The Democratic Republic of Congo has granted operational responsibility for the Itombwe Nature Reserve to a local NGO for the next 10 years, handing day-to-day management to a Congolese organisation while the national wildlife authority keeps formal oversight.
The appointment places Strong Roots, founded by Dominique Bikaba, at the centre of a precedent in DRC conservation: it is the first modern example of a locally based nongovernmental group formally co-managing a protected area. Bikaba said of the role, "It is an honor." She added the government selected Strong Roots because of its record linking community land protection with biodiversity goals, "I think the government chose us, because they have observed the work we have done in the biodiversity corridor and the way we have put local communities at the center of conservation," she said.
Strong Roots has spent roughly a decade developing a landscape-scale model intended to secure territory for both people and wildlife. The organisation describes plans to knit together a roughly 1-million-hectare corridor between Kahuzi-Biega National Park and Itombwe, and has secured 23 community forest concessions covering nearly 600,000 hectares as part of that effort.
Itombwe spans multiple traditional authorities, and Bikaba noted the reserve is composed of seven chiefdoms, with Strong Roots already working with four of them inside the corridor. Bikaba, who comes from an Indigenous community that was previously evicted for another protected area, has emphasised community-centred management as a central principle of the organisation's approach.
The new arrangement makes Strong Roots responsible for managing the reserve for 10 years, while the Congolese Wildlife Authority, ICCN, retains formal oversight. The deal converts a decade of community land work and local concessions into a formal administrative test case, and will indicate whether locally rooted NGOs can translate community stewardship into the sustained governance required for protected-area administration.
