I first started working in Africa in late 1999, when I joined the Wildlife Conservation Society team that was managing the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park in northern Congo. The Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park lies at the heart of one of the richest and most biologically intact tropical forest ecosystems in Africa. Located in the heart of Central Africa, the area is home to a diverse range of globally threatened mammals, reptiles, birds, insects and plants – forest elephants, chimpanzees, western lowland gorillas, and bongo antelope are just some of the species of large mammals which roam the forests. The national park also boasts old growth forests containing mahoganies and other tree species which are many hundreds of years old. It is one of the world’s few remaining remote, undisturbed wilderness areas. 

For the last 25 years the Congolese Ministry of Forestry Economy (MEF) and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) have worked together to ensure the protection of this natural sanctuary. This partnership began in the early 1990s, when conservationists from the two organisations first began exploring the area, documenting its wildlife and habitat; in 1993, the government of Congo recognised the importance of the area for biodiversity conservation with the creation of the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park. 

This partnership has continued to prosper over the past 25 years, allowing the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park to remain one of the world’s truly wild protected areas. National park staff have succeeded in conserving the area’s wildlife during a period in which much of Central Africa has come under threat from the activities of illegal loggers, poachers and other groups who wish to plunder the region’s natural resources. 

Elephant poaching in particular has remained an ever-present threat to the wildlife in the area, and is often driven by factors that lie far beyond the boundaries of the protected area. The most important amongst these is the global level of demand for ivory, which in itself influences the price, driving up prices when demand is high. In the early 1990s, politics also played a role, as the Convention for the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) implemented a worldwide ban on the trafficking of ivory in 1989. 

This coincided with the launch of conservation activities in Nouabalé-Ndoki. Once the local people of Bomassa and Makao had given their support to conservation, and anti-poaching activities were underway, elephant poaching in the area was almost completely eradicated, with only very occasional cases being reported. 

However, the global financial crisis in the late 2000s, coupled with a growing demand for ivory from Asia, changed the dynamics of elephant poaching across Central Africa. Prices for raw ivory in local towns such as Ouesso and Impfondo increased significantly, and a previously economically marginal activity was suddenly very lucrative. The looming crisis was further fuelled in the area surrounding the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park by the dramatic increases in road access that took place around the same period; logging activities were focused in the area bordering the Ndoki river from 2006 until 2010, and more recently the eastern bank of the Goualougo river has been logged, meaning that a network of access roads and paths now straddles almost the entire southern boundary of the national park. 

Faced with this ‘perfect storm’ of road access and economics, the management team knew that they had to come up with an equally innovative response. Such a change arrived in Congo when the government decided to delegate the management of the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park to a private foundation, the Nouabalé-Ndoki Foundation (NNF). The NNF was created October 2014, and is a partnership between the government of Congo and WCS. Its primary goal is to ensure the sustainable management and financing of the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park, with a Board of Directors setting the overall strategy for the Foundation and a Park Management Unit responsible for implementing activities at site-level. 

The development of such a transparent framework for all major strategic and management decisions has ensured a high degree of accountability for all stakeholders, and has facilitated a notable increase in the effectiveness of the on-the-ground conservation activities. This in turn has fostered greater confidence on the part of donors, and as a result there has been a significant increase in funding for the park management unit over the time that the new management framework has been in place. The Foundation also provides representatives of local communities with a voice in management decisions, and community development now lies at the heart of the Foundation operations, with one of the five sections of the project management unit focused on that area. 

Above all, the creation of the Nouabalé-Ndoki Foundation has allowed park management to professionalize the national park operations, developing management and business plans, securing significant new investment, and increasing staffing and infrastructure to a level that is appropriate to successfully manage a national park in the modern age. Under the new management framework there has been a significant increase in the park’s ranger force, while an intensive training regime has ensured that they possess the skills necessary to undertake their work efficiently. With increased coverage, manpower, and the use of real-time communications technology, rangers are now much better able to protect the area.

Behind the scenes, extensive support systems have been put in place to oversee areas such as logistics, purchasing, vehicle management and maintenance, and adminstration, ensuring that the park operations run seamlessly. Various monitoring systems have been introduced to ensure that the national park objectives are being achieved. Field-based research teams have developed innovative remote monitoring systems such as camera traps and acoustic recorders, while all ranger units are monitoring using bespoke software. Landscape surveys allow park managers to gain an accurate estimate of population numbers for large-bodied mammals every five years. 

These skills are regularly put to the test, with ecoguards now encountering poachers in the forest on a frequent basis. Most recently, an incident in the southern buffer zone of the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park resulted in the arrest of four people and the seizure of a number of illegal items, including

Whenever I visit the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park, I usually go out to one of the three principal field sites – Mondika, Mbeli and Goualougo. Goualougo is the most difficult to access, and so while it has generated a huge amount of valuable conservation science over the past two decades, I have only ever been able to make two or three visits. Mbeli and Mondika are a bit more accessible, by contrast, and so I have been a regular visit to both locations over the past few years.

All three of these sites are important have played a key role in the helping us to gain a better understanding of the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park. Conservation science has always been a key tool for gathering the data and information necessary for successful management of the national park, from the time of the very first surveys that first identified the ecological importance of the Nouabalé Forest Management Unit back in the late 1980s and early 1990s. When conservationists first arrived in the area, a number of expeditions were conducted by Mike Fay, Marcellin Agnagna and others to better understand the importance of the landscape and the distribution of charismatic species that roamed the landscape. Once a number of important ecological hotspots were identified, various site-based studies were launched both to deepen our understanding of flagship and keystone species such as elephants, gorillas and bongo. This work also ensured that there was a permanent presence in some of the most vulnerable areas in and around the national park. 

Three of those site-based studies, the Mbeli Bai Study, the Goualougo Great Ape Study and the Mondika Gorilla Study continue to thrive today. 

The Mbeli Bai Study is the longest running of the three sites, and has provided ground-breaking insights into the social organization and population dynamics of western lowland gorillas. The bai is a natural swampy forest clearing of approximately 15 hectares, located in the southwest of the national park, and offers a unique opportunity to observe gorillas in the wild. Gorillas are extremely difficult to study in the wild, as the majority of their habitat is made up of dense forest vegetation, making it very difficult for scientists to observe their behaviour; researchers at Mbeli solved this problem by building an eight-metre high platform that provides them with a birdseye view of the gorillas that visit the clearing. 

Researchers first started working at the clearing in 1994, and initially focused on documenting the different gorillas that visited the clearing; over time, they have built up a database of thousands of observations that has enabled them to publish studies on range of different topics, including gorilla demographics, ecology, and social dynamics. All of this information has provided valuable insight to conservationists working to protect the species. Mbeli bai is also visited by other large mammals, such as forest elephants, sitatunga antelope, buffaloes, black-and-white colobus monkeys, Congo clawless and spot-necked otters. For several species, every animal visiting the clearing is individually known to the researchers, providing life histories of up to two decades for certain individuals.

Permanent research work in the Goualougo Triangle was launched in the late 1990s. The Triangle lies between the Ndoki and Goualougo rivers, on the southern boudary of the national park. The extensive swamps of the two rivers act as a natural barrier against human encroachment. This meant that historically people rarely penetrated into the heart of this pristine forest block, and when researchers first encountered chimpanzees in the area, they responded with a ‘naïve’ reaction that suggested that they had never seen human before. Instead of fleeing when encountered, the chimpanzees displayed a certain curiosity towards the human observers, and would descend to the lower branches of trees to gain a better view of the new arrivals. 

The chimpanzees and gorillas in the Goualougo Triangle have been the focus of a long-term study since 1999, with the site managed by David Morgan and Crickette Sanz. Work initially focused on the social structure and behavior of chimpanzees, revealing an extensive tool-using repertoire, including tool-using behaviors not previously documented elsewhere in Africa. More recently, the study has examined the long-term impact of logging on chimpanzees, and particularly the impact of logging in the neighboring forests on the social structure and dynamics of chimpanzee communities in the Triangle. In this way, the study has become a leader in developing a more comprehensive understanding of the impacts of FSC-certified logging on apes. This helps to avoid negative impacts associated with logging, and convince governments of the need to promote timber certification.

Research at the Mondika field site in first began in 1995, although at that stage the work was led by Diane Doran from Stony Brook University. Dr Doran was primarily studying the behaviour and socio-ecology of the western lowland gorilla. The silverback Kingo and his group was the first family group to be successfully habituated to the presence of researchers in the early 2000s. A second group – led by Buka –  was added in 2009-10, and work is currently underway to habituate a third group. The long-term goal is for the site to be developed as a world class tourism destination, while simultaneously continuing to provide valuable data on the species. 

Mondika is one of only four sites in Central Africa where western gorillas have been fully habituated to the presence of humans. The study site is located in the Djeke Triangle, a 10,000ha forest block that lies just outside the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park. The area has never been logged, contains no human settlements, and was declared a conservation set-aside by the CIB logging company, which means that it will not be subject to timber extraction in the future. The zone contains an extraordinarily high density of gorillas and is also home to chimpanzees, elephants and ten other primate species; this incredibly abundant biodiversity is expected to become the main driver for future ecotourism activities in the region.

In addition to this site-based work, there are a number of other ways in which conservation science helps to direct the management of the national park. The most important is probably the landscape surveys, which are conducted every five years to estimate the number of large mammals inhabiting the area. Unless the large mammal population is regularly counted in this way, it is impossible to know if conservation activities are attaining their objective. For the past decade and a half, large mammals have been monitored across the landscape every five years by foot surveys on line transects, providing population estimates for elephants, gorillas, chimpanzees, as well as data on the presence of rarer large mammals such as bongo and buffalo. Information on poaching and other illegal activities is also collected. 

The park has also often been the site for research and development into new advances in conservation science and technology, including aerial videography, remote cameras and acoustic monitoring techniques. Advances in conservation science have been strengthened by an extensive capacity building program. Congolese students and biologists have participated in all science and research activities, starting with the first Japanese research teams that worked in the area, through to the development of the Mbeli, Goualougo and Mondika site-based projects, to the landscape-wide line transect surveys. 70 Congolese researchers are currently employed across the whole WCS program, while a dozen staff from NNNP alone have obtained Masters degrees or doctorates from Europe, the US and universities across Africa over the past two decades.

Over the past four years or five years, I’ve been a regular visitor to the Bomassa headquarters of the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park (NNNP) in northern Congo. NNNP is the flagship project for the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Congo Program, and as the director of that program, I travel regularly to the site to host visitors, meet with staff, and generally make sure that the site is running well. 

The most recent visit came at the end of November 2018, when I spent a brief weekend visiting with some technical staff from Brazzaville. The site has increasingly become a haven for wildlife over the years, with several species of monkeys and birds often spotted in the canopy of the large tropical hardwoods that are dotted around the camp. For a number of years now, De Brazza monkeys have become increasingly comfortable with the presence of humans in the camp, to the extent that they will often sit just two or three metres above your head in the trees. Other small monkeys such as moustached guenons are equally common, while larger-bodied black and white colobus are often seen in the higher reaches of the trees. During this most recent visit, I also got some amazing photos of a pair of black-casqued hornbills, who were feeding on the fruit of one of the palm trees in the camp.

Occasionally over the past couple of decades, one of the more charismatic large mammals has habituated himself (it is invariably a male) to the base camp. In the mid to late 1990s, a male silverback gorilla was a regular visitor to the base camp. Named Ebobo by local villagers, as ebobois the word for gorilla in the lingala local language, he would regularly enter both Bomassa village and the NNNP headquarters, feeding on vegetation and fruits for a few hours before disappearing back into the forest. He would re-emerge every few weeks over a number of years, before being seen for the final time in mid 2000. Ebobo was quickly replaced by an elephant as the area’s resident charismatic large mammal, as a male that was quickly nicknamed Gentil started visiting. A slightly more dangerous proposition than ebobo because of his size, Gentil would wander around the camp at all times of the day and night, and was a regular until around 2010.

Conservationists from the Wildlife Conservation Society and Congo’s Ministry of Forestry Economy first arrived in Bomassa village in the early 1990s, and at the time they were intent on exploring an area of forest that lay to the east of the village. This forest lay within the Nouabaléforestry concession, and so was slated to be logged at some point in the future. The concession lay on the eastern banks of the river Sangha, and was one of a handful that had not yet been attributed to a logging company. This meant that the project team had a small but important potential opportunity to save the area from logging, and conserve its forests and wildlife.

Bomassa quickly became the centre of operations for the effort to transform the Ndoki forest into a national park, and a partnership was established with the local village to launch a conservation project. At that time, in the early 1990s, Bomassa served as a staging post for elephant poaching, with guides from the village taking poachers as far as the banks of the Ndoki river, and across the river to Mbeli bai to shoot elephants. Although local villagers rarely entered the area that would eventually become the national park, elephants in the area were mercilessly targeted by poaching operations. The effort to launch a conservation project was therefore the classic case of ‘poacher turned game keeper’.

Of course, the project was successful, and the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park was created in 1993. Today, the NNNP lies at the heart of one of the richest and most biologically intact tropical forest ecosystems in Africa. This area is home to a diverse range of globally threatened mammals, reptiles, birds, insects and plants – forest elephants, chimpanzees, western lowland gorillas, and bongo antelope are just some of the species of large mammals which roam the forests. The national park also boasts old growth forests containing mahoganies and other tree species which are many hundreds of years old. It is one of the world’s few remaining remote, undisturbed wilderness areas. 

The community of Bomassa itself has benefitted enormously from the presence of a conservation project over the past two and a half decades. One of the first things that project staff did in the early 1990s was construct a school and a hospital in the local village, bringing much needed basic services to the previously impoverished area. Local children were able to attend school on a regular basis for the first time in the village, and as they got older, they benefitted from scholarships to attend high school in the nearest provincial centre. A handful of the most gifted children went on to attend university in the capital city, Brazzaville, and today the village of Bomassa boasts its very first university graduates.

The presence of the national park has also generated a significant amount of income for local people, both in terms of salaries for direct employment (70% of households now benefit from some form of employment with the protected area) and other revenue that is generated from activities such as tourism, and which is shared amongst the community in the form of a village development fund. Additional benefits include a well to provide clean water, financial and other support for elderly people, and medical evacuations to the nearest provincial centre in the most serious cases. Above all, the fact that the conservation project has helped the local village to manage their natural resources sustainably for the past 25 years means that today hunters from the village can still find an abundance of antelope and other target species close to the village limits. While inhabitants of larger towns in the area, such as Ouesso, find that their natural resources are so depleted that they have to journey many miles from the town in search of wildlfie to hunt, those species are still relatively abundant close to Bomassa.

This is a photo of a buffalo that I saw on a recent trip to Wali bai. The forests of northern Congo contain a number of bais – natural forest clearings that occur across the region, including the neighbouring Central African Republic, Gabon, and southeast Cameroon. Wali bai is one of the easiest to visit, and is located a few kilometres from the headquarters of the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park (NNNP). 

This particular clearing is essentially a lake, and is regularly visited by buffalo that plunge under the water’s surface to feed on the algae that grow on the lake bed. Forest elephants are also regular visitors. I photographed this buffalo as he swam through some of the deeper parts of the lake, at some points plunging almost completely below the surface, with only a thin strip of his back betraying his presence.

I try and visit the bai whenever I’m in Bomassa, and the clearing now forms part of the tourism circuit that is being developed by the NNNP staff. My guides on this most recent trip were three guys from the local village, and all were well trained in how to guide visitors through the forest. This is especially important for trips Wali, as it’s not unusual to run into elephants on the path that runs between the clearing and the NNNP base camp. The guides that were with me were actually guys that I’ve known for several years, and have grown up alongside the conservation project.

These clearings come in all shapes and sizes. Many are rich in salt and other minerals, which attract species such as elephants; these bais tend to be mainly sandy, and some of the larger ones can attracted dozens of elephants in a single day. There are also bais that are composed more of swampy vegetations, and these clearings are a haven for gorillas. The best known example of this kind of bai is Mbeli bai, which is located inside the NNNP and hosts a long-running research projet.

These clearings provide a rare opportunity to view forest species in their natural habitat, and so will play a big role as ecotourism is developed across the region. Wali bai is particularly important as it is located at the point where the borders of the three countries that make up the Sangha Trinational Protected Area complex, Congo, Cameroon and the Central African Republic, intersect. As such, it will play a key role in the development of transboundary tourism activities.