The Central Africa region encompasses the vast Congo Basin and Ogooué Basin forests, the second largest tropical forest in the world. It features exceptional biodiversity and is of great conservation importance, harboring vast contiguous forest blocks with intact assemblages of large charismatic mammals, including the endangered forest elephant, two species of gorilla, chimpanzees, and bonobos, the reclusive Okapi, and the bongo. It is also home to diverse human cultures including indigenous forest peoples. The Gulf of Guinea coastlines sustain significant marine mammal and turtle nesting and feeding grounds, and the region boasts globally significant biodiversity hotspots along the Albertine Rift.

Challenges

The region is facing a set of unique and expanding conservation challenges and threats, along its coastline and within its forested interior.

Forests: Poaching of elephants for ivory, the commercial bushmeat trade, deforestation and degradation due to expanding agriculture and infrastructure development, charcoal production, and a poorly managed and regulated extractive industry (mining, logging, oil).
Coastline: Overfishing, pollution and perturbations from the oil industry, and the targeted poaching of turtles.

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Our Goal

The region presents unparalleled opportunities to save some of the last remaining forest wildernesses on the planet.

How Will We Get There?

To help do this, we are employing some core strategies:

Developing effective partnerships for terrestrial and marine protected area creation and management.
Assisting with the development of full-chain wildlife law enforcement programs.
Encouraging sustainable landscape-scale planning and management.
Improving the well being of local people.
Working with both government and international partners to mainstream green development strategies and approaches.

A VISION DOCUMENT FOR KAHUZI-BIEGA NATIONAL PARK

Why WCS?

WCS has a significant presence in Central Africa with a strong conservation, protected area management, livelihoods, policy and scientific program. Central Africa includes some of the largest country programs in WCS's Global Conservation portfolio, in terms of staffing, budget, and diversity of projects, and a strong WCS legacy that dates back to the 1950s. The program includes one of WCS's flagship site-based programs in Africa (the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park in the Republic of Congo) and has spearheaded and assisted with a number of pioneering conservation management models over the last 30 years, including private-public partnerships for integrating conservation in sustainable, multiple-use forest management and the creation of Gabon's world famous national park network (terrestrial and marine).

18 protected areas

WCS is currently a part of numerous partnerships to support the management of 15 terrestrial and three marine PAs in six countries in Central Africa covering an estimated 209,338 square kilometers. We are also currently working toward the creation of four new PAs covering 62,555 square kilometers.

4 great ape species

Between our Central Africa and Sudano-Sahel regions, WCS works to protect all four great ape subspecies in Africa, from the critically endangered Grauer’s gorilla in DRC, where we are working at the sites most crucial for their continued survival, to the mountain gorillas in Rwanda, Uganda, and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Within WCS landscapes in northern Congo, we work to protect the single largest population of wild western lowland gorillas on the planet.

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On Our Strategies

Develop Effective Partnerships for Terrestrial and Marine PA Creation and Management

This is done through private-public management partnerships, co-management, and technical support to protected area agencies. It includes all aspects of protected area creation, planning, and adaptive management including law enforcement, infrastructure, research and monitoring, innovative tourism development, and more. The establishment of a well-managed network of terrestrial and marine parks can form the cornerstone for long-term conservation, security, and development.

Assist Development of Full-Chain Law Enforcement Programs

Intelligence-led anti-poaching efforts (including terrestrial, marine, and aerial surveillance), anti-trafficking (at landscape, national, transboundary levels), and legal follow up on prosecutions, will work to halt illegal wildlife trafficking and poaching, and improve governance at local, national, and international scales.

Encourage Sustainable Landscape-Scale Planning and Management

This includes community-based resource management (fisheries, wildlife management, non-timber forest products, agroforestry and sustainable production of agricultural products such as cocoa), alternative sustainable livelihoods partnerships; extractive industry best practice partnerships and certifications (timber, mining, oil); and partnerships with tourism operators. Within this is land-use planning with ecologically sound zoning, set-asides, and corridor establishment outside of protected areas, and road planning. It further encompasses climate change adaptation and mitigation programs and integrating human-wildlife health interface concerns in management interventions.

Improve the Well Being of Local People

People depend on the forests, rivers and oceans of Central Africa for their water, culture, food, shelter, and their livelihoods. WCS is working to improve the well-being of those in and around cities as well as near our field sites. We're doing this in three main ways:

We are working at new scales and with new partners to improve food security. The single biggest threat to wildlife in Central Africa is the commercial bushmeat trade; neither protein alternatives nor law enforcement alone can solve this complex issue.
In DR Congo, we are attempting to pilot new models of community-based management of wild places.
We are aiming to provide appropriate market- and non-market based incentives for families to engage in conservation practices and to steward the wildlife they live with and the natural resources they depend upon.

Work with Both Government and International Partners to Mainstream Green Development

This can positively influence major infrastructure and macro development planning through scientific guidance and policy support, including influencing dam and hydro plant construction, major road development, and macro zoning plans for development projects in the countries of the Central Africa region. Also, we are working to promote "green" energy options to reduce pressures on natural resources and manage and reduce charcoal production.

In Action

The Republic of Congo is home to 20% of all the remaining forest elephants on Earth, and 62% of the world's gorillas. WCS has been supporting management of the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park there since 1993. The past decade has brought considerable conservation challenges to the area, with rapid expansion of industrialized logging, and a wave of elephant poaching that began in earnest after 2006. In 2014, the government began a public-private partnership with WCS to manage the park. WCS is now fully responsible for the protection of more than 1,600 square miles of pristine lowland rainforest, a stronghold for gorillas and forest elephants, over the next 25 years. WCS management of Nouabalé-Ndoki has resulted in a fourfold expansion and professionalization of its ranger force, and a reduction of elephant poaching in the park to zero in 2015.