Dear friends, colleagues and supporters,

The whole of humanity is facing an unprecedented challenge as one third of the world's population is confined at home due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The Republic of Congo, for its part, has just proclaimed the health state of emergency and the lockdown of the entire population at home until April 30th.

Despite these difficult times, I can assure you that the Park will continue to provide essential services and that the park will be protected by our rangers, who are themselves supported by our management and support teams.  

Although one of the wildest and most remote places on the planet, Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park will most likely be affected, hopefully only indirectly, by the Coronavirus pandemic. For several weeks now, visits to this exceptional site have been cancelled and our teams have been working hard over the past few days to ensure that our bases and research sites have enough supplies for the coming weeks, thus enabling us to maintain our essential operations. As usual, our rangers are deployed to protect the exceptional natural heritage of the Park.

Naturally, the Park will continue to support health centres in neighbouring villages during this challenging period. We have already provided hand-washing stations that have been installed in public places in Bomassa and Makao. In addition, in the brief time before the government issued a shutdown of all group gatherings, key messages on the coronavirus were communicated to neighbouring communities in order to immediately promote best prevention practices. Nevertheless, the Community Development Department will now pause its activities in order not to endanger communities living near the Park.

We remain more determined than ever to continue our actions despite these difficult and uncertain times.

Thank you to everyone who reads this newsletter for their unwavering support. If you would like to pass on a few words to the brave employees of the Park who have volunteered to pursue our mission in the field, please do not hesitate to reply directly to this message. The heads of the Park Management Unit are copied here.

Good luck to all and ... #staysafe.

Eric ARNHEM, Ph.D.

Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park Director

For more Information, please consult the following PDF: