Guerillas vs. Gorillas

The Daily Mail reports that wildlife rangers are battling to save an orphaned baby mountain gorilla found clinging to her dead mother in the Congo. The adult gorilla had been shot a point-blank range in the back of the head.

The two-month-old, who has been named Ndakasi by conservationists looking after her in Goma, is taking baby formula from a feeding bottle. "She's more or less OK. It is certainly a worrying situation, but not hopeless," Paulin Ngobobo, senior warden in eastern Congo's Virunga National Park.

Ndakasi, who was born on April 15, would normally have suckled for up to three years. Only 700 mountain gorillas survive in the wild, more than half of them in Virunga.

At least two have been killed and eaten already this year by rebels living off the land as militia fighting drags on despite the official end of Congo's five-year war in 2003. It is unclear who had killed the adult female or why. She had been killed "execution-style" in the back of the head and left at the scene rather than taken away to be eaten, said Emmanuel de Merode of conservation group Wildlife Direct. "It looks like she was lured with bananas because we found bananas at the site.

"A second gorilla was probably shot because there was a trail of blood nearby and three gunshots were heard. The other was probably wounded and got away," he said. "There are militia groups there. This particular incident was in the Mikeno sector, which is on the border of Rwanda. There was a lot of fighting in that area in January and those problems have not entirely been solved."

Last month Wildlife Direct said Mai Mai rebels had attacked patrol posts in Virunga park, killing one wildlife officer and critically injuring three others, and threatened to slaughter gorillas if park rangers retaliated. More than 150 rangers have been killed in the last decade while protecting Congo's parks from poachers, rebel groups, illegal miners and land invasions, working through the war without pay.