Newsletter: Celebrating Conservation Success in 2020

Some good news for 2020...

2020 has been a tough year. But despite the many challenges that this year has brought to the world and its wildlife, Global Conservation is proud to have supported critical work by our partners in protected areas around the globe. 

Read on for just a few of this year’s many success stories!

A Conservation Victory: One Year With No Elephant Poaching in Mana Pools

In a major conservation victory, our partner, the Bushlife Conservancy, has recently announced that Mana Pools National Park has been free of any elephant poaching incidents for twelve months. Over the past ten years, 12,000 elephants have been poached in the park and the surrounding Zambezi Valley. Sadly, by 2014, elephant numbers in this area had decreased 40% from 18,000 to 11,500. 

With Global Conservation’s support, Bushlife Conservancy stepped in to fund more rangers, better communications, and regular patrolling. Thanks to these improvements, elephant poaching declined steadily from more than 70 cases in 2016 to just 7 in 2019, and now to zero over the past year. Read more about how Bushlife accomplished this, and see BBC’s coverage of the story!

Major Drop in Leuser Ecosystem Deforestation

For the past several years, Global Conservation has been supporting a Global Park Defense program in the Bengkung-Trumon Megafauna Sanctuary (BTMS). BTMS is a 400,000-hectare expanse of critical habitat at the core of the Leuser Ecosystem, home to endangered Sumatran tigers, rhinos, elephants, orangutans, and sun bears. Along with our partners, Forum Konservasi Leuser (FKL) and Forest, Nature and Environment of Aceh (HAkA), we’ve been working to establish a robust SMART Patrol system to fight illegal logging, poaching, and land clearing for palm oil plantations.

With GC’s support, FKL has now restored a major river basin in the BTMS. HAkA is training government agencies in deforestation mapping and helping the provincial government set up a forest monitoring system. Poaching cases have also decreased dramatically since 2017 as patrols have intensified, with fewer than half as many poaching incidents in 2019 vs. 2018. 

Our partners at the Rainforest Action Network have also made great strides in fighting conflict palm oil in the Leuser Ecosystem, and deforestation has dropped by 40% in the Leuser Ecosystem since 2015.

Rangers Battle Snaring in Cardamom NP, Cambodia

Global Conservation has been partnering with Wildlife Alliance to implement Global Park Defense in Southern Cardamom National Park. This past year, we achieved 50% GPD coverage of the park, including aerial surveillance, cellular cameras, targeted patrolling, and new ranger bases in high-threat areas.

Snares, traps made of wire or rope, are a particular threat to wildlife in Cambodia. The “walls of death” created by rampant snaring have stripped forests of their wildlife. In 2020, a six-ranger GPD team deployed to the Veal Thapou poaching hotspot, where poachers have been snaring for bushmeat to sell to restaurants. 

This law enforcement pressure has been effective: though large hauls of bushmeat were initially seized from restaurants, none has been found in those restaurants recently. The number of snares found in the forest is also decreasing.

We are also partnering with Conservation International to launch a project in the Central Cardamom Mountains NP, which began last year and has already made great progress improving management and equipping rangers.

New Operations Center in Murchison Falls NP, Uganda

During the late 1970s to the year 2000, Murchison Falls National Park suffered extreme poaching. Since 2018, Global Conservation has been supporting the work of the Uganda Conservation Foundation (UCF) and the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) to restore wildlife and tourism numbers.

As of 2019, Murchison Falls still had no communications network and no means of coordinating park operations. This year, we supported the design and construction of the Murchison Falls Law Enforcement and Operations Centre (LEOC), including a Joint Operations Command Centre with the Ugandan police, an armory, police station and cell block, and radio and internet towers. The LEOC is the first of its kind in Africa, integrating all relevant departments and providing for interagency requirements.

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