Inside the Fight to Save One of the World’s Most Dangerous Parks

To these young men raised in poverty, that Virunga’s tremendously fertile soil, its trees, and its creatures should be protected by law for the viewing pleasure of well-off tourists struck them as a grave injustice. They were swept into a militia known as M23, which touted a host of grievances against the corrupt government but in the meantime was content to loot and rape its way through a slice of eastern Congo near the park’s southern sector. By the end of 2013, after more than a year and a half of fighting, the Congolese Army, backed by United Nations troops, routed M23.
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