Taï National Park in Côte d'Ivoire

Taï National Park in Cote d'Ivoire, a World Heritage Site, is the single-largest tract of undisturbed tropical rainforest in West Africa, and is located at the centre of west Africa’s Guinean Moist Forest Ecoregion.

The Park was established in 1972 under the joint recommendation of WWF and IUCN, and is currently the largest (455,000 hectares) legally protected representation of West Africa’s Guinean Moist Forest, and ranks among the highest priority tropical moist forest areas in all of Africa.

In the 1980’s, the survival of the park was directly threatened by illegal farming, wildlife poaching and gold mining and indirectly by the activities of timber companies.

In response to these threats, WWF, in collaboration with the government of Côte d’Ivoire, launched a conservation project for the Park in 1988, which succeeded in stabilizing the Park’s biodiversity.

In 1992, WWF, together with national partners organized a Round Table on the future of the Park, and in 1993, the stage was set for an integrated German Development Cooperation (GTZ) funded project for the Autonomous Project for Conservation of the Taï National Park, better known by its French acronym - PACPNT.

Objectives

• To participate in the implementation of the Autonomous Project for the Conservation of Taï National Park.
• To support the Direction for the Protection of Nature for the monitoring of the project
• To strengthen environmental awareness among the
  neighbouring population.
• To define and implement an ecotourism development plan.