Virunga National Park is a national park in the Albertine Rift Valley in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It was created in 1925. In elevation, it ranges from in the Semliki River valley to in the Rwenzori Mountains. From north to south it extends approximately , largely along the international borders with Uganda and Rwanda in the east. It covers an area of . Two active volcanoes are located in the park, Mount Nyiragongo and Nyamuragira. They have significantly shaped the national park's diverse habitats and wildlife. More than 3,000 faunal and floral species have been recorded, of which more than 300 are endemic to the Albertine Rift including eastern gorilla (Gorilla beringei) and golden monkey (Cercopithecus kandti). In 1979, the National Park was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site because of its rich diversity of habitats, exceptional biodiversity and endemism, and its protection of rare mountain gorilla habitat. It has been listed in the List of World Heritage in Danger since 1994 because of civil unrest and the increase of human presence in the region. There have been several deadly attacks in the park by rebel groups, and several park rangers have been killed. Politics There have been plans to drill for oil in the Congo Basin since the 2000s. Preventing these plans the park gained further protection by an agreement sealed between DRCs president Felix Tshisekedi and Boris Johnson at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow. To improve the country's economic situation the government undermined that very protection by auctioning oil exploration blocks inside the park by the end of July 2022. Tullow Oil Plc, TotalEnergies, ENI and China National Offshore Oil Corporation Ltd (CNOOC) were interested in acquiring drilling permissions. Local and global groups, such as Greenpeace, are warning about the social and ecological impact of devastating the forest for oil production. Campaigners trying to create public awareness are threatened and intimidated on social media. History In the early 1920s, several proponents of the European conservation movement championed the idea of creating a protected area in northeastern Belgian Congo, among them Victor van Straelen, Jean Massart and Jean-Marie Derscheid. When Albert National Park was established in April 1925 as the Congo's first national park, it was conceived as a science-oriented nature reserve with the aim of studying and preserving wildlife and so-called "primitive" hunter-gatherer African Pygmies. In 1926,