Conflict-Sensitive Conservation in Gola Rainforest National Park Workshop Report

The report details a 2011 workshop in Sierra Leone focused on applying conflict-sensitive conservation (CSC) to the Gola Rainforest National Park. Participants identified various conflicts, including wildlife-human clashes, resource access disputes, and unequal benefit-sharing. The workshop prioritized these issues based on human and conservation impacts, selecting four key conflicts for detailed analysis using conflict trees and maps to develop potential solutions.

• The Gola rainforest is the largest remaining closed canopy rainforest in Sierra Leone, covering 71,070 hectares, and is part of the Upper Guinea Rainforest Ecoregion, which has lost over 70 per cent of its area since 1900.
• The Gola Forest Programme (GFP) has distributed over US$500,000 in development benefits to seven chiefdoms since 2007 and employs 50 forest guards, who have confiscated 21 shotguns and 2,273 snares since 2007.
• Workshop participants identified six categories of conservation-related conflicts: wildlife–human, resource access, benefit-sharing, policy-related, park–people, and transboundary conflicts.
• Four specific conflicts were prioritized for detailed group analysis based on their high human and conservation impacts: resource access disputes (covering minerals and logging), wildlife–human conflicts, unequal benefit sharing, and boundary demarcation.
• Wildlife-human conflicts primarily involve crop raids by monkeys and chimpanzees, with no existing funding mechanism to compensate communities for these losses.
• Benefit-sharing conflicts stem from a policy where chiefdoms receive equal benefits regardless of their size or population, and from the capture of funds by household heads due to traditional beliefs.
• Boundary demarcation conflicts have arisen because the original 1920s stone cairn markers were not maintained, and new GPS-based demarcation has revealed that some communities and farms are located inside the park boundaries.

APA

Crawford, A., Brown, O., & Finlay, H. (2011). Conflict-Sensitive Conservation in Gola Rainforest National Park Workshop Report. International Institute for Sustainable Development. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/csc_gola.pdf

Chicago

Crawford, Alec, Oli Brown, and Helen Finlay. Conflict-Sensitive Conservation in Gola Rainforest National Park Workshop Report. International Institute for Sustainable Development, 2011. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/csc_gola.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Crawford |first1=Alec |last2=Brown |first2=Oli |last3=Finlay |first3=Helen |title=Conflict-Sensitive Conservation in Gola Rainforest National Park Workshop Report |publisher=International Institute for Sustainable Development |date=2011 |url=https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/csc_gola.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{crawford2011conflictsensitive, author = {Crawford, Alec and Brown, Oli and Finlay, Helen}, title = {{Conflict-Sensitive Conservation in Gola Rainforest National Park Workshop Report}}, institution = {International Institute for Sustainable Development}, year = {2011}, url = {https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/csc_gola.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }