Mission to Gola Rainforest National Park, Tiwai Wildlife Sanctuary and Freetown, Sierra Leone

From 3-12 February, the NaturAfrica landscape project operator for the Gola-Foya transboundary landscape, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), organised a visit for EUD Delegation staff from Monrovia (Liberia) and Freetown (Sierra Leone) and two members of the NaturAfrica regional coordination team to the Sierra Leone side, to meet local partners and to help inform plans for the NaturAfrica project formulation. 

The visit began with meetings in Freetown and Kenema with government and local partners, which were instructive on the need for clearer policy on community forests (11 of which surround the national park) and protection for forest reserves (evident from the scale of deforestation seen in Kambui Hills forest reserve). Although the government is currently conducting a forests inventory to inform a new forestry law, it is clear that engaging with this legislative process or a change in status of the protected areas in the landscape is beyond the scope of the future project, particularly given the divergent interests at national level. 

The Gola Rainforest Company, a joint venture set up in 2014 by the Forestry Division of the Government of Sierra Leone, the Conservation Society of Sierra Leone and RSPB, finances many of its operations through the REDD+ carbon credit project that it was set up to administer and is a good example of effective protected area management. It conducts conservation, research and community and livelihood support activities in and around the national park. However, in the face of human pressures, there is a pressing need for more training and opportunities for young people and others living around the park.

The ‘paramount chiefs’ and communities of Nomo and Gaura, which each manage a community forest, expressed a strong motivation to support forest conservation, for watershed protection as well as other benefits. Meanwhile, tourist lodgings are available for visitors at both the national park’s Lalehun forest camp and the nearby Tiwai Island Wildlife Sanctuary (WS), which is under separate management. 

One obvious target would be to create ecological corridors to link the divided sectors of Gola Rainforest NP and the park with Tiwai WS. However, this would require an MoU with 122 local communities. And in the case of Tiwai, while local villages might support the idea of plantations to form a buffer zone, they would need incentives to replace the lucrative commercial logging and diamond mining activities organised by influential external actors.

The project document is now being finalised and activities should commence later in 2025. 

https://golarainforest.org/

https://www.tiwaiisland.org/

Below: images from the mission to Gola and Tiwai, Sierra Leone, February 2025 

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