OKKPS

The OKKPS landscape is shared between Guinea and Sierra Leone. It comprises several protected areas, including the classified forests of Pinselli and Soyah, the Outamba-Kilimi National Park and the Sabouyah and Kuru Hills reserves, and has a wide variety of habitats, with rainforests, open forests and shrubby and grassy savannahs spread over an altitudinal gradient from 61 to 1 134 m.
It is home to 50 species of mammal, two of which are particularly threatened: forest elephants and chimpanzees.

For more information:
https://www.papfor.org/-landscape-OKKPS-

The Support Programme for the Preservation of Forest Ecosystems in West Africa, PAPFor, was launched in the OKKPS landscape in June 2021, and ended in October 2024.

It aims to support government agencies to improve the governance of natural resources, with strong involvement of local communities.

One of the main objectives of the PAPFor programme in the OKKPS landscape is the creation of the Pinselli-Soyah-Sabouyah (PSS) protected area . To achieve this, a free, informed and prior consent (FPIC) process was carried out with local communities with regard to the provisional boundaries of the park, in particular through:

– Holding community consultation meetings. The aim is (i) to inform and raise awareness among local communities of the options for the integrated management of natural resources and the possibilities for creating a future PSS protected area, and (ii) to gather the opinions and fears of the various stakeholders involved;

– Drawing up participatory community maps showing the boundaries of village territories and their use and occupation in the various localities. This data can then be taken into account when defining the boundaries of the future protected area.

– Setting up a steering committee. This will enable the Guinean and Sierra Leonean authorities to discuss the issues surrounding this future protected area within the wider context of the OKKPS landscape.

The Integrated Management Effectiveness Tool (IMET) is a tool that can be used to assess the effectiveness of PA management and better identify the improvements needed for better management of these areas.

An IMET training and evaluation workshop was held in Conakry in August 2022. This enabled the baseline situation of the management level of the various conservation areas to be established using newly collected data. Alongside this workshop, the authorities in charge of managing the National Parks and Wildlife Reserves in Guinea (OGPNRF) and Sierra Leone (NPAA) took the opportunity to lay the foundations for their cooperation in the future of the project.

An IMET evaluation of PSS was carried out in 2023, followed by an IMET evaluation of Outamba-Kilimi NP in September 2024.

Throughout the PAPFor programme, support has been provided to update several management plans for the target protected areas.

In the OKKPS landscape, the draft Outamba-Kilimi development plan was presented to local communities and then commented on by government departments.

The final validation workshop by the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change is scheduled for the 1st quarter of 2025.

PAPFor places great emphasis on environmental education. Numerous activities have been implemented by operators in the field to raise awareness among local populations of the importance of protecting and sustainably managing natural resources.
These activities include

• The creation of 6 ‘People, Animals, Nature’ (PAN) clubs in schools located in or near the OKKPS landscape;
• Training community leaders and educators;
• A tour of theatrical performances, aimed at informing the inhabitants of the landscape about the processes involved in creating and managing a protected area;
• Listening circles, which bring together communities from neighbouring villages to discuss sustainable management of natural resources in their area. Discussions are recorded and shared with listening groups;
• The mobile cinema, which broadcasts videos of good practice from exemplary villages to communities in neighbouring villages.

A total of 105 camera traps were set by joint teams of community ecoguards and NPAA rangers in Outamba National Park, Kuru Hills and the corridor. Of 25 325 videos generated by the 105 camera traps, 5 333 showed wildlife, recording a total of 38 different mammal species. These were mainly mangabey (Cercocebus atys, 586 videos), followed by domestic cows (Bos taurus, 510 videos), bushpig (Potamochoerus porcus, 514 videos), western chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes verus, 457 videos), Maxwell duiker (Philantomba maxwellii, 379 videos), Campbell’s monkey (Cercopithecus campbelli, 372 videos) and the harnessed guib (Tragelaphus scriptus, 315 videos).

The development of rural communities is vital to a nation’s environmental, social and economic sustainability.

To this end, the assisted natural regeneration (ANR) technique has been implemented by WCF in 6 communities living in the OKKPS landscape. It involves selecting trees to be preserved in farmers’ fields on the basis of various economic, medicinal and agro-ecological criteria. In all, 818 trees have been preserved in the six ANR fields established in Guinea. The growth of each preserved tree will be monitored, enabling an understanding of how the presence of trees benefits crops.

On the Sierra Leone side, WCF has supported the NGO Tacugama to do the same, enabling 10 communities to develop 10 fields of 9.39 ha of ANR.

For more information: https://www.papfor.org/Support-for-the-creation-of-farmer-managed-natural-regeneration-FMNR-fields-in

One of the priority objectives of the PAPFor programme is sustainable rural development on the periphery of protected areas.

To this end, PAPFor partners have developed training modules for communities in good agroecological practices.
This is the case, for example, in Soyah and Madina Oula in Guinea, where 133 people from 14 villages took part in a week of training workshops organised by the WCF.

At the end of the training, 82 out of 133 people volunteered to try out agro-ecological practices for the 2022-2023 and subsequent agricultural seasons.

In Sierra Leone, WCF and Tacugama supported the development of sustainable mulch-based agriculture around Outamba. Following training and the provision of farming tools by the project, farmers were able to grow crops such as onions, peppers, cucumbers and okra. 156 community members, including 95 women from 5 villages, worked on 4 hectares.

For more information: https://www.papfor.org/Community-training-in-agroecological-techniques

The PAPFor programme in the OKKPS landscape was implemented from April 2021 to October 2024 by the Wild Chimpanzee Foundation (WCF) and Tacugama (TCS), with a field team based in Mamou and Soyah for Guinea and Outamba for Sierra Leone.
The two partners worked in close collaboration with the national park services and the governments of Guinea and Sierra Leone. The programme developed synergies with the USAID-funded WABiLED project, and private partners such as Winning Consortium Simandou Railway and Rio Tinto.

The European Union is now funding a national project (Natura Guinée) to support the continuity of action on the Guinean side. In Sierra Leone, there are plans to continue supporting this landscape through new programmes such as NaturAfrica West Africa.