At the core of our mission at Wild Tomorrow, alongside habitat protection and restoration, is supporting wildlife rangers in Africa. These brave men and women risk their lives every day to protect wildlife and the world’s last remaining wild places while lacking even the most basic supplies.

Meet Adams Cassinga, a true hero for wildlife, who fights to protect the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s natural wealth and beauty. Sadly, Adams must operate on a shoe-string budget, so Wild Tomorrow are helping him find international support. Read more about Adams’s work and the equipment he needs.

ADAMS CASSINGA

As part of this year’s World Ranger Day campaign to equip rangers in underfunded nature reserves, we are proud to continue our support of Adams Cassinga, a world-renowned wildlife warrior battling wildlife crime in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the founder of the local NGO Conserv Congo.

To say that Adams is a courageous and inspiring nature champion is an understatement. He has had many identities as his life’s winding path led him to wildlife conservation, first as a 16-year-old fleeing civil war. His father, who feared Adams would be captured and forced to become a child soldier, sent him to South Africa. In Johannesburg, Adams learnt to survive on the streets while teaching himself English in public libraries. After he was granted official refugee status, he studied journalism and landed his first job working for a local newspaper. While working as an investigative reporter in 2006, Adams was shot three times!

Adams changed career paths again, this time to work in the lucrative mining industry in South Africa. In this role, he returned years later to the DRC to visit gold mines. While he was flying over the jungle, Adams saw the crisscrossed wounds of mining operations on the lush forest landscape. He began to think about the beauty of his country’s wild places and the struggle to protect them. The rest is history — and now Adams is the DRC’s premier wildlife warrior.

*The rescued pangolin readjusts to the wild.*

SUPPORT CONSERV CONGO’s RANGERS

CONSERV CONGO

After volunteering as an honorary ranger, Adams took his wildlife mission one big step further, founding Conserv Congo in 2017. Conserv Congo fights poaching and trafficking through undercover investigations in pursuit of criminals in the illegal wildlife trade. With a team of volunteers including police officers, politicians and students, Adams infiltrates trafficking networks and conducts organized stings with the authorities.

*Adams has served as an honorary ranger in multiple national parks across the Democratic Republic of the Congo.*

Conserv Congo works with the state environmental agency, Congo Institute for Nature Conservation (ICCN), which is overseen by the ministry of the environment. It also partners with multiple national parks, helping to prevent poaching, training volunteers patrol the parks with rangers, and buying uniforms and other supplies for rangers, who often do not even have shoes or functioning guns.

One of the parks is Kahuzi-Biega, home to some of the planet’s last surviving eastern lowland gorillas and African forest elephants, both critically endangered.

The smallest of the African forest elephant is native to humid tropical forests in West Africa and the Congo Basin.

Conserv Congo’s work outside of protected areas is especially important – essentially extending the protection of wildlife outside park boundaries.

To date, Conserv Congo has worked on more than 6,000 criminal cases, rescued hundreds of trafficked animals from chimps to parrots, and seized tons of ivory and pangolin scales.

Recently, Adams and his team trekked in to the jungle to release a pangolin, rescued from the illegal wildlife trade at the eleventh hour, found and seized at the international airport in Kinshasa. Thankfully the pangolin was able to be released the next day, after a long, hot trek thru the jungle. Watch Adams’ releasing the pangolin in the video below.

Conserv Congo takes a holistic approach to conservation, leading multiple community conservation efforts. Adams works with six schools in Kinshasa to teach young people about their nation’s natural riches and consider a career in conservation. He hopes to dispel the notion amongst the Congolese people that anyone who works in conservation is rich, white, and has a PhD. So far, he has reached 2,000 students. Another of Conserv Congo’s community projects is promoting sustainable farming and agroforestry in remote villages as an alternative to poaching and deforestation.

Tragically, however, Conserv Congo rarely receives international support, mostly because it lacks the overseas connections that many large nonprofits in the West enjoy. Adams tells us we are one of the few NGOs that provides support for his vital work. Otherwise, Conserv Congo depends entirely on Adams’ personal savings and individual gifts of money and equipment.

*Adams’s team with bats illegally poached for bushmeat.*

HOW YOU CAN HELP

Adams needs all kinds of equipment for his team at Conserv Congo. Last year, we bought 100 pairs of ranger boots and shipped them from South Africa to the DRC.

This year, as part of our World Ranger Day campaign, we hope to give Adams and his team:

2 handheld Garmin GPS units
10 pairs of binoculars

Handheld outdoor GPS units are vital to Adams’s work in the DRC’s vast tracts of natural wilderness. His team’s preferred model is the Garmin GPSMAP® 64, of which he has asked for just two units. Binoculars will enable rangers to have much greater visibility on patrol and during undercover investigations.

Our friends at the fStop Foundation are generously donating five camera traps to Conserv Congo. Thank you!

SUPPORT CONSERV CONGO’S RANGERS

Please donate to our World Ranger Day campaign to help equip Adams, his team, and other African rangers, our precious wildlife’s last defense against poaching and habitat destruction.

ADAMS CASSINGA: CONGO BASIN WILDLIFE WARRIOR

ADAMS CASSINGA

CONSERV CONGO

HOW YOU CAN HELP