Lope National Park

Lopé National Park, located in the center of Gabon, became the first protected area in Gabon when the Lopé-Okanda Wildlife Reserve was created in 1946. Its legal and management statutes have changed several times over the years, and the Lopé National Park became part of the network of 13 parks created in August 2002 by Presidential decree.Although the terrain is mostly rain forest, in the north the park contains the last remnants of grass savannas created in Central Africa during the last Ice Age, 15,000 years ago. These savannas are now a rare ‘island’ habitat in the rain forests and represent a unique record of biological evolution during that time.

The Human Aspect

The Lopé area has been inhabited almost continuously as of 400,000 years ago. Artifacts of hunter-gatherer settlements represent the oldest concentration of archaeological relics in west-central Africa. Between 2500 and 1400 BC, iron-working cultures burned and felled the forest and carved some 1200 petroglyphs. The ancestors of today’s inhabitants arrived around 700 years ago. They cleared forest for plantations of fruits and manioc, as villages still do today.

The Ogooué River flowing through the north of the park has always been a major trade route across Gabon. Despite the designation of the reserve, a road was built in the 1960s through the northern edge of the park and the area was opened to forestry in the 1980s by railway. Villages spread through the forests of the park at the turn of the century, but have gradually migrated north to benefit from the economic possibilities of the river, road, and railway. Many rural villages have completely vanished, as Gabon’s population has urbanized in recent years. Today, the population living around the park is around 3500 inhabitants, occupying six villages on the northern and eastern boundaries of the Lope NP. No villages existed within the park when it was created, but some Bongo ‘pygmy’ groups still hunt and gather in its south.

Threats

The main threats are unsustainable hunting and ivory poaching, as well as commercial logging adjacent to Lope National Park. An indirect threat is under-resourced government involvement in park protection.

WCS Activities

• An ongoing biological monitoring program will allow staff to estimate large mammal populations throughout Lopé National Park and to continue monitoring the impacts of human activities.
• Various research activities at the Station des Etudes des Gorilles et Chimpanzees, in collaboration with the Gabonese research institute CIRMF.  These include long-term behavioral-ecology studies of great apes, leopards, elephants, buffalo, mandrills, mangabeys, and other taxa. Phylo-geographic studies of several species, local archaeological and sociological studies, forest ecology, etc (see SEGC fact sheets for further information).
• A training center was finished in 2002, providing a venue for capacity-building amongst young African conservation professionals throughout the region (See Lope Training Center fact sheet for more information).  
• The physical delimitation of the park was begun in 2004.
• Environmental education/outreach programs continue to operate in the villages around the park to identify possible areas of conflict and begin to deal with them.  A particular focus has been placed on working with children in the schools of the region to teach the importance of the park and conservation activities (See Outreach fact sheet for more info).

Important Next Steps

• Complete the delimitation of the park in 2005.
• Continuation of research, training, and monitoring activities noted above.
• Further development of tourism potential of the Lope National Park, including a feasibility and impact study.  Focus on the potential of mandrill observations for tourists.
• Continuation of environmental education and outreach programs in villages near the park.