In Walikale, located in the DRC between Maiko and Kahuzi- Biega National Park, 11 different clans are creating the Nkuba Conservation Area (NCA). With support from the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International (DFGFI), the communities will conserve 1,100 square kilometers of forest, home to approximately 150 critically endangered Grauer’s gorillas. NCA not only provides crucial habitat to these gorillas, endemic to the eastern DRC, but is also the first step to creating habitat connectivity between Maiko and Kahuzi-Biega.
Despite the important role local communities, like in Nkuba, play in conserving gorillas, protected areas remain the primary option put forth by the national government to halt biodiversity loss in this region. Community conservation areas are largely absent from conservation discussions. While protected areas provide important protection for gorillas and other biodiversity, our over five years of work in the area suggests that community conservation areas could play an equally vital role in conserving biodiversity in the eastern DRC, especially considering a large percentage of the gorilla habitat in the DRC is located outside of national parks (Plumptre 2015).
Through the use of year round, monthly household surveys, we show that despite popular narratives that communities are the main consumers of bushmeat, a large portion of bushmeat is sold outside of the community. It also appears that during certain times of year there is an increased influx of hunters from outside the community. This highlights the need for practioners and researchers to study both temporal changes of bushmeat hunting and consumption as well as the flow (moving in and out of the communities) to best design conservation interventions.
Despite the collaboration’s initial success, key challenges remain including continued artisinal mining, insecurity, and an influx of poachers from outside the community. Larger questions also remain of how NGOs, like DFGFI, can best represent the needs of community, instead of creating a system of decentralized despotism (Ribot 2004). Regardless of these challenges, we contend that if conservationists want to halt the decline of Grauer’s gorilla it is necessary to grapple with these larger issues and move the discussion of conservation in the DRC beyond the current one sided narrative of protected areas to include community conservation areas as a model of conservation.
Ecosystem: Forest , Resources: Wildlife , Big Issues: Land use , Solutions: Governance/Management , Solutions: Local/Traditional knowledge