Private-Sector Partnership
Private-sector partnerships, particularly with the logging and oil industries, provide a unique opportunity to incorporate business into the mitigation of threats created by their activities.
This is the case in northern Congo, where WCS works with the CIB logging company to manage wildlife in four logging concessions. This collaborative project is called PROGEPP (the Project for Ecosystem Management in the Nouabalé-Ndoki Periphery Area).
The principal threats to conservation - habitat destruction, road construction, commercial hunting, and immigration - are a direct result of the company's logging activities. Through the PROGEPP partnership, the company is helping to reduce the negative effects its activities have on wildlife, and contributes directly to the law enforcement program, providing both equipment and funds. The company has adopted rules for its employees that reinforce Congolese hunting laws, and has banned the transport of hunters, firearms, and bushmeat in company vehicles to reduce commercial hunting. Through its technical expertise in conservation and wildlife management, WCS advises the logging company on ways it can reduce the negative impacts of logging on wildlife, while simultaneously working with local populations to manage activities such as hunting within the logging concessions.
This initiative contributed directly to CIB's international timber certification efforts which received Forest Stewardship Council certification of the Kabo concession in x 2006.