“Forest Food” and Bomassa Village

The Tri-National Sangha protected area network, which includes the Goualougo Triangle as well as neighboring parks in Cameroon and the Central African Republic, is bisected by the Sangha River.

On the river’s eastern bank in the northern Republic of Congo is the village of Bomassa. It’s comprised of roughly 400 residents from linguistic communities such as the Bambenjele and Bangombe clans.

Located in the northern Republic of Congo near Lincoln Park Zoo's Goualougo Triangle field research site, Bomassa village is growing.

These clans have traditionally subsisted as hunters and gatherers, relying wholly on food from the forests and rivers like the Sangha for their survival needs. Locally produced agricultural products, on the other hand, have played very little role in meeting local dietary needs.

In more recent times, this could largely be understood as most individuals not having the time or energy to spend cultivating and maintaining a crop. Since Nouabale Ndoki National Park was created in 1992, resident have frequently found employment by participating in research projects in the park—project like the Goualougo Triangle Ape Project.

Lincoln Park Zoo Vice President of Conservation & Science Lisa Faust, Ph.D., Fisher Center Director Steve Ross, Ph.D., and Curator of Primates Maureen Leahy visit with kids in Bomassa.

But times are changing as activities within the park have expanded, as has Bomassa village. The village has grown with an influx of those seeking jobs in the park as well as the immigration of relatives of local families. With more mouths to feed—and increasing interest in control over diets and the nutritional quality of items—agriculture is now being considered as an option.

In the last year, villagers have cleared forest around the village to explore the use of subsistence crops such as manioc (Manihot esculenta, also known as cassava) and cocoa (Theobroma cacao). Whether such crops will help combat hunger or increase local incomes remains to be seen.

Forest near Bomassa village is being cleared for agriculture.

Smallholder agriculture activities such as these have led to extensive deforestation in West Africa, but it has only more recently taken hold here in the Republic of Congo. Bomassa serves as the Nouabale Ndoki National Park headquarters and is located outside the park in the Forest Stewardship Council–certified Kabo logging concession. In certified concessions there is an effort to develop a more collaborative system in which local people needs are considered along with timber production and wildlife protection.

Like many villages associated with protected areas, Bomassa bears costs and sacrifices associated with conservation goals. Human-wildlife conflicts are not uncommon in the tropics, particularly in remote villages bordering heavily forested landscapes. Bomassa, for instance, has difficulties protecting the crops from forest elephants that range into the village and plantations.

Elephants can range out of the forest and feed on local's crops, spurring human-wildlife conflict.

The fact that elephants feel comfortable enough to enter the village is a strong indication that conservation activities are having a positive impact, not only in the park but in the logging concession as well. To sustain these efforts, we now have to develop creative, informed ways of managing human-wildlife interactions in the forest-agricultural mosaic that’s developing near Bomassa.

Dave Morgan

David Morgan, Ph.D., is a research fellow in Lincoln Park Zoo's Lester E. Fisher Center for the Study and Conservation of Apes and the co-director of the Goualougo Triangle Ape Project.

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Al Jazeera English filed a series of reports from the Republic of Congo's remote Goualougo Triangle, highlighting zoo efforts to study and save gorillas and chimpanzees in one of the most remote places on Earth.