I never saw those images. The next time we drove that road together we were on our way to a funeral.

I was in northeastern Congo to document the lives and work of the Okapi Wildlife Reserve rangers, whose job it is to protect the UNESCO World Heritage site’s namesake giraffe-like animals and their forest habitat. We were visiting the site of the Bapela gold mine, which had been closed down by the rangers and cleared of illegal mining activities just a few months earlier.

I knew the trip was risky, but I hoped my photography could illustrate the rangers’ struggle for conservation and their conflict with local communities and militias over valuable resources like gold, timber, and wildlife.

We unloaded the truck