Many big and small incidents happen in the park daily. Some might give you a better picture of what the staff and rangers deal with, so we will be blogging more about the stories that happen all over the park. Because it is high on the priority list to keep our animals safe, today you get an animal rescue story:

Last weekend, it involved hippos on Lake Edward. The central sector warden, Rodrigue, learned from a supporter of the park that a hippo had died following a fight with another hippo at Taliha on the west coast of Lake Edward. The people living nearby wanted to chop it up and split the meat among them, and began making plans to kill the other hippo involved in the fight as well.

At the request of our team, some FARDC military soldiers guarded the hippos while the rangers took a boat to the scene. The dead hippo was still in one piece and was found to have a snare on his foot. The rangers planned to take the hippo back to Rwindi, central sector headquarters south of the lake, to bury it or let wild animals take it, but the plan changed to a public burning in Vitshumbi, a large lakeside fishing village, to prevent accusations that the rangers would eat the hippo.

The park strictly forbids eating animals of the park for any reason. Without this policy it would be easy to find excuses. Hippos in particular have been a target of poachers. In 1976 there were 27,000 hippos in Lake Edward and surrounding rivers, the largest concentration of hippos in the world. In 2005, there were approximately 350. Today that number is up, at about 1200, but we still have a long way to go in protecting these animals.