World Wildlife Fund

WWF has worked for more than 30 years to protect the Congo Basin. By tapping our global network, we have addressed a vast array of challenges facing nature, including the timber industry, mineral and oil extraction, energy production and wildlife poaching. We partner at every level—global, national, regional and local—to achieve lasting conservation. 

Making conservation history
In 1999, WWF co-hosted the historic Yaoundé Summit, which brought together the leaders of six African nations and gave rise to more than 8.5 million acres of new protected areas, cross-border anti-poaching efforts and better forest management. In 2005, the Brazzaville Summit assembled ten heads of state and resulted in a regional treaty on conservation and sustainable development and the TRIDOM trans-border agreement to conserve 7.5 percent of the entire Congo Basin. 

Supporting local communities and saving the gorilla through ecotourism

WWF scientists have succeeded in habituating a group of western lowland gorillas to human presence.
© WWF-Canon/Martin Harvey

Gorilla-based tourism is helping raise funds to protect national parks and help local communities. WWF leads a scientific team that is studying western lowland gorillas. In the Dzanga-Ndoki National Park in Central African Republic - part of the Sangha River Tri-National Landscape - scientists have successfully habituated a group of gorillas to human presence. Tourists can now track these normally elusive apes under the guidance of indigenous BaAka pygmies. WWF works closely with the BaAka people to utilize their unique knowledge and safeguard their traditions while encouraging sustainable economic development. 

In a precedent-setting policy by the Central African Republic, 90 percent of all park entry fees collected in Dzanga-Ndoki are returned to the local communities. Creating an ecotourism economy near Dzanga-Ndoki National Park improves local standards of living - building a powerful incentive for conservation. 

Protecting man's closest relative

Bonobo society is matriarchal.
© WWF-Canon/Franz Lanting

The Salonga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo was created in 1970 specifically to protect the bonobo — the species genetically closest to humans — which is threatened by the bushmeat trade. WWF is working to monitor and protect the surviving bonobo population in Salonga, where we provide training and equipment to park staff and support anti-poaching operations. 

In 2007, WWF discovered a previously unknown population of bonobos in the south-west of the Lake Tumba region in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This area is well beyond the borders of any previous bonobo sightings, and the group that was discovered is larger than any other known sites.

Creating Gabon's national parks

Key coastal areas have been protected under Gabon's new national park system.
© WWF-Canon/Olivier Langrand

WWF's efforts were instrumental in the creation of a vast network of 13 national parks in Gabon, covering 11 percent of the country. WWF and our partners carried out a two-year field research program, which led to a successful proposal for the parks, which were completed in 2005 

To staff the parks, WWF-Gabon held the first national training of ecoguards and ecoguides in 2004. This education programs continues, and teaches candidates about the forest, map reading, ecology, species identification, wildlife law and the use of Cybertracker Ranger Based Monitoring System. These ecoguards and ecoguides are now working in the protected areas to eliminate illegal logging and the bushmeat trade.

Preserving nature across national boundaries

A transborder patrol in the Sangha Tri-National landscape.
© WWF-Canon/Olivier Van Bogaert

WWF was at the origin of the trans-border program involving Cameroon, the Central African Republic and the Republic of Congo that is today the Sangha Tri-National Forest Landscape. Over 96 percent covered with intact forest, the Sangha Tri-National landscape is home to 58 species of mammals including one of the largest remaining populations of forest elephants. 

In 2005 an agreement was reached to facilitate anti-poaching operations by permitting the free movement of park staff across national borders. Trans-border initiatives of this kind help to build stronger ecoregion-based conservation efforts and landscape management. March 2007 saw the launch of the Sangha Tri-National Foundation, created by WWF and other international partners to ensure long-term financing for this crucial conservation area. 

Achieving millions of acres of sustainably managed forest
In the Congo Basin, WWF and the World Bank Global Forest Alliance have orchestrated a sweeping multinational effort to form and manage protected areas across national boundaries, and to cooperate on forest sector policy reforms. 

WWF promotes strict forest certification practices.
© WWF/Lee Poston

As a result, WWF celebrated the first forestry concession in the Congo Basin to obtain Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification in 2005. In 2006, the Swiss-based Danzer Group announced a broad cooperation with WWF, and pledged that 8 million acres of logging concessions would be FSC-certified from 2008 onwards. Also in 2006, three major logging companies joined WWF's Central Africa Forest and Trade Network (CAFTN), agreeing to sustainably manage up to 1.7 million acres of natural forest in the Congo Basin and to seek FSC certification. WWF continues to protect the Congo Basin's lush forests through collaborations such as the innovative Congo Basin Forest Partnership.

Defending leatherback turtles 

WWF is working to monitor key turtle nesting beaches.
© WWF CARPO/Peter Ngea

The Gamba-Mayumba-Conkouati landscape encompasses mangroves, swamps, rainforests, savannas, lagoons and seashores. Its coastline is one of the most important nesting areas in the world for endangered leatherback turtles. In 2004, WWF helped to create four national parks that cover 20 percent of the landscape, and to reinforce park infrastructure and surveillance posts. WWF is now partnering with logging, oil and fishing groups as well as local communities to develop sustainable practices. We are monitoring the turtle beaches along the landscape's coastline, providing scientific data and protection from egg and turtle poaching. WWF also organized the area's first attempt to develop sustainable ecotourism based on turtle nesting.

Notable Accomplishments

1980s

• Launched conservation efforts to protect gorilla habitats and empower local indigenous Ba’Aka pygmies

1990s

• Assisted in establishing the Sangha Tri-National Reserve Park—the first cross-border protected area complex in Central Africa
• Brought together six African nations at the Yaoundé Summit to conserve more than one million acres of fragile habitats, creating a multinational antipoaching strategy and establishing a responsible forest management structure
  

2000s

• Developed blueprint for regional conservation that joined the efforts of experts in science, policy, business and fieldwork
• Convened the Brazzaville Summit of ten African nations that resulted in Africa’s first-ever conservation treaty
• Successfully influenced three timber companies to join WWF’s Central Africa Forest & Trade Network (CAFTN)