Congo Gorillas and Illegal Charcoal Trade

Just recently I saw a sad episode of 60 minutes which talked about how a family of 4 gorillas were exectuted by people who want the conservation in Africa to be unprotected to be able to carry illegal trading of charcoal.

In a steady trickle teenage boys push their way down a dusty road to the bustling city of Goma, their bicycles buckling under the weight of 100-pound (45-kilogram) sacks of charcoal, or makala as it's known here.
The boys are part of an illegal trade that may pose the biggest threat to one of the most pristine places on the planet, the Democratic Republic of the Congo's Virunga National Park.

The park's dense forest is rapidly being depleted of its trees to satisfy the almost insatiable demand here for charcoal, which is used for cooking and heating by the millions of people living in this troubled region.
The lucrative charcoal trade is not only wreaking havoc on the park but also on its most famous inhabitants, the rare mountain gorillas.
Conservationists believe last month's execution of four moutain gorillas inside the park was carried out by people associated with the charcoal trade who want the park unprotected.
"The gorillas have become a hindrance for the charcoal trade," said Emmanuel de Merode, director of WildlifeDirect, a conservation group based in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Kenya that supports the park rangers working in Virunga.
"There's a very strong incentive for these people to kill the gorillas." ation park unprotected to carry out their illegal trade.

After watching, it really upset me to know that people are killing these beautiful creatures just so they can carry out the illegal trading, and also the illegal trading is killing the dense forest of the Congo which many animals call home.