Landscapes

Wildlife Protection

The harmonization of training for all ecoguards in the Ndoki-Likouala landscape, as well as their annual refresher courses, has led to increased professionalization across all areas of intervention, in crucial areas such as self-defense, first aid and respect of individual rights.

With the same high standards applied to all elements involved in the law enforcement effort, ecoguards can better collaborate to prevent wildlife crimes wherever they occur, and better communicate to fight more effectively traffics that may span several intervention zones.

A growing harmonization effort is underway with protected areas in neighboring countries that are part of the Sangha Tri-National landscape, allowing ecoguards to make limited incursions into adjacent protected areas when tracking poachers.

Since 2016, WCS has been working to set up a Counter-Wildlife Trafficking program, and in particular intelligence networks to optimize our knowledge of trafficking to more effectively combat it. The program has proved its worth, with a 30% higher arrest rate when ecoguard patrols are intelligence-driven.

In addition, the CWT program ensures that successful operations go to trial and result in a conviction. Judicial activities include building cases, liaising with the prosecutor and visiting prisons, in order to combat corruption attempts, apply legal procedures and monitor sentence execution. The conviction rate rose to 80% by 2022, thanks to improved procedures and training for ecoguards in the proper handling of evidence and crime scenes.

The development of a regional platform bringing together governmental and administrative stakeholders from the two regions of Congo that include the Ndoki Likouala landscape (the Sangha and Likouala regions) has enabled better coordination, communication and understanding between stakeholders, for improved enforcement of wildlife laws in the landscape.

A coordinated effort to introduce, learn and use specialized softwares, such as SMART (Spatial Monitoring And Reporting Tool),

QGIS (Geographic Information System), SMS (Stockpile Management Software), has improved our monitoring and analysis of the results of our law enforcement support efforts.

These analyses in turn help to understand the modus operandi of poachers and their networks, and to deploy ecoguards more effectively in sensitive areas to deter or stop poaching.

The more recent introduction of a new landscape-scale tool, EarthRanger, facilitates and harmonizes communication and coordination across the landscape for better cooperation between the different protected area anti-poaching units.