One cruel trap can do so much harm – will you help destroy them?
As you start to think about the festive season and what it means to you and the people you love, I’d like you to spare a thought for gorillas.
The troop is all around you. They’re eating and playing in the grass at the edge of the clearing. You stroll into the forest beyond, seeking the cool of the shade. In an instant you’re upside down, dangling in the air. A steel wire is biting into your leg. You scream in agony. You can’t see. Blood is dripping into your eyes…
When you’re decorating your tree this Christmas, please remember that there may be less festive items dangling from trees in the forests of the Democratic Republic of the Congo – and in Rwanda and Uganda too.
Gorillas can so easily get caught up in brutal traps like the one shown here. Once caught, they have little or no chance of escape.
You could be their only chance. Please help this Christmas.
Day after day, our rangers comb the gorillas’ forests, looking for brutal traps. They’re often made of steel brake cables from motorbikes, cars or trucks. One end is tied to the branch of a tree and the other is pegged to the ground to keep them under tension.
Every snare could kill or maim a gorilla – even a mature silverback
These are ‘noose-like’ devices, set from tree branches that are bent over to cause tension in the steel wire or rope. As soon as the gorilla steps into the loop of the trap, it releases the tension on the tree branch. This generates enormous power, lifting the trapped gorilla into the air, leaving it dangling from one limb.
As the gorilla struggles to free itself, the steel wire tightens, biting into flesh and causing terrible wounds. Even if a gorilla does somehow manage to escape from the trap it could easily lose a hand or a foot – fatal injuries in the forest.
Every year our rangers track down and destroy hundreds of traps. With your help today we will snap even more – and save more gorillas.
Extinction is forever. Please don’t let these precious creatures go.
Patrolling the forest, day and night, in all weathers.
My name is André Byamungu and I run the ranger teams here in Walikale in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
This Christmas we’ll be forcing our way through some of the harshest terrain in the world. Struggling – and failing – to keep the driving rain out of our boots and our clothes. All to keep gorillas safe.
But the gorillas here are facing an ever greater threat. Traps are a living nightmare even for a team of trained rangers who know to look out for them and who have heavy duty wire cutters to disarm and destroy them. But for gorillas, they’re much, much worse. In fact, they’re absolutely murderous.
Rangers simply have to search the forest day after day, night after night. Every single trap they can find and destroy represents many gorillas’ lives saved. The rangers are the only people who stand between gorillas and extinction. They – and the gorillas – are depending on you.
