EDITOR’S NOTE: Call to Earth is a CNN editorial series committed to reporting on the environmental challenges facing our planet, together with the solutions. Rolex’s Perpetual Planet Initiative has partnered with CNN to drive awareness and education around key sustainability issues and to inspire positive action.
Deep in the swamp forest of the Niger Delta lives a monkey that was unknown to science until 1993. Within two decades of its discovery, around 90% of its population had been wiped out.
Well known to the people who lived in the forest, the Niger Delta red colobus, with its striking black, orange and white coat, was already rare when first documented by researchers, with an estimated 10,000 of the monkeys living in the region. But hunting, and habitat loss from tree felling and from oil-extraction roads and canals meant that by 2010, it ranked among the world’s most endangered primates.
When she first visited the area in 2013, Nigerian conservationist Rachel Ikemeh knew she had to act fast to save the monkey. A species endemic to Nigeria, the surviving population had retreated into fragmented habitat pockets scattered across 77 square miles of the vast Niger Delta region in the south of the country.
This ancestral landscape covering 27,000 square miles is home to the second-largest swamp forest in Africa, the third-most expansive mangrove forest in the world, and vital coral reefs and marine ecosystems — a playground the primate had once roamed freely.
At first, Ikemeh was reluctant to involve local people.
“In my line of work, I was given the impression that communities were always to blame,” Ikemeh told CNN. “They’re the culprit, the problem to the natural environment. The ones hunting (animals) to extinction and the ones driving deforestation.”
With no other alternative in sight, Ikemeh decided to take a leap of faith. She launched the community-led conservation program South-West/Niger Delta Forest Project (SWNDFP) and traveled to the Apoi Creek Forest to meet with locals. She taught them about conservation, the animals’ needs, and data collection and by 2021 she had successfully set up a conservation area covering 2,500 acres of surrounding forest, policed and protected by the local Apoi community.
The Niger Delta red colobus was “right at the edge of becoming extinct,” Ikemeh recalled. “But today, as I speak to you, we have the records of four thriving groups, nursing and nurturing their babies. They’re repopulating where conservation areas were created, where habitat restoration is ongoing, and where the forest is now being restored.”
While the population was believed to have fallen to 200 at one point, it is estimated to have doubled since the program was established. It’s a success for Ikemeh, who never expected this first initiative to become a decade-long community-based project.
As the years passed, SWNDFP’s scope would grow far beyond the Apoi Creek Forest and the community, now protecting more than 20,000 acres of forest and at least 16 threatened species, according to the organization. “The only way these monkeys can have a long-term future is for us to scale to other surrounding areas,” Ikemeh explained.
Earlier this year, the Rolex Awards Laureate took her mission a step further by establishing Nigeria’s first locally managed marine area, in Foropa Middleton Kingdom, a coastal community along the Atlantic Ocean.
Located in the heart of the Niger Delta, its shores have drastically changed over recent decades. Sharks, dolphins, sea turtles and schools of fish used to be a common sight but have dwindled. Oil spills, caused by aging equipment, militant sabotage, and illegal artisanal refining have turned the delta into one of the most severely polluted environments on Earth.
Black sand mining — the extraction of heavy mineral deposits from the coast — has also had an impact. All this pollution, Ikemeh explained, has forced local fishing communities like the Foropa Kingdom to take up logging and poaching, further degrading the Niger Delta red colobus’s habitat.
This region needed to be brought back to health if the monkey’s population was to expand there. But marine life, unlike swamp forests, isn’t Ikemeh’s forte. Once again, she realized community involvement was key.
“When you want something to be sustainable, you want it to be stewarded by the people who live closest to it and by the people who need it for their livelihood,” said Ikemeh. “They’ve seen the exploitation, and now they want a different future.”
The first to be involved in the project were local fishermen, Ikemeh explained, but also “former loggers, former hunters, who are bringing in their skills and knowledge, now channelling them into conservation.”
Chef Josaih Uson, former chairman, Chiefs’ Council of Foropa Middleton Kingdom, explained the community’s participation: “We’re preserving the protected area by actively preventing hunters and fishermen from coming,” he said, adding that they’re redirecting these activities toward nonprotected areas, and also prohibiting fishermen from using tools that would damage the reefs, such as dynamite, as well as educating them against mangrove logging.
“Future generations will enjoy this,” Uson said. “The areas are now more secure and this has created more employment.” SWNDFP estimates it has supported the livelihoods of almost 14,000 people in the region.
Local villager Mary Wallson Alamene leads women in organizing cleanups.
“The women in my community are now cleaning up the land and the water side,” she said. “Bottles, bags, pampers (diapers) … if you don’t contaminate marine life, you won’t lose it.”
She is also educating the youth about protecting the environment, contributing to the 27,000 people now engaged in conservation education through Ikemeh’s organization.
“All of the news about the Niger Delta is only about oil, but there’s so much more to this place than just oil,” Ikemeh said. “The land, the people: everybody has been victims of exploitation here.”
The project’s long-term goal is to bring more than 1 million acres of the region under community supervision. It’s an immense undertaking, but Ikemeh knows that it’ll benefit people and wildlife.
“Conserving this landscape and the seascape should be number one (priority) because that’s what’s most important to ensure the peace and security that is required for people to thrive in this region,” she said. “So until the environmental conservation of this region is addressed, every other thing will just be addressing the symptoms of what’s going on here.”