Skip to main content

In a remarkable show of humanity, a forest ranger offers comfort to a grieving gorilla 🦍 that has lost its mother

In a remarkable show of humanity, a forest ranger offers comfort to a grieving gorilla 🦍 that has lost its mother. With guardians of this caliber, the fight to preserve these incredible animals will never be lost. This striking image was captured in Virunga National Park, Congo.

Protecting the forests of Virunga National Park in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo - home to endangered mountain gorillas - could be described as one of the toughest jobs on the planet.

In the past 12 months, more than 20 of the park's staff have been murdered - and last week rebels were accused of killing the Italian ambassador to DR Congo, his security guard and driver in an attack within the park.

"The level of sacrifice that's involved in keeping this work going will always be the hardest thing to deal with," says Emmanuel de Merode, who is in charge of more than 800 rangers at Virunga, Africa's oldest and largest national park.

It spans 7,800 sq km (3,000 sq miles) and is home to an astonishingly diverse landscape - from active volcanoes and vast lakes to rainforest and mountains.

The park was set up nearly 100 years ago to protect mountain gorillas, of which there are only 1,000 left in the world. But numbers are increasing, and in some welcome news, three babies have been born at the park in the past month.

Mr De Merode has lived in DR Congo for nearly 30 years, but he still remembers the day he first arrived.

"I bought a motorbike in Kampala and drove through Uganda into Congo, and as you cross the border you're immediately struck by the enormity of the park and the incredibly beautiful landscapes."

Born in North Africa and raised in Kenya, Mr De Merode is a Belgian prince, but he does not use his title.

Click Here To See More Photos

You Can Click Here to Watch The Video

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

This is how long the average prisoner live once he arrived in Auschwitz before taking them to the gas chamber

Auschwitz was large but not the worst of the camps; it most probably was the most well known It was a labor camp. Prisoners were worked to death. Those arriving WERE sorted into those groups that could be used for work and those who were considered worthless: children, the old and sick. These were sent immediately to the gas chambers to be liquidated. So they were there maybe an hour before being killed. In 1941-1942 the extermination camps in Poland, Sorbibor, Chelmo, Treblinka, Belzec were used to empty the Polish Jewish ghettos. Understand that the word “concentration” meant where the Jews and undesirables were gathered or concentrated for subsequent elimination. There was a vast dislocation of people in the wake of the Nazi invasion of Poland and the Soviet Union. Millions of Jews were concentrated in sections, ghettos of cities and then were rounded up and ship to extermination camps. These camps were constructed away from major cities and from the time a train arrived with a load...

A female survivor forced into sex slavery at Auschwitz bares the inscription Feld-Hure, tattooed on her chest in, 1945. More on German sex crimes during the war in the comments

A female survivor forced into sex slavery at Auschwitz bares the inscription Feld-Hure, tattooed on her chest in, 1945.  Forgotten by too many are the millions of rape victims of the Wehrmacht. Once praised for honorable conduct, the “clean hands” of the German Army was once one of the most well-kept myths of the Second World War until the 1990s. Over time, historians have deconstructed the lies surrounding the myth, revealing a far more sinister military organization with an affinity for the National Socialist world view and the violent means to assert it across Europe. Remnants of that clean image, however, remain in discussion of the Wehrmacht’s sex crimes—or rather the complete absence of such discourse. Rape was used as a weapon of mass terror by the Wehrmacht. An unprecedented level of sexual violence was committed on the Eastern Front, where over 10 million women and young girls were raped by German soldiers. Nazi authorities and policies, through the Criminal Orders, c...

Popular posts from this blog

How common were instances of sexual abuse in Nazi concentration camps

How common were instances of sexual abuse in Nazi concentration camps. The accounts that rap£ or prostitution was common, Were the guards were given "free reign" over the prisoners given view of them as subhuman The Nazis sort of developed a network of state-controlled brothels during the war. This included both the civilian and military brothels. The Nazis even set up brothels for the forced labor inmates that helped with the German war effort as incentives for higher production from prisoners in camps. Back then these brothels were suppose to serving several needs. For the soldiers that were far away from home, the Nazis thought that having these brothels would reduce the possibility of rape in occupied lands and reducing the sexual relations with impure local women or forced laborer's, as well. Heck, the Nazis tried to use these brothel women to cure homosexuality as a treatment with male prisoners that were gay. Regular German women were exempt from serving in these b...

The prisoners in concentration camps have sex with each other

 The prisoners in concentration camps have sex with each other Steady on. Nearly all concentration camps were single-sex, and at those that held both men and women the sexes were usually kept separate, though at Auschwitz III (Monowitz) and possibly also some other sub-camps they worked together. At extermination camps (where the sexes were not separated) most of the prisoners were killed within 24 hours of arrival. Prisoners did not have privacy. Remember that at the time most people had a horror of same-sex relations, especially between men. However, some Kapos and even guards forced prisoners to have sex with them. In Night Elie Wiesel relates how he found his Kapo having sex with a female prisoner, and he (Wiesel) was given 25 lashes for finding them having sex.* In the Women’s Camp at least one guard forced another woman to have sex with her, and at many camps there was a piepel (camp bum boy). *He also describes the hanging of the piepel of a Blockältester ( ‘block senior’). ...