Dominique has an extensive professional background in conservation, and holds a Master’s degree in Ecosystem Conservation and Management from Yale University. He has served local, national and international organisations in and outside the DRC, including the United Nations Development Programme. Thanks to Dominique and his team at Strong Roots, the people of the eastern DRC are becoming increasingly empowered, allowing them to pursue sustainable livelihoods and, as a result, ensure the survival of the critically endangered eastern lowland gorilla.
Interview with Dominique
Could you tell us briefly about the work done by yourself and Strong Roots in the Democratic Republic of Congo? What are the key projects that you focus on?
All our programs focus on the conservation of eastern lowland gorillas (also known as Grauer’s gorillas), as our mission is to save great apes from extinction. In addition to our sustainable conservation work with the known habitats and populations of eastern lowland gorilla in Kahuzi-Biega National Park and Itombwe Nature Reserve, we have been working on a key corridor project to connect these protected areas and the remaining populations of great apes in the landscape, bringing about 300,000 hectares of forest to conservation. This corridor is composed of seven community forests and is home to great apes and other taxa. We are working with the government of DRC, local communities and indigenous peoples (and their rulers), as well as other conservation bodies and community leaders to have this area as a community-based conserved area by 2020.
For four years, three groups of gorillas (26 individuals) have been being monitored by a 6-person Great Ape Monitoring Team composed mostly of former hunters in Burhinyi Community Forest, one of the seven community forests composing the corridor. The eastern lowland gorilla, an endemic and critically endangered gorilla subspecies, has dramatically declined in eastern DRC (from about 17,000 individuals in 1998 to fewer than 4,000 animals in 2016) due to habitat loss, mining, poaching, the wildlife trade, and rampant poverty among the local peoples living in the surrounding habitat. Community livelihood projects include reforestation, where more than 1.3 million trees have been planted (between 2010 and 2017) in a region where 98.6% of fuel comes from wood and where the annual population growth is 4%. Livelihood projects for food security include capacity development for agricultural techniques and access to improved seeds. Strong Roots works with 837 smallholders in the corridor, where they have increased their crop production for the last five years to 68.9% for food security, and about 41.7% among the Batwa (indigenous) peoples around Kahuzi-Biega National Park.
Other projects include livestock activities with farmers and park rangers and organising the Kahuzi-Biega park rangers’ wives into a co-op to improve their family revenue. Support from Strong Roots has allowed these women to organise a microcredit project, manage a cassava grinding mill at the park and run a small restaurant at the park’s headquarters. Education is key! In addition to Strong Roots’ Kahuzi-Biega Environmental School, our Environmental Education Program works with 21 schools around Kahuzi-Biega National Park and seven schools around Itombwe Nature Reserve. By doing so we raise awareness of the dramatic decline of the eastern lowland gorilla, the expected contributions and required actions from all stakeholders, and how science and new technologies in conjunction with traditional knowledge can help to reverse the decline of great apes in eastern DRC.
