoming visible.
Habituated gorilla populations in the Highland Sector remain stable. Community committees meet regularly to review park decisions. Conflicts that once ended in confrontation are now handled through mediation under the new grievance mechanism.
These early signs matter—not because the work is done, but because they demonstrate that change is possible. Progress is starting, and it's accelerating.
Why This Matters
Beyond Kahuzi-Biega
Even today, the challenges have not abated. Since early 2025, the Highland Sector — roughly ten percent of the park's area — has been inaccessible due to the armed conflict in eastern DRC. This is the reality of conservation at the edge of the possible.
The response is the same as it has always been here: adapt. The shut down of the park’s activities in the highland has accelerated work to establish a permanent base in the lowland sector — where 90 percent of the park is secure, and where the majority of the park's Grauer's gorillas already live. A setback has become a catalyst. That is conservation doing what the teams here have always done: finding a way forward.
Across Africa and globally, protected areas face intensifying pressures: climate change, political instability, armed conflict, economic stress, growing human populations, competing land uses.
The stakes reach far beyond these mountains. The water that falls here feeds millions of people downstream. The carbon stored in these trees regulates a continent's climate. And the lessons emerging from this landscape may shape the future of conservation everywhere.
The Long View
The conflict that has shaped eastern DRC for three decades has not ended – since 2022, the M23 rebel group's offensive has displaced over a million people in South Kivu, driving new pressure on the park as families seek resources and survival.
Reconciliation advances unevenly. This will not be an easy journey in a region plagued by a history of violence, corruption, armed conflict, and competing interests in natural resources.
The question is whether transformation can happen fast enough. The pressures have not stopped. But something has shifted.
The communities once removed from this forest in the name of conservation are now shaping its future. The same families displaced from their ancestral lands are positioned — for the first time — to help protect them.
Around the world, Indigenous peoples safeguard the majority of what remains of Earth's intact ecosystems. When they hold secure rights and real authority, biodiversity flourishes. Kahuzi-Biega is the proof — and, through the African Commission decision, now a legal precedent across 55 nations. What was learned here in the hardest years is no longer confined to one park.
A protected area cannot exist without recognizing the deep interconnection between forests and the cultural identities of Indigenous Peoples.
