Democratic Republic of Congo

Our work to protect DRC’s biodiversity

Fauna & Flora has been working in the DRC for several decades, ensuring that wildlife conservation has retained a voice throughout the extended periods of civil unrest and political turbulence.

Since 2007 we have supported the Congolese protected area authority – the Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature (ICCN) – and local people in managing the country’s astounding biodiversity. This work has ranged from helping to develop a community conservation strategy, which was adopted nationally, to supporting local communities in developing appropriate local governance systems to ensure that natural resources can be managed sustainably.

We have supported biodiversity monitoring that has identified critical areas for important species such as Grauer’s gorillas, chimpanzees, okapi, bongo and forest elephants. We also played a critical role in designing and coordinating an unprecedented collaborative survey of Grauer’s gorillas, to understand what is happening to the population of these animals and what needs to be done to save them from extinction.

Today, our work is focused on supporting two community reserves that are home to Grauer’s gorillas, by building local capacity to manage these reserves effectively. We have also been helping the community rangers to carry out monthly bio-monitoring patrols, allowing them to keep a watch over the resident gorilla groups and other threatened species as well as deter illegal activities within the reserves.

Not only does this provide the community rangers with a stable source of income, but it also means that the reserves’ wildlife can benefit from their expert local knowledge. We are also supporting the sustainable use of natural resources by local communities, creating livelihood options that relieve pressure on the forest.

Revealing the elusive okapi

Despite their elusive behaviour, okapis have been a victim of hunting for many years. As a result, their numbers have halved in just two decades and it’s now estimated that only 35,000 okapis remain in the wild.

Our new project, ‘Supporting the long-term survival of okapi in Eastern DRC through coordinated and sustainable local conservation approaches’, hopes to be able to track the locations of the okapi. This work is supported by IUCN Save Our Species and co-funded by the European Union. In 2022, we deployed teams across Kanyama, Bitule and Omate community forests and discovered 184 traces of okapi. This data was fed into the design of a camera-trap survey that started in January 2023.