Kahuzi-Biega guards the last stronghold of the Grauer's gorilla, the largest primate alive, and it is the only place in the world where you can walk up to a habituated family of them. A silverback here can pass 200 kilograms. Two extinct volcanoes give the park its name — Mount Kahuzi at 3,308 metres and Mount Biega at 2,790 — and the land drops away from their subalpine heather through bamboo and montane forest to Congo Basin rainforest at 600 metres. That ladder of habitats, and the apes living on it, earned the park UNESCO listing in 1980. Adrien Deschryver, a Belgian conservationist, had it created in 1970; the Batwa who lived in the forest were evicted to make room for it. Then the wars came. Gorilla counts inside the park fell from around 600 before the 1990s to 125 by 2008, and UNESCO moved the site onto its List of World Heritage in Danger in 1997, where it still sits. Rangers have since brought the highland population back to roughly 200 to 250 animals.
A trek leaves from Tshivanga, half an hour above Bukavu, and abandons the path almost at once. Trackers cut through nettles and vines, reading night nests and chewed stems, until the green ahead goes quiet and the family is simply there. Chimanuka's group is the one most visitors meet. Whether any of this is possible right now is another question. M23 fighters took Bukavu in February 2025 and reached the park headquarters, where they disarmed the eco-guards; patrols and monitoring largely stopped, charcoal cutting spread inside the forest, and ordinary tourism has not resumed. Ask ICCN, the Congolese park authority, before you plan a thing.