Wildlife Conservation

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…

By Chaz Kyser   Transboundary agreements between Guinea and Liberia to better protect and manage their shared forests and wildlife proved beneficial for two forest elephants that decided they didn’t need visas or face masks to travel between the two West African countries.   The elephants, “threatened with extinction” according to the Convention on the…

By Edudzi Nyomi, WA BiCC Communications Specialist In the early weeks of self-isolation and physical distancing, a few curious friends asked my opinion about the supposed positive environmental effects of COVID-19 stemming from us staying at home. The question remains legitimate even as countries around the world—including Ghana, where I live—have substantially eased restrictions on…

By Fauna & Flora International Forget the peculiar creatures populating the pages of Alice in Wonderland. This is your chance to follow in the footsteps of the intrepid explorers who have just delved deep into a West African fantasy world filled with fanged frogs, lipstick-wearing snakes and folding tortoises. Last year, with support from the United…

Felicia Kyne may not look like a superhero. She can’t fly and does not carry magical weapons. But the soft-spoken 23-year-old woman from a remote village in Liberia is on the frontlines of a global battle to preserve biodiversity. Read the full story here.

By Nouhou Ndam, WA BiCC Forestry and Landscape Coordinator Guinea is known as the “Water Reservoir” of West Africa.” Many rivers, including the Niger, Senegal River and Gambia River, originate from Guinea and flow across over a dozen countries. Guinea is endowed with biodiversity that is unique in West Africa, especially in its dense and…

The Ziama-Wonegizi-Wologizi (ZWW) forest complex, shared by Guinea and Liberia, is home to more than 25% of Africa’s mammals. Nearly 90% of its native vegetation has been lost, however, because of unsustainable human activities. To sustainably manage this globally unique refuge of plant and animal biodiversity and essential ecosystem services such as water, the governments…

In a bid to further strengthen the working relationship between the Mano River Union (MRU) and the West Africa Biodiversity and Climate Change (WA BiCC) Program, the two organizations signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in Freetown, Sierra Leone on February 20, 2019. The MOU was designed to support activities to combat wildlife trafficking; increase…

Liberia is on track to losing significant populations of its wildlife and stands a risk of having some of its critically endangered species being completely wiped out in ten years if no action is taken. Mama Liberia is blessed with the largest remaining portion (42%) of the Upper Guinea rainforest; a forest that runs through…

All over the world, women are excelling in roles that were previously reserved for men. Living proof of this paradigm shift can be found in Liberia, where more and more women are training to be Community Ecoguards, a position that has since been perceived as male-dominated at Grebo-Krahn National Park. The active participation of women…