PAPFor

Tiwai Island Wildlife Sanctuary

Kristell — 2022-12-14T20:49:02Z

Key points

In each of our newsletters, we offer a section that focuses on one of the Protected Areas in the PAPFor supported landscapes. Today we take you to Sierra Leone.

Tiwai can only be accessed by crossing the Moa River by boat

Tiwai Island is located in southern Sierra Leone and is part of the Gola-Foya Landscape. With Wildlife Sanctuary status since 1987, it is one of the best conserved protected areas in West Africa.

Covering an area of 1 200 hectares, Tiwai Island's particularity is that it is an island in the Moa River, and is shared by eight communities that have decided not to hunt or farm on it. The two main activities on the island are research and ecotourism.

This unique site was spotted by primatologist John Oates in the 1970s for its diversity of primates: no less than 11 species are found there. Since then, much research on the primate communities, and more generally on the island's flora and fauna, has been conducted from a small research centre.

Biodiversity

Tiwai's primary attraction is the high concentration and diversity of primates, many of which are globally endangered. These include the Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes), the Diana monkey (Cercopithecus diana) and Campbell's mona monkey (Cercopithecus campbelli).

Tiwai island Western red colobus (Piliocolobus badius), Tiwai Island

Tiwai Island is also known for its population of pygmy hippos (Hexaprotodon liberiensis). This species is extremely difficult to observe, but Tiwai is the place where one is most likely to spot this particular mammal, or at least its tracks.

Many birdwatchers visit this sanctuary, which is home to over 200 species of birds. The site has a large number of hornbills, but the most sought-after species are the White-breasted guineafowl (Agelastes meleagrides), Timneh grey parrot (Psittacus timneh) and the Rufous fishing owl (Scotopelia ussheri), to name a few.

Timneh Grey Parrot, Tiwai Island

Management

Tiwai is governed according to a management plan. The Tiwai Island Management Committee oversees the implementation of activities and is made up of several stakeholders including the government, a university and representatives of the eight local communities. The ecotourism activities are managed by the Environment Foundation for Africa - Sierra Leone (EFA-SL) and half of the revenues are donated to a Development Fund for community benefit.
This makes Tiwai an interesting model of Protected Area management, with tangible benefits for conservation and development.

PAPFor

As part of the Gola-Foya landscape, Tiwai Island receives support from PAPFor via BirdLife and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), including support to EFA for the renovation of tourism infrastructure, for the development of the management plan and for maintaining a database on the island's biodiversity and past research results.

Implementing land-use planning in community forests

Yuzhou — 2022-07-26T18:28:40Z

Apart from supporting communities to attain the ownership of their forests wit-hin the context of the land formalization processes, PAPFor supports the need for greater connectivity between Protected Areas and Community Forests.

Maintaining wildlife corridors and sustaining the integrity of the forest ecosys-tem for biodiversity protection is one of the primary objectives of the PAPFor programme.

PAPFor supports the formation and activation of Community Forest Manage-ment Governance Structures in areas adjacent to Protected Areas. Participa-tory Land Use Planning enables communities to set aside specific units for conservation, agricultural land needs and commercial forest utilization and further helps to guide communities on the threat of fallow systems associated with shifting cultivation.

Improved protected area management

Yuzhou — 2022-07-26T18:26:32Z

The PAPFor Programme has supported capacity strengthening of the Protected Area management system in the form of training and provision of materials and equipment for patrols, biomonitoring and law enforcement. Efforts were also concentrated on the integration of communities into the protected area mana-gement approach by recruiting, training and deploying community ecoguards in patrol monitoring activities. Training has been conducted on Integrated Mana-gement Effectiveness Tool, SMART Mobile and camera traps for Biomonitoring.

The transboundary collaboration between Sierra Leone and Liberia based on the Peace Park Agreement between the two countries is very active and sup-ported by the PAPFor Programme.

In keeping with standard Protected Area operational principles, PAPFor sup-ports the review and/or drafting of management and co-management plans for key protected areas in the landscape.

Artisanal mining inside Protected Area

Yuzhou — 2022-07-26T18:22:15Z

Mining for mineral resources (mainly iron ore, gold and diamond)is a major government income earner for both Liberia and Sier-ra Leone. Gola Forest is known to be occupied with deposits of these minerals. Mining is therefore one of the major sources of threat for biodiversity conservation and fo-rest resources management in the Gola Landscape. It has remained one of the frontline issues of conflict betweeen protected area management, communi-ties, forest anagement institutions and civil so-ciety organisations.

Although the Law of Liberia disallowed mining ac-tivities in Protected areas, lack of law enforcement makes it difficult to control the small scale artisanal mining in the core of the National Parks, most espe-cially in Liberia. Industrial ining groups have esta-blished camps close to the boundary of the National Parks, posing threat to wildlife populations and impac-ting negatively on vegetation.

Increased logging and timber extraction

Yuzhou — 2022-07-26T18:20:37Z

Illegal logging and timber extraction has remained a major threat to Community Forests and sometimes the Protected Areas over a long time. Chainsaw logging poses significant threat to forests and biodiversity on the Landscape. Trees are felled and split into planks. The planks are taken from the forests to the access roads and taken to markets in towns and cities.

Access to forests by chainsaw millers and sellers are made possible by community members who clear new farms.

Felling of trees for charcoal production is also very high, most especially in Liberia. Impacts of tree extraction is also a major issue in the forest edge communities to the National Park in Sierra Leone.

Stronghold for endemic and threatened wildlife taxa

Yuzhou — 2022-07-26T18:16:32Z

Conserving the Greater Gola Landscape is also vital to protect its globally impor-tant wildlife. Many of Gola's species are found nowhere else in the world, and over 60 species are classified as global-ly threatened. Over 100 mammals are found in the forest, including the Vulne-rable African elephant, the Endangered pygmy hippopotamus, the Endangered western chimpanzee and the endemic and rare Jentink's duicker. The lands-cape supports 327 bird species, inclu-ding the Endangered Gola malimbe, the Endangered Timneh parrot, and the Vulnerable yellow-headed picathartes.

There are also over 600 species of but-terflies and almost 900 species of plants, as well as 43 species of amphibians, 13 species of reptiles and 31 of the avai-lable 175 species of freshwater fish are
threatened.

The unique White-necked picathartes

Yuzhou — 2022-07-26T18:14:52Z

The White-necked Picathartes (Pica-thartes gymnocephalus) is endemic to the Upper Guinea rainforests and is clas-sified as Vulnerable by BirdLife Interna-tional on the 2007 IUCN Red List. Unique ground-loving birds, they are resident in lowland forest, hill forest, and secondary scrub with large boulders and caves in-side the forest for them to use for nesting and roosting often as a colony. They fo-rage in pairs or groups on the forest floor in a strange bouncing manner and return to rock to roost communally at night.

The species now has a highly fragmented distribution, the majority of breeding co-lonies are extremely small and isolated, and many are close to the minimum for long-term viability. Forest throughout its range is disappearing rapidly, leading to further fragmentation and rapid decline of remaining populations, and trap-ping is a serious threat. A 2007 survey in GRNP, KHFR and the buffer zone found a total of 109 active nests at 35 active sites, with half the sites located outside the protected areas.

The scale and global impor- tance of the Gola Rainforest

Yuzhou — 2022-07-26T18:10:00Z

The Greater Gola Landscape is situated at the heart of the Upper Guinean biodi-versity hotspot. It is a transboundary re-gion encompassing key protected areas across Sierra Leone and Liberia: the Gola Rainforest National Park, the Gola Fo-rest National Park, the Foya Proposed Protected Area, the Tiwai Island Wildlife Sanctuary, the Kambui Hills Forest Re-serve, as well as surrounding areas of buffer zone and community-managed forests. Together these create the largest remaining single block of the Upper Gui-nean Forest. The total size of this lands-cape is around 3500 km². The vegetation and soils of the Greater Gola Landscape is a major carbon sink of great value. In 2014, the Gola Rainforest National Park in Sierra Leone was established as the first Reducing Emissions from Defores-tation and Degradation (REDD) project in West Africa. By 2021 this will have conserved nearly 5 million tonnes of car-bon dioxide by keeping it locked in the forest and soils.