Pu Mat National Park is one of Vietnam’s largest national parks and is home to several hundred gibbon groups, making it a global stronghold for the white-cheeked gibbon as well as countless other species. The capacity of authorities’ to manage the park effectively is limited, leading to threats from hunting and unsustainable livelihood practices. These threats are exacerbated by a number of roads that were recently built into the park for national security and border patrols, but which fragment the habitat and make it easier for people to carry out illegal and unsustainable activities. Action is urgently needed to improve law enforcement, build the capacity of community conservation teams and develop a sustainable management plan for Pu Mat.
Virachey National Park forms a key part of the Annamite Mountain Range, the largest remaining transboundary forest landscape in mainland Southeast Asia, and is one of the most biologically important and endangered tropical forests in the world. While Virachey has so far escaped the worst of the deforestation seen elsewhere in Cambodia, external development pressures and short-term economic interests are prompting shifts towards unsustainable resource extraction and encroachment.
Kenya’s northern coast, part of the Eastern Africa Biodiversity Hotspot, is home to globally important yet severely threatened marine species, coral reefs, seagrass meadows and mangroves. Over 100,000 people live along this coastline and are largely dependent on unsustainable fishing practices, such as the use of beach seine nets and monofilament fishing lines, for their livelihoods. FFI is working with local and international organisations to support the development of community-based natural resource management in Lamu, Tana River and Garissa counties.
Liberia is a key source and transit country for illegal wildlife trade (IWT) in West Africa. In the country’s capital city, Monrovia, markets are well-known trade hubs, and porous international borders allow for easy, unregulated transboundary trafficking. Wildlife such as chimpanzees and Timneh parrots are wild-caught for the pet and entertainment trade, forest elephants are hunted for their ivory, most of which is for export, and pangolins and others animals are targeted for national, regional and international demand for wild meat and other wildlife products. Many species face serious decline across their range in the Mano River Union (Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Côte d’Ivoire) and West Africa.
Kyrgyzstan is home to at least 27 wild tulip species, more than a third of the global total. At the height of spring, these beautiful species carpet mountain slopes in a brilliant show of yellow, orange and red. Such sites are, however, becoming increasingly rare. Tulips are in decline across the country, with most species struggling to cope with high levels of grazing pressure on these same mountain slopes. The loss of these species is an indicator of the declining health of these pastures. Intensive grazing also degrades soil, adversely affects other native plants and invertebrates, and reduces the quality of forage needed to sustain healthy livestock (which form a major part of local livelihoods and culture).
The critically endangered Tonkin snub-nosed monkey has been at the centre of FFI’s primate conservation activities for well over a decade. In 2002 and 2007, FFI surveys led to the discovery of two key populations of the species in Khau Ca forest, Ha Giang Province and later in Tung Vai watershed protection forest in Quan Ba district, Ha Giang province on the border with China. Since 2002, FFI has been focusing on community-led conservation by engaging local communities in species monitoring and habitat protection.
FFI has been working on marine conservation in Cambodia since 2010, with a programme of work that has evolved from an initial government request to help establish the country’s first marine protected area, known in Cambodia as a Marine Fisheries Management Area (MFMA). This site was formally designated in June 2016 and takes a multiple-use approach that supports sustainable fishing, biodiversity conservation and tourism.
Northern Mozambique’s Niassa Reserve (4.2 million hectare) is one of the planet’s last remaining havens for biodiversity. Niassa harbours 40% of Mozambique’s entire elephant population, and is one of the most important refuges on the entire continent for two of Africa’s threatened carnivores, lion and wild dog.
This project is focused on the Childukhtaron and Dashitijum Nature Reserves in Tajikistan. Only 3% of the country is forested so both reserves are identified in Tajikistan’s National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan as two of the country’s three most valuable walnut-maple forest sites, with a rich variety of wild fruit and nut trees, including critically endangered pears, Pyrus tadshikistanica and Pyrus korshinskyi, as well as the vulnerable almond Amygdalus bucharica and apple Malus sieversii.
The illegal trapping and sale of birds for falconry, a traditional practice in Georgia, pose a threat to raptor species. It is estimated that 200,000 birds are trapped each year with 5,000 being smuggled out of the country. For some species, birds regarded as low quality are also killed to remove them from populations.
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