Democratic Republic of the Congo: Wildlife Law Enforcement and Protected Area Management Coordinator

Nov 20, 2014 | Wildlife Conservation Center, DevNet

The Wildlife Conservation Society is seeking a highly skilled individual with expertise in wildlife law enforcement and protected area management to fill this position, for the protection and conservation of the Okapi Faunal Reserve protected area.

The Okapi Faunal Reserve (OFR), a UNESCO World Heritage site in the Ituri Landscape of eastern DRC, harbors the largest remaining population of forest elephants in DRC and is hence the most important protected area for their conservation in the eastern portion of their range. Established in 1992 with assistance from WCS, the OFR protects a vast tract of lowland tropical rainforest, which harbors viable populations of a full suite of large mammal fauna (including elephant, okapi, chimpanzee, bongo, ...) and multitudes of other species. Despite a series of wars, the OFR has had continuous and determined anti-poaching efforts, and thereby managed to maintain this crucial forest elephant population in eastern DRC by the time that relative stability returned to the region.

WCS’s work in this Landscape has focused mainly on biological monitoring, feeding the resulting data into government management of the OFR, and addressing the main drivers of deforestation and threats to wildlife (habitat loss and hunting for bushmeat and ivory) by zoning and land use planning, agricultural intensification via conservation farming, and the development of alternative livelihoods. In recent years, WCS has been expanding our work to address the tremendous threats facing the Landscape, in partnership with the Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature (ICCN, DRC’s Parastatal Wildlife Authority). Since the insecurity experienced in 2012, ICCN along with international conservation NGO partners, has been working to restore security and protection in the OFR, mainly through essential anti-poaching efforts. 

This position takes  forward WCS’s developing  law enforcement and protected area management initiative and builds upon WCS’s long term presence in the region working on conservation issues in cooperation with the Government of DRC. This program is directly supported by WCS, USAID, USFWS and coordinated with the work of other OFR donors (Kfw, UNESCO, ) and partners (notably GIC) .  The program, in partnership with ICCN and in complement to other conservation components (land use planning, conservation livelihoods, etc.) in the area, undertakes a range of activities to establish effective wildlife law enforcement and protected area management including anti-poaching operations, intelligence led enforcement, law enforcement monitoring (including application of SMART), operational and logistical support to enforcement, protected area and enforcement infrastructure development, community-conservation security partnerships, security cooperation with Government and international entities, etc...

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