JRS grantee Wild Earth Allies shared the following report after their partners’ successful participation at the 4th Congress of the African Primatological Society in Yaoundé, Cameroon last month.  Read more below:

Team members from two of Wild Earth Allies’ partners, Primate Expertise and ACDEF Cameroun, met in person for the first time at the 4th Congress of the African Primatological Society in Yaoundé, Cameroon, earlier this month.

Throughout the congress, members of both teams shared their knowledge and experience in community-centered primate conservation, covering themes such as biodiversity research and monitoring, habitat restoration, and sustainable livelihoods.

Six ACDEF team members attended, with three presenting on their work with communities in Cameroon’s Dja Biosphere Reserve to establish Community Conservation Management Areas (CCMAs) in the buffer zone, a community-based governance mechanism recently recognized under Cameroonian law and pioneered by ACDEF. Newly launched community-based wildlife monitoring in these CCMAs reveals these areas are habitat to critically endangered forest elephants, western lowland gorillas, and chimpanzees. (You can find more about our work with ACDEF on our blog here.)

 Three Primate Expertise team members attended, with two presentations by Michel Baraka NYAKABEJI, who shared his research on community-centered blue monkey conservation on Idjwi Island in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Michael also honored the life and legacy of late project leader Dr. Augustin K. Basabose, founder of Primate Expertise, in a memorial plenary session.

 Primate Expertise shared about the experience, “Beyond the presentations, the Congress was a genuine space for connection and exchange. It allowed us to build relationships with researchers and institutions engaged in primate conservation in Africa and particularly the Democratic Republic of Congo.”