Wild places | WCS Congo Blog

mitigating human-elephant conflict in Bambama

Posted on September 28, 2016

WCS’s community development team is working with farmers in the periphery of the proposed Ogooué Leketi National Park to reduce the impacts of elephant crop raiding. Over recent years, the communities in the district of Bambama have suffered increasingly from incidents of crop raiding. Local farmers are exasperated by the problem, and can resort to desperate measures to protect their fields, with serious consequences for...

Dismantling northern Congo’s trafficking networks

Posted on September 13, 2016

by Zanne Labuschagne

The fight to protect northern Congo’s forest elephants has reached boiling point. In the past two months 32 poachers have been arrested, over 100 kilograms of ivory seized and six semi-automatic weapons detained across the Ndoki landscape. This includes the arrest of an ivory trafficker tied to one the most notorious poaching rings in northern Congo. ...

Sustainable agroforestry two years down the line

Posted on September 8, 2016

by Tim Rayden

This week marks the second anniversary of a collaboration between WCS Batéké Project, and the National Afforestation Service of the Congo’s Forest Ministry. The collaboration was set up in September 2014 to promote alternative livelihoods for the populations living in the periphery of the Lefini Wildlife Reserve in central Congo. ...

world elephant day 2016

Posted on August 12, 2016

by Zanne Labuschagne

Over the last decade central Africa has lost 60% of its elephants; a staggering loss owed mainly to the unrelenting ivory trade. World Elephant Day offers a critical opportunity to take stock of their plight whilst also recognizing the hard work teams of men and woman are putting in in the field to protect these giants across their range. ...

Burn baby burn

Posted on June 21, 2016

by Tim Rayden

Last week a team from the WCS Batéké Project was in the field with a group of fire experts from US Forest Service to look at fire management in the Lefini and Lesio Louna wildlife reserves. Around one third of Congo’s surface area is covered by savannah. The grassy plateau stretches across the middle of the country from Gabon to the east of...

the ndoki experience

Posted on May 31, 2016

by Forrest Hogg

Our latest video, 'The Ndoki Experience' showcases the incredible diversity of the pristine forest of Nouabale-Ndoki National Park. The park, created in 1993, spans 4,238.7 km2 in the northwestern corner of the Republic of Congo and is a rare example of an intact forest wilderness, completely uninhabited by human settlers and with low human population densities in the surrounding area. The forest is part...

Putting Ecoguards inREACH

Posted on May 23, 2016

by Forrest Hogg

Christian and Brel are ecoguards working for the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park, Northern Congo. Their job is highly varied – from manning strategic check points on logging roads to conducting river patrols in search of illegal wildlife traffickers operating in the areas around the Park....

Bonye’s many visitors

Posted on May 4, 2016

by Zanne Labuschagne

The first quarter of 2016 saw the official start of the forest elephant-monitoring programme at Bonye bai, a remote forest clearing in Nouabale-Ndoki National Park. A team of WCS researchers and trackers headed out to the bai to construct a basic observation platform in February. The mission and construction of this tower, built to aid bai observation efforts, was covered in a mini-documentary ‘The...

Kingo “the loud voice”

Posted on April 27, 2016

by Zanne Labuschagne

The serenity of the forest is punctuated by the crash of figs as they hit the leaf litter on the forest floor, sent plummeting down by several gorillas feeding in the canopy 20 meters overhead. The rest of the family group is scattered in the undergrowth around us. Kingo the group’s silverback is lying on a bed of leaves in front of us in a...

Trees for Congo

Posted on April 22, 2016

by Zanne Labuschagne

Across the north of Congo spans one of Africa’s most pristine belts of rainforest. This vast expanse of trees not only harbors astonishing biodiversity, but is also a vital buffer against the effects of climate change. Further south, pockets of forest on the sandy hills of the savannah result in interesting and unique faunal assemblages. This year the theme for Earth Day is Trees...