that obtained only a few specimens, no European botanists had investigated the mountain range's flora before 1929. In that year the botanist Thomas Ford Chipp, then deputy director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, reached the summit of Kinyeti peak. Later that year he published a report on the flora with several photographs. The biologist Neal A. Weber examined the ants in the area in 1942/1943. Civil wars The mountains were a haven for the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) during the Second Sudanese Civil War (1983–2005). In 1986 the government of Sudan started to provide arms, training and sanctuary for the LRA, who began to raid and plunder villages along the then Sudan–Uganda border. The secessionist Sudan People's Liberation Army assisted the Uganda People's Defence Force in fighting back. The struggle dragged on for over twenty years. Over 400 people were massacred by the LRA in the Imotong area in March 2002. The LRA finally withdrew from the region in April 2007. Years of civil war have made violence commonplace, most people have experienced the murder of a close family member. According to a 2010 report, "interviews suggested that at least every male community member over 20 years of age owns a gun in Ikotos, with some households having as many as eight to nine guns ... 33 per cent of all crimes were reportedly carried out with an AK-47 or similar automatic rifle". After the Second Sudanese Civil War ended in 2005, more foreign aid workers began spending time in the region. The range became part of South Sudan when the country was established in 2011. Agricultural impact The British colonial administration of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan began a forestry project in the Kinyeti basin in the 1940s. They cleared the native trees and natural forest habitats, to plant fast-growing softwoods, such as cypress-pines, for lumber. In 1950 the mountain range's habitats above were placed within the Imatong Central Forest Reserve, with no further settlement permitted. The reserve was not protected and the settlement ban was not enforced during the civil wars. Forestry brought laborers into the mountains, and they started hillside farming in a wide area around the forest plantations. Forestry was then neglected during the First Sudanese Civil War (1955–1972), after the 1956 independence of Sudan. After 1972 an effort was made to rehabilitate the softwood tree plantations, with a new road built from Torit, a hydro-electric scheme