The transnational management regime of the Virunga Conservation Area across the Congolese, Rwandan and Ugandan borders: Challenges and opportunities

Abstract

The Virunga Transboundary Conservation Area (VTCA) shown in Figure 1 is a 434 km2 natural heritage/wildlife complex. One part comprises a 240 km2 portion of the mountainous Virunga National Park, which was created in 1925 inside the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). As such, Virunga National Park, with a total land area of 7, 800 km2 (Figure 2), is not wholly located in the VTCA. The main focus of this paper is the Mikeno sector of the park, an area of approximately 250 km2, which happens to be part of the VTCA territory (Figure 2). The entire park was placed on the World Heritage List in 1979 and pronounced a World Heritage Site in Danger in 1994. The second part of the VTCA is an alpine area covering some 160 km2 of Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park, which was created in 1929 and designated as a Biosphere Reserve (Figures 1, 2 and 3). The third part, also mountainous, is a 33.7 km2 area within the Mgahinga Gorilla National Park (MGNP) in Uganda (Figures 1, 2 and 3). The MGNP was established in 1964 as a reserve to protect the mountain gorilla and it was inscribed onto the World Heritage Tentative List in 2007. This ‘three-in-one’ natural heritage area lies between 1°21′50″ S and 29°38′17′ E.