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....
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...
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...
At the end of March 2015, at a routine roadblock on a logging route cutting through the forest, a pastor from the Ngombe village in northern Congo was caught with a basket loaded full of elephant meat. The pastor was arrested by the Ministry of Forestry Economy and Sustainable Development (MEFDD) ecoguards manning the barricade, and taken to the Ngombe police station for questioning. MEFDD...
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...
This forest elephant is just one of over 500 that have so far been individually identified by researchers who have spent the past twenty years studying the wildlife of the Mbeli Bai clearing in the Nouabale-Ndkoi National Park in northern Congo. Having spent the night sleeping on the viewing platform at Mbeli last week, I woke up at sunrise to find him feeding on a...
Last week, in the Bateke Plateau, as the orange glow of a Congolese sunset shone through the trees, the Lefini elephant monitoring team observed a rare spectacle. Four different family groups of elephants entered the bai, followed by a lone bull. A total of 33 elephants were observed at the social gathering, the highest number viewed at one time in the clearing in over a...
Several days hike from the nearest logging road, accessing the northern forest clearings of Nouabale-Ndoki National Park is a big challenge. But it might be worth the effort. The largest clearing, or 'bai', is known as Bonye and it offers one of the most untouched places to view wildlife in Central Africa. Remotely situated, Bonye bai provides an important refuge to the northern Congo's most...
Located on the Sangha River in northern Congo, the Bomassa headquarters of the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park have become a haven for wildlife such as this De Brazza monkey. The monkey is one of a group of around twenty individuals that visit the camp on most mornings and evenings to feed on the palm nuts that are scattered across the camp. The monkeys spend up to...
On the 3rd of March 2016 two men were arrested in northern Congo in the possession of 15 kilograms of ivory, an automatic weapon and nearly two hundred rounds of ammunition. Fitting that this arrest occurred on World Wildlife Day, which this year emphasized the importance of taking the future of wildlife, and specifically that of African elephants, into our hands. WCS supported the investigation...