- The NGO Strong Roots Congo is securing lands for communities and wildlife to create a 1-million-hectare (2.5-million-acre) corridor that spans the space between Kahuzi-Biega National Park and Itombwe Nature Reserve in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
- The effort requires multiple communities to register their customary lands as community forestry concessions under an environmental management plan, which, piece by piece, form the sweeping corridor.
- To date, Strong Roots has secured 23 community forest concessions in the area, covering nearly 600,000 hectares (1.5 million acres) of land.
- The corridor aims to rectify a historical wrong in the creation of Kahuzi-Biega National Park, which displaced many families, by engaging communities in conservation. Advocates say the project has had a positive impact so far despite challenges, but persistent armed conflict in the eastern DRC is slowing progress.
Dominique Bikaba’s family was once displaced from vibrant rainforests in the Congo Basin to make way for a sweeping national park. Today, a conservationist who also champions the protection of endangered gorillas in these forests, Bikaba is embarking on a journey to conserve this ecosystem — in a way he says is more just.
His organization has begun securing lands for communities and wildlife to create a 1-million-hectare (2.5-million-acre) corridor that spans the space between Kahuzi-Biega National Park and Itombwe Nature Reserve in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Despite the ongoing conflict between the DRC government and the M23 armed group in the east that has slowed down the project, the corridor is more than halfway toward its goal.
“The corridor is about conserving a block of forest between the two protected areas, allowing species to move safely from one place to another,” Bikaba says. “It’s for restoring these landscapes and wildlife in the region, but also to promote the livelihoods of these communities. For that, there’s a process to legally secure these lands by the Congolese government through community forestry concessions.”
The initiative has been well received by local authorities, who say it could connect the two sites not only geographically, but also in terms of biodiversity. “Species will be able to migrate from one point to another, and this connection will also enable the connection of populations,” says Arthur Kalonji, acting director of Kahuzi-Biega National Park.
To establish these community-managed forests, Bikaba’s organization Strong Roots Congo, with the support of organizations like Rainforest Trust and Biome Conservation, engages with communities that have customary ownership of lands, and helps them formalize this into a community forestry concession (CFCL) — a formal arrangement that grants lands to communities in perpetuity. Piece by piece, these concessions are coming together like a puzzle to form the corridor. In exchange, communities apply sustainable management practices.
To date, Strong Roots has secured 23 community forest concessions in the area, covering nearly 600,000 hectares (1.5 million acres) of land.
For Bikaba, an important reason for establishing this community and wildlife corridor was to rectify a historic wrong in the creation of nearby Kahuzi-Biega National Park, which displaced his family and many others decades ago. The purpose is to provide lands for those displaced or impoverished by evictions, while conserving biodiversity in formal concessions, he tells Mongabay.
“I think that if the people who introduced us to so-called modern conservation had taken the time to think and discuss with local communities, they wouldn’t have made so many mistakes in creating the park,” he says.
Rethinking conservation?
Bikaba also belongs to a traditional community: the Bashi tribe.
This story is also his, he says. He was born while his family was being expelled from the lands they had inherited from their ancestors for the creation of the park. But later, while living with his grandmother, he returned to the area.
“She took me into the forest, showed me where my family used to live, the animals …,” Bikaba says. “But it was park land, so being there was risky because it was illegal; she could have been shot.”
He grew up amid the conflict between park management and his people, while maintaining a connection to nature and his traditions. This conflict was further complicated by regional issues. First, the genocide in neighboring Rwanda pushed many people there to cross the border into the DRC (called Zaïre back then) and seek refuge near the park. Then the two Congo wars bloodied the eastern DRC. The human and wildlife toll was heavy.
According to a study, due to the war, the gorilla population declined from 17,000 individuals in 1995 to 3,800 in 2016. Chimpanzee and elephant populations were also decimated, a loss Bikaba describes as an “ecocide” that prompted him to found his own NGO, Strong Roots Congo.
Straddling the Albertine Rift and the Congo Basin, Kahuzi-Biega comprises dense lowland tropical rainforests as well as Afromontane forests interspersed with bamboo forests. It’s home to a rich diversity of wildlife, notably the world’s largest population of Grauer’s gorillas (Gorilla beringei graueri), classified as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List.
In these rich lands, the Indigenous Batwa people depended on the forests for hunting, gathering, shelter, their livelihoods and culture. It was also the seat of their spirituality.
“But now … the populations find themselves in great precariousness,” says Innocent Bisimwa, program officer at Strong Roots. “Land is truly a factor of integration, empowerment and identity. When you don’t own land [in this region], you’re really almost subhuman. You don’t have the means to survive. The expulsion of Batwa communities from their land disrupts their social and political organization.”
Cyprien Chikuru, 50, is a Mutwa (singular of Batwa) living modestly on the park’s outskirts. His family, too, was expelled from the area. His home, constructed from natural materials, lacks running water and electricity. His family now depends on the cash and market economy, but struggles.
“We can’t find medicine. People die due to a lack of care, unable to afford to reach health centers. If you bring someone there, they’re rejected, and then they die,” Chikuru, 50, a father of 10, tells Mongabay. “When we were in Kahuzi-Biega National Park, we ate meat. If someone had a fever, we found medicinal plants in the forest to treat them.”
After their official eviction, the Batwa had to depend on non-Batwa communities and were discriminated against and exploited as cheap labor. This has reportedly left many in precarious situations and led to high rates of malnutrition, disease and mortality.
“Today, we live at odds with the inhabitants here where we have taken refuge,” says Lukera Kalerema, 61. Though his wife gave birth to 14 children, only seven are alive today. “My wife was also arrested because she cut firewood in the park. Kahuzi-Biega park and the Congolese state are making us suffer.”
According to a book by Albert Barume, now the United Nations special rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous peoples, an estimated 50% of the Batwa population died in the two decades following the violent expulsion.
Some have returned to the park to reclaim lands, hunt or gather plants, but have faced violent expulsion and abuse, including killing, by park guards, according to a report by the NGO Minority Rights Group. The park is also beset by a growing illegal timber and charcoal trade, in which some Batwa chiefs have taken a small part to make money.
The expulsion of Indigenous peoples from the area wasn’t accompanied by appropriate measures or followed by relocation plans, Bisimwa says. This has created frustration and conflict between the expelled communities and the managers of Kahuzi-Biega.
To curb ongoing and future violence, Bikaba decided to rethink conservation in the region.
“We must move away from the idea that to protect nature we must exclude humans. We are nature’s protectors; we have been for centuries,” he says.
Creating the corridor
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, as in many African and Southeast Asian countries, “modern” law often conflicts with “customary” law regarding land ownership.
Customary law refers to the precolonial laws that governed different settlements, while modern law represents the laws written during and after the colonial era by the ruling authorities. Under modern law in the DRC, forest lands, i.e., classified and unclassified forests not belonging to a private entity, belong to the state. Whereas under customary law, the land belongs to the populations who inhabit and protect it, represented by their customary chief.
To bridge the gap between modern and customary laws, community forestry concessions were created. Strong Roots Congo meets with communities to inform them of the forestry laws. Together, they implement participatory mapping that both delineates the claimed forest territory and highlights the community’s knowledge of this territory.
The process isn’t always easy, as villages are often in remote, difficult-to-access areas.
“We also have to travel kilometers to meet local communities,” says Anastasie Bahati, the community forestry program officer for Strong Roots Congo, who works directly with communities in the field. “That’s our biggest challenge as field agents. First, we travel by car. When there’s no road for the car, we switch to a motorcycle. And when the motorcycle can’t go any further, we finish on foot. Sometimes you have to walk for two days, from 3 a.m. until 6 p.m.”
Next comes the stage of organizing community assemblies. Here, the communities reaffirm their desire to claim the forest and their understanding of the process before making an official request to the state.
“We help them — those who don’t know how to sign, we show them how to make a signature and so on, we explain the documents that have been translated into local languages, and then they put together their application, which is then sent to the local chieftaincy,” Bahati says.
After approval by the chieftaincy, the document goes to the government. “At first, it was complicated because sometimes even state officials didn’t know what community forestry was, so we had to raise awareness,” Bahati says.
Once the application is submitted, a notice is posted all over the land to ensure the population is properly informed of the claim on the land. For 30 days, communities have the opportunity to contest the application.
“If there are no objections, the governor issues a decree stating that this forest belongs to that community. We provide funding to the provincial government so they can officially deliver the decree granting the community the forest concession,” Bahati says. She explains that the NGO contributes to the provincial government’s mission expenses, which without this money would have difficulty traveling to the field to carry out the basic checks needed to establish the community forest. In the DRC, it is not uncommon for administrations to lack the funds necessary to carry out some of their basic missions.
Following this, socioeconomic studies and inventories are conducted to develop a straightforward management plan for the forest. That’s what Strong Roots Congo is doing now in communities that have already had their concessions approved.
Kalonji, the Kahuzi-Biega park director, says one of the reasons he supports this initiative is because the concessions could reduce the impacts of armed conflict on forests and wildlife.
“The CFCLs [community forests] will serve as a buffer zone for better protection of the park by delimiting it. Populations will regain use of the land, thus limiting intrusion into the park. Furthermore, this will help anticipate issues of human-animal conflict. In other words, the animals won’t have to go directly into the fields to prey on the crops,” Kalonji says. “In this buffer zone, we can grow other plants that the animals won’t eat, creating a natural barrier while generating income for the local population. For example, coffee and peanuts can be grown in the buffer zone. Elephants don’t eat coffee.”
On the ground, Bahati says she already sees the impact of new leadership.
“Customary leaders now feel truly responsible — they can’t destroy what belongs to them anymore. There were many inter- and intracommunity conflicts that were resolved through the community forestry process,” she says.
For example, two communities in the Mwenga territory, the Balobola and the Banamocha, were constantly fighting to the point where there were almost daily deaths, Bahati tells Mongabay. But during the community forestry process, when they clarified the boundaries between the two groups, the conflict calmed down.
According to rights advocates, this process also helps protect Indigenous peoples from land grabbing by mining companies.
“These lands are coveted by people from many different nationalities who go through Kinshasa [the DRC capital] and arrive with already signed documents,” Bahati says. “The community is not informed. Land is handed over to outsiders without any consideration. For example, some Chinese operators deforested part of Kitutu, near the Bingili-Bazala [group of villages]. They were mining [gold] in the Elila River, but thanks to civil society organizations stepping in, we managed to get them out.”
Conflict shakes things up
The process of completing the corridor is currently being threatened by the resurgence of the M23 armed group in the region. According to Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, M23 has committed “executions, including of children, and conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence. There have also been attacks on hospitals and humanitarian warehouses, as well as threats against the judiciary.”
Bukavu, a large city in the eastern DRC, is where Strong Roots Congo’s main office is located. For security reasons, like many environmental defenders, a number of their staff were forced to flee as the city fell to the M23 militants in February this year. For those who remain, day-to-day life is becoming increasingly difficult.
“We no longer have real access to our operational area,” Bahati says. “For example, to get to Mwenga, you have to go through more than 10 checkpoints. They extort money from the community, passersby and people in vehicles. It’s no longer accessible.”
Even so, she says she has no intention of giving up. “Now is the right time to work with communities, because if we abandon them, people fleeing the fighting in cities will take refuge in the forest — and they’ll destroy it. In this context, securing the land is key.”
Additional reporting by Crispin Kyalangalilwa.
Banner image: Journey by pirogue for members of the Baliga community to participate in community meetings in April 2023. Image courtesy of Strong Roots.
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Related Mongabay podcast episode: Rights to millions of hectares of Indigenous & local communities’ lands restored by ‘barefoot lawyers’. Listen here:
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CORRECTION (Dec. 23, 2025): A previous version of the story including a statement by Cizungu Ntavuna, chief of the village of Buyungule in Chongo, about a corridor in the region. However, he was referring to another corridor, not the biodiversity corridor between Kahuzi-Biega National Park and the Itombwe Nature Reserve. The statement has since been removed for clarity. We apologize for the error.
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