Community Management in Bomassa Village
WCS-Congo staff at the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park assist the populations of local villages with the implementation of a community-based hunting management program.
The villages of Bomassa and Bon Coin are situated next to the headquarters of the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park, and many community members, in addition to employment with the NNNP, depend on the natural resources of the area for their daily livelihoods. To ensure the sustainable management of these resources, the local population implemented a series of hunting controls and regulations in the early 1990s in partnership with WCS-Congo staff. This includes measures such as restricting the export of bushmeat from the village, banning the use of non-sustainable hunting techniques such as metal cables and limiting the numbers of certain animal species that can be harvested in a particular time period.
At the same time, the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park encourages the socio-economic development of the villages through various measures, such as favouring local residents for employment by the park and the creation of a Village Development Fund to share the benefits of ecotourism in the NNNP.
Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park staff have implemented a bushmeat monitoring program in the zone to measure the success of these measures. This monitoring program assesses the rate of off-take of prey species (including pigs, monkeys and duikers, all legally hunted under Congo wildlife laws) in the Bomassa hunting zone, ensuring a healthy population of prey species in the area and protecting the long-term livelihoods of local people.