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...
Say 'Congo' and most people will think of thick, impenetrable forests. Few people realise that one third of Congo's surface area is covered by savannah. The WCS Batéké project works in the area around the Lefini reserve in central Congo. Trees cover only about 20% of the landscape, meaning that the wooded areas are increasingly under pressure from a growing human population. The reserve was...
During a recent visit to Nouabale-Ndoki National Park I had the pleasure of taking a walk to Wali bai guided by Gabi Mobalambi. Gabi started working for WCS Congo in 1997. At the time he was an eco-guard posted as an assistant to researchers working at Wali bai. Eight years in the field working alongside several botanical experts, and a keen interest in the natural...
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...
The formal gazettement of the Ogooué-Leketi National Park (OLNP) in south-western Congo is a primary objective of WCS Congo’s Bateke Plateau project. The protection of the OLNP would create a trans boundary protected area of half a million hectares. The area is regarded as a priority site for the protection of great apes, and is of considerable ecological significance due to its location in the...
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...