Partnering up to run a DRC reserve: Interview with Forgotten Parks’ Christine Lain

In the early 2010s, Upemba National Park in the southern Democratic Republic of Congo was a case study in the dysfunction of some protected areas in Africa. Park rangers and staff were regularly harassed or killed by armed militias embroiled in the region’s long-running conflicts, and wildlife numbers had declined sharply as a result of widespread poaching. After years of fighting and neglect, by 2012 Upemba was in what one conservationist described as a “pitiful state.”

In 2016, Robert Muir, a program director with the Frankfurt Zoological Society (FZS), founded Forgotten Parks. FZS had been working with the ICCN, the DRC government institute in charge of the country’s protected areas, on a management strategy for Upemba. But after the park’s chief warden was killed in an ambush in late 2012, FZS pulled out. Muir and Forgotten Parks offered to step in, and in 2017 they signed a 15-year deal with the DRC government to run Upemba directly.

The deal was part of a wider trend of public-private partnerships (PPPs) for conservation in protected areas in Africa. In parks where governments are either unwilling or unable to manage day-to-day operations on their own, many have turned to foreign NGOs like Forgotten Parks and the higher-profile African Parks to help. According to a 2024 study published in PNAS, there are now more than 127 protected areas in 16 countries that are managed under this arrangement.

Mongabay’s Ashoka Mukpo spoke with Christine Lain, the DRC director of Forgotten Parks and current manager of Upemba, about its PPP at Upemba. Lain left a career in humanitarian aid to work with the IUCN, the global wildlife conservation authority, where she spent 12 years before joining Forgotten Parks in 2021.

Mongabay: What do you see as the main challenges for Upemba in terms of the integrity of its ecosystems?

Christine Lain: The main challenge has been bushmeat. Poaching has been a big challenge. During the Second Congo War, it was nearly industrial poaching. You had lions, you had a lot of wildlife left, but a lot of it disappeared.

Other threats include illegal mining in some areas of the park — mostly artisanal mining, nothing industrial yet — and bushfires, which are also a big issue in this area.

I would say it is similar to many other protected areas. Unfortunately, we also have some presence of armed groups, which makes it more complicated. But compared to other protected areas in the east, it is not as dangerous as Virunga or others.

Mongabay: Upemba is one of a very small handful of parks in the DRC that are managed under a public-private partnership, right?

Christine Lain: You have others. You have Garamba [National Park], you’ve got Virunga [National Park]. You also have Okapi [Wildlife Reserve] and Kahuzi-Biega [National Park]. And if I’m not wrong, you also have now Lomami [National Park]. Some of them are really [public-private partnerships], like Virunga, Garamba, Upemba, and others have co-management agreements, which are a little bit different from [public-private partnerships].

Mongabay: What’s the benefit of this approach to conservation? And what do you feel that Forgotten Parks brings to the table that can help a country like the DRC?

Christine Lain: What we really try to bring to the table is, first of all, being able to mobilize and bring resources to the country for conservation. There are more than 80 protected areas and reserves in the DRC. But if you look at that number, probably only a maximum of 10 are really being supported and funded, because the government, unfortunately, is not able to get funding into these protected areas.

That makes it very difficult, because even a lot of rangers are not being paid for the work that they are doing.

What we are really trying to do is bring the capacities of different people [together] to get a stronger team. We have local partners and local staff, and each one is bringing something to make it work.

This is my way of looking at things after having worked for many years with IUCN, where it’s natural to bring different capacities together and make it work. For me, that’s an important aspect.

We also look at specific management tools around protected areas. We entered the incubator program of African Parks, and that’s been very helpful for us to develop management tools that would have taken us a lot of trial and error to get right.

Mongabay: Conservation is a very broad term, and you see a lot of different approaches across the continent in terms of priorities and management style. Could you tell me a little bit about Forgotten Parks’ approach, particularly at Upemba?

Christine Lain: I feel that our approach, first of all, is a very strong partnership approach with [DRC conservation agency] ICCN. What we try to do is help strengthen the capacities within the institute. It’s not Forgotten Parks; it’s not ICCN — it’s all of us together. That’s very strong in our DNA, where it’s teamwork between different people, different countries, institutions.

In terms of how we engage with communities, we really try to make it participatory. That’s an obligation that any protected area management has if you want sustainability and long-term results.

I come from a background where civil society was a very important part of the work. We really try to see how we can engage local communities and civil society, people who are able to help us and guide us in the ways that we are working.

It’s not always easy. You have management priorities around the park that are very important, and then you have to reconcile that with the needs and expectations at the community level. But we try to do it.

Mongabay: Conservation is about trade-offs. There are people who want protein sources from the bush, or to do illegal mining, for reasons that might be understandable. Given that you’re ultimately telling people there are certain things they can’t do, how do you get them to buy into the idea that conservation is worthwhile and not just imposed on them?

Christine Lain: What we really try to do is find alternatives. If you look at the budgets we have right now for Upemba, most of the funding we are receiving is coming from the European Union. I would say three-quarters of the budget is for development around the protected area, and not for conservation itself.

That shows that if you want to protect a protected area, which is at the center of your landscape, you need to come with alternatives for the communities surrounding this landscape.

What we try to do is develop these kinds of alternatives. We started with fisheries in Lake Upemba, because we have several lakes in the north of the park. This was very similar to work I did with IUCN Netherlands. It’s a very good entry point in terms of engagement with communities, because you support livelihoods. You try to improve fishing production, extra revenues, the ability to support children in terms of schooling, and nutrition.

But what we realized after developing more agricultural programs in another corner of the park is that agriculture supports revenues, but we still have this issue of nutrients, in terms of protein. We see that even if we have some good results in agriculture, we still have pressure from very poor communities going into the park to get animal protein.

So now we are looking at how we can develop programs that can also provide for this animal protein, maybe [fish farming] or other kinds. We are constantly trying to find solutions to minimize impact on the protected area and its wildlife, but which also work for the community.

Mongabay: Some parks in the DRC are threatened by mining or other resource extraction. Is that something you’ve had to deal with at Upemba?

Christine Lain: Yes. We have an oil concession that was covering 80% of the park. The old concessions were recently cancelled, but 52 new blocks were put back into the licensing round. The Upemba block, I think it has been renamed, and it still covers part of the park, but I need to confirm that.

Upemba is also surrounded by two hunting reserves. One of the hunting reserves is totally under mining concessions. Another is probably 50% under mining concessions. Yes, it is a reality that many protected areas are confronted with.

Mongabay: Practically speaking, what does that mean for Upemba?

Christine Lain: There is no exploration yet, so it’s very much still in the hands of the ministries of hydrocarbons and energy. But it is a threat for the landscape if it continues like that. We know what happened in Virunga a couple of years ago with a similar threat. Things can move quickly if there is already a company interested, but right now there are no companies.

We don’t put all our attention on it, but we keep an eye on how things evolve. The most important thing for us is to make understood the value of this landscape and all these ecosystem services for the country and for local communities. That it has value, and it should be taken into consideration by the government when they take decisions.

Our responsibility is to show the value of this protected area at many different levels — cultural, economic and so on — and then the government should make a proper decision with all this information.

Mongabay: As a private entity in charge of a major public asset, you must interface with the DRC government a lot. What’s that relationship like?

Christine Lain: There are always ups and downs. It also depends on individuals, and you find that in every society. But in general, it’s been good. We’ve been able to put things clear within our contract. That’s important, to have things very clear from the start.

Then we need to hold ourselves to what we agreed to. I would say it’s been worse in the past and now it’s going pretty well. But it’s a dynamic relationship. You’re dependent on people and things happening at national level.

We have seen in the past that there were questions on the PPP model, mostly raised by some politicians in Kinshasa. Then you wonder what interests are behind that. It’s part of the dynamic of the work that we’re doing in the [DRC].

Mongabay: The rangers who work in your park — are they under your chain of command, or the ICCN chain of command?

Christine Lain: It’s together. I have a deputy who is ICCN, and I also have a head of law enforcement. But at the end, I’m the park manager, so I take the final decision, but we are all together in it.

Mongabay: It’s no secret that ICCN has a human rights track record that has been spotty in the last few decades. What are you doing at Upemba to ensure that the abuses other parks have seen don’t occur?

Christine Lain: Training. Really trying to put all the procedures and systems in place so we can train rangers properly and make them aware of human rights considerations, safety considerations and so on.

Then it’s enforcement of discipline. It’s constant work. It’s impossible to think that something cannot happen. But if something happens, we take responsibility and we make sure it doesn’t happen again.

We have already sent rangers to jail because they did things. That’s how we need to enforce the law. The law is not only for poachers; it’s for everyone.

Mongabay: When I think about PPPs in conservation, this seems like a big source of risk. You’re working in countries where security agencies might not have high human rights standards, and you take reputational risk if incidents occur. As a private actor working in the DRC, how do you navigate that tension?

Christine Lain: I don’t handle it very differently than how I handled it when I was working for an organization like IUCN. Any kind of actor working in another country, humanitarian or conservation, has responsibility. There are risks, but you’re here to do a job properly.

Other organizations also have these responsibilities. It might be a little bit different, but it is very similar. I don’t see a big difference.

Mongabay: The difference might be more that you have direct command over rangers and interface with security agencies.

Christine Lain: Yes, but how you engage with the government and how you position yourself in terms of responsibility — for me it’s still the same. You’re here to do something properly, and that is the risk you have.

Mongabay: Upemba’s previous manager was killed in an ambush by Mai-Mai in 2012. What is the current security situation in the park? Are you still dealing with armed groups?

Christine Lain: It depends. There are some periods that are more difficult than others. This year we haven’t lost any rangers. [In 2024] we lost two rangers and two community trackers. [It] was the toughest year we ever had in the park.

It was mostly because groups were trying to get weapons [from rangers] and were attacking outposts. They are also seeing how the park is getting more and more connected to communities, and that is a threat to them. That was probably one of the reasons why they killed two community trackers — to say, “Don’t get too close to the park.”

We continue and make sure we keep this connection with communities, because communities are also our first line of defense. It’s very important we don’t lose that.

Mongabay: What motivates an armed group to try to keep people from having better relationships with park management?

Christine Lain: They don’t want to lose ground. Many of these groups are taking refuge in the park and benefiting from illegal activities, be it poaching or illegal mining. When they see that the park and the communities are getting closer with alternatives, it puts them at risk, and they don’t want to lose that.

Mongabay: What changes have you seen over the years you’ve worked in conservation?

Christine Lain: I see that conservation organizations are starting to be more open than in the past.

In the past, many were very much on their own with their own programs. Now they understand they need to be more connected to civil society and many other actors around the landscape.

It’s not only about conservation; it’s also about sustainable development and many other things that contribute to conservation.

I also see more and more critics around conservation and how it is done.

I’m not always agreeing on everything about that, because I’ve seen both sides. I feel there is misunderstanding in trying to put one model above another, when it’s more about how we can make both models work together.

It should be collaborative. It shouldn’t be destructive.

I’ve worked in eastern DRC and here [in the south, in Upemba]. I heard a lot at a certain point around Virunga and militarization. If you are not in this context and you don’t understand how it is, it’s difficult to put nuance into a very black-and-white narrative.

There are many other interests around the landscape that need to be taken into consideration.

Mongabay: What does success look like at Upemba, and for Forgotten Parks overall?

Christine Lain: Success is if we are able to make Upemba a sustainable protected area where everyone finds it a win. It will not be a success if Upemba is well known in 10 or 20 years but communities don’t feel connected to the landscape and don’t feel that it benefits them.

Success is that in 10 years’ time, Upemba is well known and we have achieved what we wanted, everybody feels proud and feels part of this win, and that it was teamwork.

Banner image: Christine Lain surveys Upemba National Park. Image by Justin Sullivan via Forgotten Parks.

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