In the vast Gola Rainforest of Sierra Leone and Liberia, dedicated teams of rangers and ecoguards are working hard to protect this internationally important hotspot for biodiversity. To celebrate World Ranger Day, we head out on patrol with Gola’s guardians and learn about an important new tool being deployed in their work to keep the forest safe from threats. Nick Williams, Flyway Conservation Outreach Officer at the RSPB, picks up the story.
The forests of Gola extend over 350,000 ha. and hold some of the last remaining examples of the great Upper Guinean Forest that once covered this part of West Africa. Credit: Michael Duff-RSPB.
Hitting the trailImagine walking for hours through a vast dark forest, dense with branches ready to hit you at face height and giant buttress roots jutting out below to block your path. A heavy pack is on your back and the buzz of insects hangs insistently in the hot, moist air. All the while you must be on the alert, ready to notice everything from the tell-tale signs of an elusive Forest Elephant or perhaps, more worryingly, of a snare or discarded shotgun cartridge. Tonight you and your colleagues will sleep under canvass, deep in the forest, many miles from the nearest road, using only the supplies you have been able to carry with you.
Now imagine facing this gruelling test day after day for more than a week before you reach the edge of the forest once more and emerge into the full glare of the West African sun.
As Abass Kawa says to me, a broad smile on his face, “if you don’t love your job, you won’t do that”. We are stood together at Lalehun camp, on the very edge of Sierra Leone’s Gola Rainforest National Park, and Abass is preparing to lead a group of his fellow rangers out on patrol once more.
Abass Kawa, Senior Ranger with Gola Rainforest Conservation, setting off from Lalehun community to begin another patrol. Credit: Nick Williams-RSPB.
Protecting the parksThe national park that Abass and his colleagues will be venturing into is just one part of a vast area of tropical forests, interspersed with farms and settlements, spanning the border of Sierra Leone and Liberia. At over 350,000 ha, the Greater Gola Landscape is a biodiversity hotspot of international importance home to a huge array of rare and threatened wildlife including Pygmy Hippos, Pangolins, and Chimpanzees as well as over 300 species of birds. As they move through the forest, rangers record signs and sightings of key species to help inform our understanding and protection of the forests’ wildlife.
Yet despite its ecological riches, this is a landscape under pressure. Abass and his fellow rangers not only record data on wildlife during their patrols but also signs of illegal human activities taking place in the forest including bushmeat hunting, mining, and logging. To better understand which parts of the forests are facing which threats it is crucial to gather this kind of information from those on the ground.
Signs of illegal human activity in the forest, like this discarded shotgun cartridge, are important pieces of data for rangers to record. Credit: C Thomas.
However, until recently there has been a problem here. Data from rangers was not being collected in a standardised way across the landscape, nor could it be easily collated and shared to help plan patrols in the most efficient way and best support other efforts to protect the forest.
Joining the dotsBut now Abass and his colleagues have been trained to use a vital new tool in the fight to protect Gola’s forests. SMART, or Spatial Monitoring And Reporting Tool, is a smartphone-based system that allows rangers to record and collate information about wildlife and illegal activities and submit to an online platform in near real-time.
Crucially, as part of the wider USAID-funded WABiLED program to help protect Gola’s forests, the SMART system has now been rolled out to rangers across all the protected areas within the Greater Gola Landscape, both in Liberia and Sierra Leone, as well as to community ecoguards. Ecoguards are volunteers from local communities who, alongside rangers, patrol the forest looking for signs of illegal activities as well as particular wildlife and are paid a stipend to support their activities. Though they do not have law enforcement powers, they play an important role supporting park operations, particularly in areas where ranger numbers are more limited.
This landscape-scale deployment of the SMART system has been done in partnership between the RSPB, Gola Rainforest Conservation, the Conservation Society of Sierra Leone and the Society for the Conservation of Nature of Liberia as well as the relevant state authorities in both countries – the Forestry Development Authority (FDA) in Liberia and Sierra Leone’s National Protected Area Authority (NPAA). Additional funding for work supporting the training of rangers and community ecoguards in Liberia has also been provided by the Ecological Restoration Fund.
A team from Gola Rainforest Conservation using the SMART system in the field. Credit: Ryan Wilkie-RSPB.
Gordon Sambola, Research Technician at the Society for the Conservation of Nature of Liberia, comments that “with the use of the SMART mobile tool we have improved our understanding of patrol coverage by ecoguards and rangers while at the same time increased the accuracy of data collected on illegal activities and wildlife observations”.
So now this all-important data about the landscape and the threats it faces can be collected and shared in an efficient way, providing a key foundation to the future protection of these forests and their globally significant levels of biodiversity.
Measuring successTracking rangers’ activities and findings at a landscape-scale is now far easier and this is already producing some interesting insights. During 2023 for example, in Sierra Leone’s Gola Rainforest National Park alone, 54 rangers trained and equipped with SMART technology covered over 9,500km on 121 patrols, achieving 96% coverage of the national park. They carefully recorded signs of hunting and habitat disturbance, as well as 343 sightings of threatened mammals; all vital data to inform both protected area management and ongoing scientific research.
In 2023 there has been a reduction in most signs of illegal activity in this national park compared with the previous year’s figures, based on the encounter rate per patrol. This has included a decrease in signs of poaching with guns and recent mining, as well as a dramatic reduction in encounters with people engaging in illegal activity. This is due to regular and effective law enforcement efforts and now, thanks to the SMART system, we have the data to directly show the benefits brought by this well-managed law enforcement.
However, the situation varies widely across the landscape with high rates of hunting still reported in some areas, particularly in Liberia, so continued coordination and action from all parties will be needed to meet these challenges.
African Forest Elephants are some of the more dangerous animals that may be encountered while patrolling the Gola Rainforest. Credit: GRC-LG.
Returning to the forestBack at Lalehun under the morning sun, Abass begins discussing his early career. He is from a forest-edge community, one of 122 that surround the Gola Rainforest National Park. Before becoming a ranger, he was a carpenter but struggled to find consistent work. Then 13 years ago he made the switch to working in environmental protection and has since travelled both to the capital Freetown and across the border to Liberia for training events.
Abass tells me of his pride in his position and excitement about going back into the forest each and every time.
“The area where I’m going today, I don’t know what is going on there” he says with energy, clearly eager to learn more about the situation in this part of the national park. Now, with a standardised data system to support their efforts, Abass and all his fellow rangers and ecoguards on both sides of the border are more prepared than ever to meet the challenges they face.
As Abass himself puts it: “that is my job, I’m here to protect the forest and its biodiversity”, adding, with feeling, “I am very, very proud to be a ranger.”
Rangers in the Gola Rainforest are always on the lookout for particular signs of wildlife or illegal human activities. Credit: Michael Duff-RSPB.
Acknowledgements
The deployment of SMART monitoring across the Greater Gola Landscape, as well as ranger and community ecoguard training, is made possible by the generous support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
Additional funding for our work with community ecoguards in Liberia comes from the Ecological Restoration Fund. The Ecological Restoration Fund supports work that protects biodiverse hotspots, rejuvenates degraded landscapes and promotes local environmental activism. They are committed to re-establishing nature’s essential interconnections while fostering cultural, social and economic opportunities for the communities inhabiting those landscapes.
In Sierra Leone, ranger patrols of the Gola Rainforest National Park are delivered through Gola Rainforest Conservation (GRC-LG). Gola Rainforest Conservation is formed by the partnership of the Government of Sierra Leone, the Conservation Society of Sierra Leone (CSSL), the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), and the people of the seven Gola Chiefdoms.
Continue reading• From smart phones on patrol to secret DNA: Innovative science in the Gola Rainforest• Protecting Gola: 10 years of the REDD+ conservation project in Sierra Leone’s Gola Rainforest• Cocoa, cooperatives and conservation: The power of forest-friendly chocolate
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