NGO accused of mismanaging Chad’s oldest national park
African Parks runs conservation sites all over the continent. Former staff describe the organisation’s operations as a ‘shitshow’ of toxic mismanagement and lawlessness.
Olivier van Beemen
David* was bewildered when he arrived at the staff base in Zakouma National Park earlier this year. His residence was a camp where Chadian workers slept outside on the ground and relieved themselves in the bushes because there were not enough toilets. He slept in a tent in which temperatures rose to 40°C or 50°C. Chad’s best-preserved nature reserve didn’t resemble one of the “stunning conservation success stories in Africa”, as The New York Times had once described it.
As he settled into the role, David’s dismay grew. He says the vehicle fleet and equipment were poorly maintained or outdated. Rangers’ motorcycles and equipment for monitoring critically endangered black rhinos were often broken or malfunctioning.
Zakouma National Park is managed by African Parks, a South Africa-based NGO that runs 23 conservation reserves in 13 African countries. The organisation dismissed these complaints, saying the “facilities in Zakouma exceed comparable standards across Africa”. It also said breakdowns in its vehicle fleet were not “beyond the norm” and that it reviewed the functionality of wildlife-monitoring equipment every month.
In contrast, Chad’s government, which has a long-term conservation management contract with the NGO, did not think African Parks was running a tight ship. On 6 October, it expelled the organisation for alleged mismanagement and fraud.
But the N’Djamena government did not account for African Parks’s international allies. Its board includes former Ethiopian prime minister Hailemariam Desalegn and Britain’s Prince Harry. A week after the expulsion, the European Union ambassador to Chad threatened to withdraw $23-million in conservation aid to the country. The EU provided more than a third of the $67-million that African Parks says it has spent on Zakouma since 2010. The government made a U-turn and renewed the African Parks partnership on 17 October “in a spirit of dialogue and co-operation”.
Smoking guns
Interviews with six former African Parks staff – five of them managers – confirm Chad had reason for concern. A former manager described African Parks’s management of Zakouma as “a shitshow”. All of them requested anonymity, fearing retaliation. Some filed formal complaints to African Parks headquarters in May and June, before they were fired or did not have their contracts renewed.
The internal complaints, reviewed for this investigation, describe extensive management failures and a hostile work environment in Zakouma. “Since I’ve been working here, it’s pretty much always been a mess. But the past nine months have been nothing short of dramatic,” said former manager Robin*.
The most serious allegations are related to poaching incidents, which began last November. By March, 12 giraffes, at least 12 buffalo and two black rhinos had been killed. Local authorities arrested two wildlife trackers employed by African Parks and held them in prison for two weeks. Their photo, captioned “alleged poachers”, remains online.
“They couldn’t communicate because both their walkie-talkies and the satellite connection were faulty. The management knew about this but did nothing,” says former manager Franck*. African Parks did not hire a lawyer to represent its detained employees.
The NGO dismissed Zakouma’s head of conservation, a biologist, after the poaching incidents. But the decision left some of its workers perplexed. “He served as a scapegoat,” says Robin, who argues that when management failures lead to poaching, the park director and the head of law enforcement bear ultimate responsibility.
The park’s director, Frenchman Cyril Pélissier, appears to have been particularly divisive. “The unpredictable director considered the park his kingdom, with the head of law enforcement below him, faithfully carrying out his orders,” says Louis*, another former manager.
Internal complaints even blamed Pélissier for the second major tragedy in Zakouma in the past 12 months: a plane crash that killed a South African pilot and a Chadian conservationist. Staffers said Pélissier regularly pressured pilots to fly, even in poor health and bad weather. In one of the internal complaints, a whistleblower reported witnessing the director say, “it will be your fault if a rhino is poached” to dismiss a pilot’s hesitancy.
Another allegation is that ivory went missing from African Parks’ warehouse in Zakouma. Two former insiders said an inventory conducted by six people on 11 June found 15 tusks were missing. They provided messages from one of the auditors to back up this claim. But none of the auditors was from the Chadian government as should be the case. African Parks maintains that “there is no discrepancy in our ivory records in Zakouma National Park.”
Zakouma just the latest flashpoint
“I see African Parks as a state within a state. You’re on some kind of an island with a military structure,” said Louis. This assessment echoes wider criticism that African Parks manages nature reserves using a “fortress conservation” model. Critics say it uses force to keep nearby communities out of the nature reserves it manages, even when they have historical claims to some of the gazetted land.
The NGO vigorously dismissed this characterisation in a statement, saying “64% of the areas it manages have people living in them and 90% of them allow some access to resources within, in line with local laws”. The NGO also said only four of 23 parks it managed were fully fenced and this was purely to prevent human-wildlife conflict.
In May, however, African Parks admitted that some of its staff committed violations against the Baka people who live near Odzala-Kokoua National Park in the Republic of the Congo, which it has managed for 15 years. This came after British human rights lawyers – hired by African Parks in reaction to a report by Survival International – investigated 21 separate incidents of alleged abuse. These included physical and sexual abuses such as rape, torture, unlawful killing, and arbitrary arrests and detention. African Parks didn’t disclose which of the allegations had been proven or how many people they affected. The full report was submitted to its board and remains confidential.
Across Africa, the NGO manages more than 20-million hectares of land. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zambia, and Malawi, many sources, including victims and alleged perpetrators, say human rights abuses have happened within areas managed by African Parks.
“In the park, there’s no room for human rights,” said a former African Parks ranger from the DRC.
Good job for writing about it🌞. Why don't you try to share the story with the Guardian or French / German newspapers so that UK/EU citizens can find out how their money is being mismanaged?