AWF's Community Based Counter Wildlife Trafficking project in DRC engaged over 1,300 community members to develop land-use plans for natural resource management and sustainable livelihood development.
By Rachel Emisave | May 11, 2021
About the Author
Rachel Emisave is African Wildlife Foundation s Communications Intern based in the Democratic Republic of Congo.More
The Bili-Mbomu Protected Area Complex is a place of stunning beauty and rare wildlife in northern Democratic Republic of Congo, but it also faces significant challenges that threaten its continued existence. Deep within the heavily forested landscape, poaching, illegal fishing methods that poison water, artisanal gold mining, and slash-and-burn agriculture are slowly decimating biodiversity, leaving the complex a shadow of its former self.
These practices sometimes the result of ignorance, sometimes out of attachment to custom contribute greatly to the destruction of wildlife habitats and the extinction of at-risk species. The Bili-Mbomu landscape is home to the largest population of the endangered eastern chimpanzee and one of the last remaining populations of critically endangered forest elephants in the regio