Gorilla Wars

IF SEVERAL HUNDRED REBEL INSURGENTS SUDDENLY decide to do battle in a wildlife preserve filled with apes, is this guerrilla warfare or gorilla warfare? That's a tough question now that Rwanda's Volcanoes National Park, home to half the world's surviving population of African mountain gorillas (large, hairy herbivores) has been overrun by guerrillas (somewhat smaller omnivores in camouflage with machine guns).

The rebels who seized control of the park are Tutsis, an ethnic group trying to reclaim land they lost more than three decades ago during a civil war with Rwanda's majority Hutu tribe. The marauding insurgents have threatened the lives of the gorillas (only 300 remain in the sanctuary) by driving out game wardens and destroying habitat. Moreover, they have ransacked a research center that was run for nearly two decades by the American naturalist Dian Fossey. Her pioneering work with the great apes was made famous in the film Guerrillas . . . make that Gorillas in the Mist.