Helping protect central Africa’s forests
Here are three different perspectives on some of the great work WWF is helping support in the endangered forests of central Africa.
Remember, it might seem a long distance off, but you can make a difference to those forests from right here in the UK, by buying FSC-certified wood and paper products. FSC doesn’t just means it's come from forests that are responsibly managed, minimising damage to the forest environment - FSC also effectively enforces laws that deliver better working conditions for local people and protect endangered species in the area.
Three perspectives on forest protection in central Africa -
The forest worker
The village school
The eco-guard
The forest worker
Cyrille Nguiesse enjoys his job. He’s a forestry engineer working in the world’s largest FSC-certified tropical forest concession (a concession is just part of a forest licensed for logging or other commercial uses).
Cyrille, who’s 35, has rarely stopped smiling in the year and a half he’s been working there. He reckons his employers, IFO, compare very well with other companies he’s worked for. He sees how the FSC-certification is benefitting him and his colleagues, as well as the forest itself.
IFO, part of the Danzer group, gained FSC certification in February 2009. Their concession covers more than 1.15 million hectares of forest in the Republic of Congo.
They have a very detailed management plan to minimise environmental impact, and they employ ‘social inclusion’ workers to liaise with people in the 85 villages within the concession - mainly BaAku pygmy communities - to make sure the logging has minimal impact where they live.
The company only cuts down on average one tree per hectare, in line with FSC standards, and there’s a community council where any grievances can be aired.
Cyrille says: “People are properly trained so they do minimal damage to the forest. They give us proper protective clothing to do our job too, and every week we get a refresher course on health and safety in the workplace.” Their saws and other equipment have extra safety features too, which is not always the case elsewhere. The result is a lot fewer accidents.
“There’s also a hospital in the village and they provide us with treatments for free. In my former company they only had one nurse but here they have several, and the workers’ houses are made of bricks and stone rather than old wood. And for the future, we also get a pension when we retire, which gives me and my family great comfort.”
The village school
In October 2009, forest concession owners IFO opened a school in the village of Ngombe specifically for the local BaAka pygmy community. Both children and adults are taught here, in separate classes.
Of the 5,000 people in the village, around 35% are BaAku pygmies. Many of the children who now come for lessons in French and Maths didn’t go to school before because of divisions between them and the local Bantu villagers. But word has spread and now more than 60 attend regularly.
One of the big barriers stopping BaAku people going to school before was the fact that they had to pay for notebooks and contribute to the teacher’s salary. But when IFO took over the forest concession in 2000, they changed all that.
Some of the BaAku children still occasionally miss the odd day in class when they help their parents hunt for food and other products to sell. But one of the big attractions for adults to come to lessons is that they want to be able to calculate the right prices for the goods they sell.
Eyoka Yvone is 19 and has a one-year-old daughter. She wants to make a better life for her and husband Ngoba. He relies on hunting in the forest to put food on their table, but she has higher ambitions.
“I’d really like to train to be a nurse and work in the village hospital, but first I need to learn how to read and write properly. Other girls my age spend their days gathering things from the forest but I want more than that for me and my daughter.”
The eco-guard
The job of stopping poachers from hunting gorillas, monkeys and elephants in 200,000 hectares of central African rainforest rests on the shoulders of just 39 ‘eco guards’.
Bernadette Mandjoua is the only woman in the group working in the Dsanga-Ndoki national park, a rich hunting ground for both small-time poachers trying to feed their families and also well armed and highly trained criminal teams searching for lucrative ivory and bushmeat.
The 40-year-old single mother of four joined the WWF-led programme in 2004 because of her passion for protecting this forest. She spends some of her days deep inside the rainforest looking for trails left by hunters.
A group of four guards is accompanied by a pair of trackers and porters who help carry equipment. Patrols can last six days at a time and require real stamina, covering up to 30km per day and camping in the dense jungle.
Bernadette says: “What we do is very difficult but it’s my passion. If we didn’t do anything then all the animals could disappear, and the forest too. There would be nothing left for the next generation.
“In the past three months we have caught about 30 poachers. Sometimes I know these people from my village, Bayanga, but that makes no difference to me. If I don’t do anything they could come back again.”
In 2010 guards seized a staggering 46,000 wire snares, 204 guns and 1,673kg of bushmeat. The most serious professional poachers are taken to the police station, but with corruption endemic in the country they can often be out of jail in days. Of 41 poachers arrested in 2010, only 11 were convicted in court. At least one legal loophole has recently been closed and now the guards are allowed to cross national borders to arrest fleeing poachers.
But the fight to protect the wider area of the Congo Basin from threats of deforestation must also be tackled. If the present rates of forest loss continue, this green heart of Africa will have lost 70% of its original forest cover by 2040.
Remember, you can make a positive difference even from here in the UK.
You can...
Buy FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certified wood and paper products to help control deforestation and improve conditions for vulnerable forest communities and wildlife in central Africa.
Newsletter sign-up
Sign-up to get the latest WWF news delivered straight to your in-box.
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter