The Republic of Congo encompasses an extraordinary diversity of wildlife, habitats and culture; including one of the largest continuous stretches of intact rainforest in central Africa and the indigenous forest people who call it home. The Wildlife Conservation Society’s largest country program has been working to save Congo’s wildlife and wild places for almost three decades. Protecting this astonishing biodiversity means saving wild places that sustain the local people, protect natural resources, and buffer global climate change. 

Over the past 25 years WCS Congo has been the government’s principle conservation partner, assisting the Ministry of Forest Economy (MEF) in managing wildlife and its habitat in several of the country’s national parks, reserves, and protected area buffer zones. Within these sites WCS is developing and implementing actions for effective wildlife protection; community based natural resource management; ecological monitoring; scientific research; and environmental education. Our approach is specifically tailored to each area we work in and its protection status to enable lasting conservation of these areas while improving the livelihoods of the communities surrounding them. Through this long-term commitment WCS has developed a profound understanding of the ecological and socio-political context for conservation in Congo, and has developed the strong relationships with government, private sector, and local community actors required to make conservation happen.

WCS and the MEF have formalized their partnership with the signing of several protocols, which define the roles of each partner in assuring protected areas are managed to international standards. These protected area protocols include Nouabale-Ndoki National Park and Lac Télé  Community Reserve. Nouabale-Ndoki National Park is considered to be WCS Africa’s flagship protected area and is our first public private partnership for the management of a national park. Recognizing the reality and importance of development, WCS and MEF have also partnered with the private sector in logging concessions adjacent to Nouabale-Ndoki and Odzala-Kokua National Parks, assisting them with the sustainable environmental management of their concessions, in an effort to reduce the impact of exploitation on wildlife.