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Deep in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a tireless conservationist is working to safeguard the future of the critically endangered Grauer's gorilla. Dominique Bikaba, founder and executive director of Strong Roots Congo, has dedicated his life to protecting these majestic creatures and their habitats.Bikaba's journey into conservation began in 1992, driven by a desire to mediate tensions between park authorities and displaced communities. His work is deeply personal, rooted in his own experiences growing up near Kahuzi-Biega national park, where his family was displaced in the 1970s. The park, a sanctuary for Grauer's gorillas, elephants, and a rich array of wildlife, is a landscape of immense biological wealth and political fragility.The Grauer's gorilla, the largest subspecies of primates, can weigh up to 250kg (39st). However, their numbers have drastically declined due to conflict, slash-and-burn agriculture, and hunting for bush meat. Before the conflicts, there were approximately 17,000 Grauer's gorillas; by 2016, that number had dwindled to around 3,800.Bikaba's organization, Strong Roots Congo, aims to create a biodiversity corridor linking Kahuzi-Biega national park with Itombwe nature reserve. This ambitious project seeks to secure 1m hectares of land for wildlife and Indigenous communities, formalizing customary land rights and promoting coexistence. So far, Strong Roots has helped establish 23 community forests, covering about 600,000 hectares.Bikaba emphasizes the importance of community-led conservation. "What we are doing is putting communities back together, so they can thrive together as they have done for centuries," he says. His approach contrasts with traditional conservation models that often cast local people as threats. Bikaba believes that humans are part of nature and that there is much wisdom to be learned from communities living in forests.Despite the challenges posed by ongoing conflict in eastern DRC, Bikaba remains committed to his work. "If there is one thing we should avoid in life, it's war," he says. "If there is a way we can stop war in this region, we should do it. No matter the cost."

A second set of mountain gorilla twins has been born in Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), marking what conservationists are calling an extraordinary event for these endangered primates.Just two months after twin mountain gorillas were discovered by rangers in the Virunga massif in eastern DRC, another rare twin birth has been found by park wardens. This time, an infant male and female have been spotted in the Baraka family, a troop of 19 mountain gorillas that roam the region's high-altitude rainforests.Park rangers have placed the young primates under additional monitoring to help them through the critical initial months, as the infants face significant challenges to becoming fully grown adults. Twins are extremely rare in mountain gorillas, accounting for less than 1% of births, and place extra demands on the mother.The gorilla subspecies, found in only two isolated pockets of the Virunga massif and the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in southwest Uganda, has high rates of infant mortality, with about a quarter falling victim to disease, trauma or infanticide.In January, Virunga National Park announced that a female mountain gorilla called Mafuko had given birth to twins. The infant males are now 11 weeks old and said to be thriving, with other gorillas in the troop taking extra care of the mother to support her caregiving, according to rangers. Park authorities believe that twin births are more likely when females are in particularly good physical condition.Jacques Katutu, the head of gorilla monitoring at Virunga, said: "Two instances of twin births within three months is an extraordinary event and provides another vital indicator that dedicated conservation efforts, which have continued despite the current instability in eastern Congo, continue to support the growth of the endangered mountain gorilla population within Virunga National Park."Specialist veterinary care has played a leading role in the revival of the subspecies. In Rwanda, Uganda and the DRC, organizations such as the Gorilla Doctors have prevented dozens of deaths by helping animals affected by human behavior, such as by releasing gorillas accidentally caught in poachers' traps. One study attributes half of the mountain gorillas' population increase to the vets.Barely 250 mountain gorillas were left in the 1970s, and many thought the animals faced extinction. Decades of intense conservation work helped population numbers surpass 1,000 in 2018, and conservation authorities have since downgraded the subspecies' status from critically endangered to endangered.The DRC section of the Virunga mountain range remains one of the most dangerous places in the world for wildlife rangers. Over the past 20 years, more than 220 rangers have been killed in the park, where rebel groups such as M23 and other militias, as well as bandits, operate with impunity.

The USAID agency was a primary financial backer of Liberia's eco-guards, who help protect species from poaching and trafficking. The eco-guards, all of whom live in forest communities, patrol for signs of illegal activity and share their findings with rangers from nearby parks and forests.In late January 2025, the SCNL learned that USAID, the eco-guards' primary financial backer, was being dismantled by the Trump administration and that funding had been abruptly suspended. The SCNL programme manager, Michael E Taire, a Liberian who lives in the capital, Monrovia, spent several days travelling over rough forest roads to break the news to the eco-guards, who were shocked and distraught.Conservation organisations large and small lost tens of millions of dollars, forcing some to function with a fraction of the resources they had expected and others to shut down programmes entirely. Efforts to address the root causes of wildlife trafficking across the globe were axed, as was USAID's forest-protection programme in the Congo basin of central Africa, one of the agency's largest and most enduring endeavours.David Kaimowitz, a longtime advocate of community-led conservation in the Amazon basin and Central America, puts it bluntly: 'We’re talking about an end to a whole era of conservation.'Diane Russell, an American anthropologist who has worked for USAID in the Congo basin since the 1980s, says the agency helped draw international attention and funding to the region’s remarkably rich remaining forests, which are home to mountain gorillas and forest elephants. It also enabled conservation to continue through extraordinarily difficult conditions.'The callous glee with which [the Trump] administration choked off aid is something I will never forgive or forget,' Kevin Starr writes.'We cannot replace USAID, but we can do big things, because we, the locals, were the engine behind what USAID was doing in this region,' Dida Fayo says.