On the blue-gray waters of Lake Edward, where the eastern fringe of Congo blends into Uganda, Byanmongo Matabishi, a fisherman from the Congolese vill

The Virunga National Park, as described herein, is one of the most beautiful places I have been--with an amazing degree of biodiversity...which appears to now be threatened
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On the blue-gray waters of Lake Edward, where the eastern fringe of Congo blends into Uganda, Byanmongo Matabishi, a fisherman from the Congolese village of Vitshumbi, stands on a pirogue and shakes his head.

“Nothing,” he says, glancing into the empty nets in the hull. “Nothing.”

Three days on the lake, and he has no fish to show for it.

By now, the internecine wars of eastern Congo have acquired a haunting familiarity: rebels plunder the country’s natural riches, and the looting feeds a cycle of impoverishment, corruption, and violence. But in Vitshumbi, more-elemental changes have been complicating the pattern. The hippopotamuses started falling first. Then the elephants. And now the fish are disappearing, too. An ecosystem seems to be unraveling.

(..)
As we leave the village, we see two men weaving through the tall grasses from the direction of the Rwandan Hutu camp. One strains under a large, lumpy sack.

“Thieves!” shouts one of the park rangers in our car. The two men run. Our SUV chases them toward a tarp, where two soldiers man a checkpoint between the rebel camp and the village.

The car doors fling open, and the rangers jump out and lunge at the thieves, while the soldiers leap to their feet. Amid shouts and scuffling, the sack opens, and stolen fish spill all over their wiry bearer. Covered in slime, the pirate fisherman slumps on the ground. A ranger grabs the other man, who stands limp and silent. The environmental activist fires questions at the two, demanding to know why they were fishing without licenses.

“Because,” the wiry man says, “we were hungry.”