History
The park was first placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger in the mid-1980s after the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources(IUCN) estimated that as few as 15 northern white rhinos remained. The World Wildlife Fund, Frankfurt Zoological Society and UNESCO/IUCN worked with the then Zairian government to rehabilitate the park. The effort paid off and the park was removed from the danger list in 1992 (Avant, 2004, 367). However, in 1991, a nearby town was captured by the Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA) and refugees began to migrate in to areas surrounding the park, growing to 50,000 by 1993. The inflow of refugees and members or former members of the SPLA also brought automatic weapons and military equipment into use in the taking of bushmeat from the animal populations within the park. The Garamba park guards were not capable of securing the park against the more heavily armed and trained poachers. There were 121 shoot-outs in the park between 1993 and 1995. African Buffalo and elephants fell to the poachers. In 1996, two of the white rhinos were killed, leading to the return of Garamba to the World Heritage Site Danger List in that same year (Avant, 2004, 368).
In 2012, 22 elephants were killed in a helicopter attack by poachers who hacked off their tusks and genitals.
Read more about this topic: Garamba National Park
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