Rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo agreed to help stop the shooting of mountain gorillas in the east of the country, boosting efforts by rangers to protect the critically endangered animals, a conservationist group said.

The gorillas were left unprotected when more than 40 rangers in eastern Congo's Virunga National Park fled their posts following a rebellion in November by thousands of fighters loyal to a local warlord, Laurent Nkunda, said Emmanuel de Merode, executive director of WildlifeDirect. Reports were received on Jan. 5 and Jan. 12 that gorillas had been shot, he said.

"In a situation where two gorillas have been killed in a short period, there's a good chance that a large number of other gorillas have been killed," de Merode said in a telephone interview from Beni, eastern Congo. "It's an issue of global importance — it's the last population of mountain gorillas left in the world. It's also important for the livelihood of local communities, as there's a high potential for eco-tourism."

The killings spurred rangers to seek talks with the rebels to explain the importance of the gorillas. At talks two days ago facilitated by the United Nations mission in Congo, MONUC, Nkunda's representative, Colonel Makenga, agreed to allow the park wardens to return to their patrols, de Merode said.

Only about 700 mountain gorillas remain, according to WildlifeDirect, a conservation group founded by Richard Leakey, a paleontologist and former director of Kenya's Wildlife Service.

The meeting was held at Jomba, one of the key gorilla sites near the Ugandan border, and also the location of the rebel headquarters, Paulin Ngobobo, senior warden of southern Virunga, said in his online blog. Ngobobo attended the talks along with Robert Muir of the Frankfurt Zoological Society, and MONUC Battalion Commander Lieutenant Colonel Rajeesh Parmar.

"Shortly after our arrival at 10.30 a.m., a company of men came striding down the hilltop in camouflage gear — most of them carrying heavy weapons and rocket launchers," Ngobobo said. "Quite a few were also carrying spears."

While Ngobobo and Muir had managed to retrieve the gorilla remains in a Jan. 15 trip to the park, they hadn't spoken with the rebels, and it wasn't possible to assess whether the killings were "planned vandalism" or not, de Merode said. The National Congress for the Defense of the People, Nkunda's group, denied the killings in a Jan. 18 statement transmitted through MONUC.

"We would never attack any wildlife species in one of our national parks," the group's spokesman Rene Abandi said in the statement. "It's against our culture, our tradition and our upbringing as soldiers and people."

As a result of the meeting, "the rebel troops have been ordered by Nkunda out of the park and have been given clear instructions not to shoot the gorillas," de Merode said. "The rangers have been given clearance to return to their patrols."

Mountain gorillas, whose Latin name is Gorilla beringei, are listed as "critically endangered" in the Red List of threatened species published by the IUCN, or International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources. That's the highest level of threat for an animal still found in the wild.

The species was featured in the film "Gorillas in the Mist," which was based on the efforts of Dian Fossey, an American zoologist, to study and protect mountain gorillas. Fossey was killed in 1985 in her cabin in the Rwandan mountains by an unknown attacker.

Virunga National Park was established in 1925, and covers 8,000 square kilometers (3,200 square miles). It borders Rwanda's Volcanoes National Park and Uganda's Gorilla Sanctuary. Virunga's wardens, including Ngobobo, are employees of the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature (ICCN) and their income is supplemented to the tune of about $60 a month by WildlifeDirect, de Merode said.