By David Goodman
Beneath the thick canopy of West Africa’s forests, there are dark secrets. In the sleepy Liberian town of Mano River Congo, Sierra Leone beckons across the broad river. A lone border guard sits in a ramshackle shelter—a converted Ebola treatment unit—and checks the occasional visitor who arrives by boat. The golden light of evening bathes the lush landscape. It seems tranquil and peaceful.
But if the forests could speak, they would tell another story—one that is anything but tranquil. The forests and mountains that rise up around this frontier town were once a battlefield. The Gola forest, which straddles the boundary of Sierra Leone and Liberia, served as a base for rebels fighting government forces in the civil wars that raged in both counties. Sierra Leone’s brutal 11-year civil war ended in 2002, leaving 50,000 Sierra Leoneans dead and displacing half the population. During Liberia’s 14-year civil war that ended in 2003, the Gola forest was crisscrossed by combatants. The dense forests also provided a clandestine transit route for Sierra Leone’s notorious “blood diamonds” that helped fuel that conflict. Atrocities were a hallmark of both wars.
The forest battlefield is now the setting for a different kind of struggle. In February 2020, Sierra Leone and Liberia signed an agreement to jointly patrol and manage what is now called the Gola Transboundary Peace Park, part of a 350,000 hectare protected landscape. Among those who took jobs as rangers in the new park are ex-combatants. They have returned to the forest that was once pierced by bullets and are now working to preserve this global biodiversity hotspot, address climate change, forge sustainable livelihoods and build a durable peace.
Liberia and Sierra Leone are an improbable front line again—this time, fighting together to save the rich biological diversity and tropical forests of West Africa, and the planet.
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Africans are the least responsible for the climate crisis—West Africa accounts for just 2% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, a pittance compared with China (28%) and the United States (14%)—but among the most affected by its impacts. The region is experiencing droughts, rising seas, livestock and crop losses, growing food insecurity, deep poverty, land degradation and biodiversity loss.
But this epicenter of the climate crisis also holds keys for solutions. This region is home to the largest remaining block of the Upper Guinean Forest, a biodiversity hotspot with global conservation significance. Together with the Amazon rainforest, these vast forests play a key role in absorbing and storing carbon, reducing temperature, managing rainfall and waterflows and mitigating climate change impacts—to name but a few of the ecosystem services these forests provide locally and globally.
The United Nations has declared that “biodiversity is declining faster than at any time in human history” and scientists predict that 1 million species will be extinct within a decade. Against this grim forecast, West Africa’s forests offer promise: they are home to the richest diversity of species in the world. The transboundary Gola landscape—encompassing Liberia’s Gola Forest National Park and Foya Nature Reserve, and Sierra Leone’s Gola Rainforest National Park—is a critical wildlife corridor. Among the hundreds of species found here, these forests are home to 60 species of plants and animals classified as threatened or endangered, including 49 mammals, 9 of which are threatened, and over 330 bird species, 14 of which are on the verge of extinction. But this biodiverse landscape is one of the most critically fragmented forests on Earth, with only about one fifth of its original forest cover remaining intact.
The region’s legacy of war is giving way to a new future focused on conservation and climate solutions. On May 15, 2009, then-presidents Ernest Bai Koroma of Sierra Leone and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia stood beneath towering trees in Lalehun, Sierra Leone. They cut a ribbon for a new “peace park” that straddles their mutual border. It was a milestone in the effort to transform this battlefield into a force for life. The peace park helps to promote a sustainable forest economy, stop poaching and allow biodiversity to recover. Just as important, the jointly managed land is helping to build peace between the war-torn neighbors.
FIGHTING FOR THE FOREST
The slight young man in a beret and green fatigues stands erect. He has the face and physical stature of a boy but carries himself with the unsmiling demeanor of a soldier. A shoulder patch identifies him as a ranger in Liberia’s Gola Forest National Park. He calls himself Butter Rice, a nom de guerre from his war days. He is unarmed but people defer to him as he walks the dusty streets of Mano River Congo. He agrees to share his story, but only after insisting that we move beyond the earshot of others.
Child soldiers played a notorious role in the Liberian civil war that raged on and off from 1989 to 2003. Young boys were routinely kidnaped, drugged and pressed into combat in Small Boy Units (SBUs), which were feared for their brutality. Butter Rice says that rebels came to his village when he was about 10 years old (he is not certain of his age) and killed his parents in front of him. They took 10 boys, gave them weapons and “they sent us out to fight.” He fought for three years, from 1999 to 2002. Butter Rice says his real name is Samuel Sumo, and claims he earned his nickname because he distributed food to villagers after looting shops.
Butter Rice drops his eyes and lowers his voice. Following the war, SBU members were ostracized due to the atrocities they committed. Two decades later, speaking about it is still a sensitive matter. The shooting has stopped, but the wounds of war have not fully healed.
“I just want to say it was bad. I try to avoid thinking about it,” he says softly. “I don’t want to see war no more.”
A few years ago, officials from Liberia’s Forestry Development Authority (FDA) were conducting drills for the rangers who were responsible for protecting and managing the national park. After the drills, Butter Rice would stop by to sell them palm wine. “Why are you suffering?” the Chief Ranger asked him. “You’re a strong boy. Do you want to be a ranger?”
Butter Rice jumped at the opportunity to return to the forest with a new mission. Now a ranger in Gola Forest National Park, his days are spent patrolling remote regions of the forest to stop the poaching and hunting of wild bushmeat and prevent illegal tree cutting. He also raises awareness among community members about the importance of protecting the national park. He loves spending days deep in the bush on patrol. He is looking forward to participating in joint forest patrols with his counterparts from Gola Rainforest National Park in Sierra Leone.
“I feel the Gola forest belongs to me,” he says.
PARKS, PEOPLE & PEACE
Liberia has recently been transforming protected areas into national parks. Sapo National Park, established by military decree in 1983, was Liberia’s only national park until 2016, when Gola Forest National Park was designated, followed a year later by Grebo-Krahn National Park. Unlike Sapo, these parks in southeastern Liberia were created following participatory planning processes.
If conservation efforts are to succeed, they need to benefit poor and vulnerable forest communities that rely on natural resources and subsistence agriculture to survive. Sierra Leone (181) and Liberia (176) rank among the lowest of the 189 countries on the Human Development Index.
Jacob Forno is the elder of a village located on the edge of Liberia’s Gola Forest National Park. He explains that local people initially resisted the creation of the national park. “When they were talking about bringing a park, I was not happy about it,” says Forno, sitting on his front stoop, his weathered face fringed by white stubble. As a sign of his stature in the community, the village is named Forno, after his family. “We were told they were taking the forest—that’s where we get medicine and do farming to make our living. If they are to take a portion of it, they should provide a livelihood program for our people.”
“Our hope is the park will bring something better for our communities,” says Forno, surrounded by a group of community members who nod their agreement. “We will protect the park. We hope the livelihood of the people can be improved. Then the people will volunteer to protect the park. But something should be given to people in return.”
The USAID-funded West African Biodiversity and Climate Change (WA BiCC) Program, through its partners the Society for the Conservation of Nature in Liberia (SCNL) and Vainga Agricultural Development and Management Consultancy (VADEMCO), is providing training in sustainable farming practices. The goal is to reduce pressure on the protected forest by shifting away from slash-and-burn agriculture, increase food security, and stop the hunting of bushmeat, which has seriously impacted wildlife. There is also support for basic infrastructure such as building village water pumps—one of which was in constant use beside Forno’s house.
Of the peace park, Jacob Forno now says, “We like the idea.” Sierra Leone and Liberia “are sister states. We have intermarriages. We are almost the same people.”
FROM WAR ZONE TO PEACE PARK
Mohamed S. Koroma has spent his whole life around Sierra Leone’s Gola Rainforest National Park. He was a farmer and hunter until the civil war broke out here in 1991. As war raged around him, he fought first with the rebels, then with the government soldiers, and finally as a Kamajor, traditional hunters who became heavily engaged as fighters in Sierra Leone’s 11-year civil war, as Koroma recounts.
“The rebels burned my house and my village. They came looking for me. They killed my brothers and sisters. Many were killed in my village,” he says, waving his arms emphatically as he recounts the atrocities that he and his community endured. He became a leader in the local Kamajors, who were thought to have mystical powers. He pulls out an amulet that he claims made him invisible to animals. Other Kamajors claimed to be bulletproof. Some were accused of human rights abuses. “People feared us,” he asserts.
When Sierra Leone created the Gola Rainforest National Park in 2011, Koroma realized that his intimate knowledge of the landscape could be a valuable asset in stopping illegal hunting, poaching and mining. “I decided to protect the forest for my not-yet-born children to see those places.”
“Because of mining, we have lost streams to landslides. That convinced me to be a protector, not a hunter,” says the barrel-chested park ranger. “Protecting the forest is better than losing it.”
Conservation is bringing additional benefits to the community. The Gola Chiefdom Development Committee distributes landowner royalties among families. It also awards two scholarships per village, covering school fees for 244 children.
For Koroma, working to preserve the national park has earned him enough to send his children to university. But he notes that the work can also be dangerous: he claims that three rangers have been shot by poachers.
Koroma says that if he returned to being a hunter “it would triple my salary.” Then he adds that a well-known master hunter died poor. He says that he does not intend to resume hunting. “If you are destroying life, it will not make you rich.”
Here in this remote corner of West Africa, there is hope that the global tide of biodiversity loss, climate change and a cycle of violence can be stemmed, one community and one forest at a time.
Butter Rice reflects on his long journey from fighting in the forest to protecting it. “My parents would be proud of me,” the former child soldier says with a soft smile. “They would know that I be changed. They be proud that their son is doing something good for society.”