Would you eat a gorilla? Probably not. Probably the thought has never even crossed your mind. But for people living in the Democratic Republic of Congo, eating bushmeat may be the least difficult decision they make on a daily basis.

Warfare has plagued this part of central Africa for decades. And with few ways to earn a living or feed a family in remote areas of the DRC, many people rely on working in illegal mines, which are often operated by armed militia groups. The mining takes place deep in the forest, so workers can’t exactly pack a lunch. Surviving requires finding nourishment where they can—and that means eating porcupines, Gambian rats, duikers, chimps, and Grauer’s gorillas.

Weighing up to 400 pounds, the Grauer’s gorilla is easy to track, travels in groups, and as the largest gorilla subspecies in the world, represents a hefty amount of protein—all of which has contributed to its precipitous decline over the past two decades. A new report from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and Fauna & Flora International estimates that while there were 17,000 Grauer’s gorillas in 1995, only 3,800 individuals remain—that’s a 77 percent drop in the population. And every single wild Grauer’s gorilla left resides in the conflict-ridden DRC.

In 1994 hundreds of thousands of refugees began spilling into the DRC (formerly known as Zaire) from Rwanda, where mass genocide had been taking place. Not one but two civil wars between 1993 and 2003 further destabilized the country. The last of these wars ended more than a decade ago, but numerous armed guerrilla groups, including the Simba rebels, continue to vie for control of DRC’s natural resources, such as gold, diamonds, tin, tungsten, and coltan. (The latter three are used in the production of computers and smartphones, the ethical sourcing of which is a story unto itself.)

Instability and human suffering often coincide with environmental devastation, and in the DRC the situation is no different. Citizens and soldiers alike live off the land, hunting bushmeat and clearing forests for fuel and farming. And there are serious consequences for anyone who tries to oppose the rebels.

Wildlife rangers engaged in a 40-minute firefight last December after stumbling onto an illegal mining camp. Fortunately, no one was killed and the day ended with several miners in handcuffs. It doesn’t always go that way, though. While monitoring several gorilla groups in the highland sector of Kahuzi Biega in March, a wildlife ranger stopped to investigate a vehicle that had been recently looted by rebels. Guerrilla soldiers hiding among trees nearby shot and killed him. According to WCS, about a thousand illegal mines exist within the gorilla’s remaining habitat. Since 1996, between 170 and 200 rangers have been killed in the region.

The pet trade is yet another threat to Grauer’s gorillas (since 2003 rangers have confiscated 15 infants from smugglers), but Andrew Plumptre, director of the WCS’s Albertine Rift program, says bushmeat hunting remains the biggest worry of all. He says finding alternative sources of food and creating better employment opportunities in nearby communities is key to saving the primates.

Many of the miners and soldiers the conservationists interviewed for the report expressed a willingness to stop eating gorillas and other endangered species like chimps and elephants. “The local people are interested in protecting land for themselves and their culture,” says Plumptre. But first they’re going to need some options.

And they can’t come too soon, because time is not on the Grauer’s gorillas’ side. According to the report, if the gorilla population continues to be gobbled up at its current 5 percent annual rate, the world’s largest gorilla could go extinct in as little as two years.

Guinea pig farming, strange as it sounds, may be one answer. The rodents reproduce quickly, eat kitchen scraps, and are small enough for families to hide when armed bandits come to town looking to loot livestock. Guinea pigs are already a popular food source in South America, and any extra animals left over from all that breeding can be sold for profit. But a long-term solution will require more than swapping gorillas for guinea pigs.

Plumptre says conservationists are also looking into a number of ways to create new jobs in the region, from giving out micro-loans—to establish small businesses and more sustainable agriculture—to ecotourism, which would provide even more reasons to keep those big, beautiful gorillas around.

Updating the primate’s status from endangered to critically endangered may also help by generating more awareness for the subspecies and raising funds for educating local communities about the gorillas’ plight. Whatever the specifics, the best way to save these animals will be to first save people—from hunger, poverty, and war. 

onEarth provides reporting and analysis about environmental science, policy, and culture. All opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the policies or positions of NRDC. Learn more or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Last spring, ecologist Mary Galea got her hands dirty in a narrow clearing under some power lines in Youngstown, Ohio. She planted violet asters, golden Alexanders, and magenta bee balm, a few native, commonly found flowers. The plants added a burst of color to the green, grassy stretch, but that was just a bonus. The real draw, Galea hoped, would be the plants’ nectar. Over the summer, field researchers watched the garden of wildflowers and noted the pollinators—particularly monarch butterflies—that came for a visit.

In the past 25 years, monarch numbers have taken a nosedive, plummeting more than 90 percent due primarily to habitat destruction. The butterflies migrate back and forth across North America, fluttering south to Mexico for the winter and north as far as Canada in spring and summer. The round-trip journey spans three butterfly generations or more, and to make it, they need plants: those that provide nectar to fuel them and those that help them make more monarchs. Milkweed is the only plant on which monarchs lay eggs and is crucial to the species’s survival.

Galea’s efforts are part of an experiment called Monarch Wings Across Ohio, which aims to identify the flowers monarchs prefer to feast on. Last year, Galea and volunteers tried out 20 types of flowers and some milkweed on 16 different plot types, including public parks, a farm, and a former golf course. In coming years, the data generated from monitoring these study sites will help inform Ohio’s backyard gardeners and land managers about which types of vegetation give butterflies their biggest boost on the midwestern leg of their trip.

Galea’s project, part of the Pollinator Partnership, is just one of many looking at how we can revive monarch populations across the United States. The plants Galea and others are growing could prove critical to monarch populations in Ohio. Real success, however, won’t rely only on the greenery in our backyards, parks, and roadsides; we’ll also have to address what chemicals we spray on farm crops.

Once upon a time, milkweed grew naturally on farms, between fields  of corn and soybeans. But farmers, under pressure to increase their yields, plowed fallow fields and started growing genetically modified crops designed to resist the powerful herbicide glyphosate (marketed as Roundup). Knowing these “Roundup ready” crops could withstand widespread application of the herbicide, farmers would spray entire fields with the chemical instead of targeting the weeds in their fields directly. Now, native plants, such as milkweed, die right along with the unwanted weeds.

As the milkweed went, so went the monarchs. By some estimates, the amount of milkweed along the monarchs’ midwestern path fell nearly 60 percent between 1999 and 2010. And we’re still losing one to two million acres of habitat a year, thanks to development, over-mowing, and pesticides, says Chip Taylor, a prominent monarch researcher at the University of Kansas and head of Monarch Watch.

“We’re in a position now where we have to run twice as fast as we possibly can just to keep up with habitat loss,” says Taylor. In the case of the butterflies, “running” means planting as much habitat as possible—and preventing its destruction.

To that end, myriad entities have stepped in to help. States and the federal government, nonprofits, and academics have formed several groups focused on saving the butterflies. Monarch Joint Venture, for example, has helped fund Galea’s work as well as a citizen science monitoring project in Texas, research into exotic milkweeds and the spread of disease in monarchs, and more than a dozen other initiatives. Last year, with financial backing from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and Monsanto (the company that produces Roundup), the U.S. government launched the Monarch Butterfly Conservation Fund, which aims to protect and increase monarch habitat. For its part, NRDC (onEarth’s publisher) is working with the Illinois Tollway Authority to plant milkweed along 280 miles of highway in the state.

Anyone who plants milkweed in their backyard is going to help, too, says Sylvia Fallon, director of NRDC's wildlife conservation project, but we also need to get more milkweed on larger tracts of land and around farmers’ fields.

Current efforts to improve farm soil health and reduce runoff may do just that. Lisa Schulte-Moore, an ecologist at Iowa State University, and other scientists began testing the benefits of strategically planting prairie strips—areas of restored prairie—nearly a decade ago. When they converted as little as 10 percent of row-cropped field to perennial prairie, they reduced the amount of soil loss by 95 percent, phosphorus loss by 90 percent, and nitrogen loss by 85 percent, compared with land kept completely in row crops. These strips of wildflowers, legumes, sedges, and native grasses also coax pollinators—including many a monarch—to drop in. Schulte-Moore and her team have introduced 150 acres of prairie strips to date, and farmers are keen to add more, all of which bodes well for butterflies.

How those prairie strips will hold up amid high levels of pesticides is still unknown. In order for programs like Schulte-Moore’s to help monarchs, the government has to do its part to address rampant pesticide use on farms, says Fallon. The feds have yet to limit pesticide use on fields or even to encourage farmers to go easy on how much they administer, so in February 2015, NRDC sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for its lack of action in tackling the glyphosate threat.

Of course, glyphosate isn’t the only problem pesticide out there. While glyphosate is a very effective weed killer (and milkweed killer), some weeds have developed a resistance to it. To get rid of those pesky survivors, farmers also spray 2,4-D or atrazine, which aren’t good for butterflies or their caterpillars either.

Schulte-Moore’s team is now working on 25 commercial farms and with landowners who apply various pesticides to varying degrees to see how prairie strips fare under different conditions and whether they’ll provide high-quality habitat for monarchs.

Agricultural lands cover a lot of ground in the middle of the country, and prairie strips can give a little back to monarchs and other native pollinators, much like Galea’s work could provide hospitable hangouts on smaller plots. And that’s what we need: the best pit stops possible so these black and orange beauties can rest, eat, lay some eggs and get back on their way.

onEarth provides reporting and analysis about environmental science, policy, and culture. All opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the policies or positions of NRDC. Learn more or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.