USAID Funded Tourism Expansion in Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park 1st Performance Report

Despite the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the program has made significant progress in developing tourism in the park. The program's primary objective is to create enabling conditions for tourism development, which includes the submission of the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park Management Plan to the Ministère de l'Economie Forestière in September 2020. The submission of the management plan is a crucial step in creating a tourism concession in the park and marks the on-schedule achievement of Program Milestone A. To ensure that the tourism concession agreement developed by the program reflects best-practice, WCS has sought external expertise from Conservation Capital, a specialist firm with significant experience in developing wildlife-based tourism solutions. The firm has begun a comparative analysis of best-practice in tourism concessions in Africa and is creating a legal template for the text of the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park agreement. The WCS Congo management staff have continued their political engagement with the Republic of the Congo Government on the importance of protecting biodiversity in northern Congo and how tourism expansion can help meet this objective and create green economic growth. Meetings were held with both the Ministère de l'Economie Forestière and the Ministère du Tourisme et de l'Environnement. The future inclusion of the Djeke Triangle area into the park is an important part of the effort to build a secure future for tourism in Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park. On-the-ground work to protect the biodiversity of the park has continued throughout the six-month period. WCS has reported that 68 km of key park access roads have been fully rehabilitated, achieving 80% of the amount promised under the program. The park management has organized 400 vehicle journeys and distributed over 300 orders of supplies to field teams. Specifically supporting tourism, the park logistics team has significantly advanced the construction of a new guest room, a new arts and crafts village market, a new hospitality center and restaurant, and two new tented platforms in the park HQ. A central objective of the park HQ's activity is supporting the work of the research and law enforcement field teams that do the daily work of protecting and monitoring the park's wildlife. At Mondika, the site of Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park's headline tourism product, robust health measures were put in place to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Despite the disruption these measures caused, the monitoring of the two existing habituated lowland gorilla groups (Kingo and Buka) remained on target, with visits by researchers carried out on 70% of days. The habituation of the new third group (named Mététélé) is progressing well, with visits carried out on 75% of days. Park law enforcement efforts have maintained close to pre-COVID levels of activity, with ecoguard patrols conducted on every day of the reporting period. In the last six months, 155 operations, covering a total of 30,191 km, have been carried out in the park and its periphery. These patrols continue to be coordinated by a high-tech communications and tracking system, enabling the command of field patrols in real-time and improving their effectiveness and safety. Protection activities close to Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park's tourism sites were strengthened with the establishment of an advanced operating post for ecoguards at Mokele. By working closely with the communities living in the park's periphery, WCS has played an important role in the distribution of personal protective equipment and public health messaging. However, the social and travel restrictions have naturally impacted the ability to work with local people. Nevertheless, some important capacity-building work has taken place, including training for a group of restaurateurs from Bomassa and Makao in June 2020 and the initial work undertaken on the construction of the Bomassa community tourism project's campsite. Efforts to promote Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park to national and international audiences made good progress, with the program launched to international press in June 2020. While attempts to launch the program in Congo were delayed by COVID-19, plans are in place for media events that will happen before the end of 2020. The recruitment of a new WCS Congo Communications Officer was achieved in September 2020, with the hiring of a highly experienced new staff member. Significant international media activity was generated for Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park in August 2020 with the announcement of the sentencing of the "Butcher of Ndoki" to 30 years in prison for the attempted murder of park rangers.