Last Chance For Animals (LCA) Will Honor Prince Emmanuel de Merode, Director of Virunga National Park

Previously in Virugna National Park, gorilla were murdered with regularity. 

After years of civil war that ravaged Eastern Congo, Virugna National Park's team of restorers is bringing peace and a sense of security to the area -- along with hope for its gorilla population. WSJ Magazine profiles the changes in 'Natural Wonders in a Renewed Congo.  Poaching is a huge problem in the Eastern Congo, where elephants, gorillas and leopards are slaughtered for their body parts, which are then smuggled to Asia, where they are sold as miracle medicinal cures and aphrodisiacs. A growing problem is the killing of gorillas for bushmeat in expanding populations and to feed terrorist groups in the Congo. 

International nonprofit Last Chance for Animals (LCA) will honor Prince Emmanuel de Merode, Director of Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and Anthony Caere, Head of Virunga's Air Wing. The two men will both receive the prestigious "Albert Schweitzer Award" at its annual gala on Saturday, October 22, 2016, at the Beverly Hilton hotel in Beverly Hills, CA. 

This year, LCA's fundraising gala will be centered on the plight of Africa's Virunga National Park and its critically endangered mountain gorilla population.

Emmanuel de Merode, who is married to Kenyan paleontologist Louise Leakey, the granddaughter of  Louis Leakey, was shot by gunmen near Goma in April 2014.

Louise Leakey is the head of the Koobi Fora Research Project in Kenya's Turkana basin and is an assistant professor of anthropology at Long Island's Stony Brook University.