Loango National Park - Operation Loango

One of thirteen national parks created in Gabon in 2002, Loango National Park protects diverse coastal habitat, including part of the 220 km² Iguéla Lagoon, the only significant example of a typical western African lagoon system that is protected within a national park. The area also remains a relatively pristine example of how most of coastal western Africa must have been before more recent degradation. It is a place where large mammals, including forest buffalo, elephant, and hippopotamus wander onto the beaches and even enter the Atlantic Ocean.

WCS is engaged in a collaborative venture with SCD (Societé de Conservation et Développement, a private tourism company) in Operation Loango, a unique effort to bring the private sector and an international NGO together to protect a national park. WCS, partly funded by SCD tourism revenues, manages various conservation, monitoring, surveillance, and research activities in the park, all aimed at maintaining the long-term integrity of this ‘window into the past’.

The Human Aspect

About 500 people live in the park’s vicinity. Local people are trained by WCS as eco-guides, who lead tourists, man surveillance posts, carry out patrols, gather scientific data, and support research teams, among other activities. Eco-guides serve as local ambassadors, spreading the word to nearby communities of the benefits of the project. This serves to improve relationships with the local people.

Threats

In the long term, if the park is not self-supporting and/or making a significant contribution to the Gabonese economy, pressure will mount to harvest its natural resources. Recently loggers have opened roads close to the park. This facilitates the transport of bushmeat, fish, and the other natural resources and poses a serious threat. Illegal offshore fishing, and at times, petroleum spills, threaten important marine fish stocks and rare marine life.

WCS Activities

• Research - Maintaining and supporting various 
•  research programs that  currently  include: cetaceans (primarily the annual migration of humpback whales that breed and mate in Gabonese waters); African forest elephants (satellite tracking to map local migration patterns); botany (mapping and cataloguing the botanical diversity of the park); socioeconomic (monitoring local fisherman); marine turtles (monitoring and tagging nesting turtles), crocodiles, and archeological surveys.
• Surveillance - Maintaining surveillance camps from which teams routinely engage in patrols to monitor and report on illegal fishing/hunting activities and wildlife movements. These teams have also been responsible for beach pollution surveys (e.g. trash, petroleum) and subsequent clean-up operations.
• Logistical & Technical assistance - Assisting the Ministry of Water and Forests team at Iguéla in their various surveillance and education activities.
• Rural development – Recruiting, equipping and training eco-guides from local communities to carry out the aforementioned surveillance activities. In addition, there is also a conservation / environmental education program which benefits Loango NP through inviting local schoolchildren to see the park.
• Collaboration – In addition to several Gabonese government institutions, other organizations involved with the project are the Smithsonian Institution, WWF, and the Max Planck Institute (Germany).

Important Next Steps

Most of the above-mentioned activities are ongoing and will continue into the future. Surveillance of illegal activities, including coastal fisheries, will be expanded in 2005. The conservation awareness and environmental education programs for local communities will be enlarged in collaboration with the government, with WCS/Operation Loango support. More eco-guides will be hired and trained, to allow for more outposts around the park and to promote a bigger area of influence. A great ape study is planned for 2005.