In Lokofa camp, on the edge of Salonga National Park, a dozen people stare at a laptop screen. Underneath a traditional jungle hut, they sit illuminated by neon tubes wired to a pounding generator. Frogs and crickets add rhythm to the dull beat of the machine.

What appears to be a training course is in fact a plan in progress. Over two years of animal monitoring and social economic studies are being discussed. An impressive amount of information has been gathered in this remote region of the DR Congo. Tonight, the group shares their findings in order to plan their first actions.

The camp that hosts this meeting was used as a logging base to feed the steamships of the Congo Free State a century ago. Then in 1970, Africa’s biggest forest national park was formed over 36 thousand square km of this forest. Yet, today little is still known about this place. For the newcomer, this part of the world seems to have remained unchanged. But for the people here in the meeting, they are trying to figure out what to do about this fast changing forest due to poaching, encroaching and agricultural settlement.

Maurice, a monitoring group leader, struggles to define different types of snares they find in the park. In a place so isolated, the locals are now learning to put their knowledge into preventative action against poachers. Transforming their findings into a detailed plan is new for these researchers, some of whom have just walked crossed a park as large as Maryland armed with GPS and notepads.

And this is no stroll in the park. From above, Salonga appears to be a continuous broccoli-like field. It bears almost no traces of human beings. No trace of war either, unlike DR ’s other World Heritage Sites which are in the East. But here lives the bonobo - our closest relative, the peacock and the elusive forest elephant among others. Now, working with the Congolese park guards are conservationists and researchers from foreign organizations.

This Evening maps are being printed and spread around the participants. The WCS team has chosen a perimeter of action within Salonga. They know the park is still more real on paper than on the ground. Salonga still has almost no park guards – just as when it was created 30 years before. The area is so isolated even the local authorities are struggling to make sense of a State infrastructure to the villagers. The only thriving industry for the locals around the park is called Daily Life. At least, by Congolese standards, life here is rather peaceful and not a struggle.

Yet, some find specialized activities to earn a living. Poachers come a long way from other provinces to find natural resources in the expanse of the park. Ivory and bushmeat bring fast cash compared to agricultural goods the region produces. Some villages have learned skills like cartridge making for the poachers. Fortunately, Salonga is still too remote for timber exploitation to have become a big problem at this point.

Although most of the villagers around the park acknowledge the park exists, the challenge remains in portraying it as a valuable place to protect. To reach this, the group recognizes that the first challenge is to demarcate the park, starting in the area where the WCS team works. Most rivers are natural demarcations, but some stretches need to be delimited by hand. The next few months are going to be spent with the villagers working on this issue.

On another front, the unforgiving number of snares the group found inside the park worries them. Some key questions arise, like how much elephant meat can be found on market stalls? Is the bonobo targeted directly? Rivers and a road that take bushmeat out of the forest will be under close scrutiny over the next two months.

These actions must extend outside the park. WCS’s John Hart is keen to get them going, but with caution. “Our actions might not always have the desired effect. First we must try a few actions, like the bushmeat survey, and review our strategy to see if the desired results are reached”. A meeting in December with partners such as WWF and the Institut pour la conservation de la nature (ICCN) is planned to analyze the survey and the delimitation project.

The following day, as the meeting ends, a visit to a town called Monkoto is scheduled to meet with elders and the local authorities. The police chief boasts two leopard skins to John Hart claiming they were snared outside the park. We are quickly reassured by the others that their engagement towards the park is for real. In this part of the , park puts the villagers on the map. But will that shaky assurance preserve this immense World Heritage Site called Salonga and have the upper hand with the poachers? That will require the strong commitment of international partners.

See photos.