Celebrating on the world stage - Gola Rainforest joins World Heritage Site list

Home to over 320 bird species as well as endangered mammals including Pygmy Hippo, pangolins, Forest Elephants and Chimpanzees, the Gola Rainforest National Park in Sierra Leone is an internationally important hotspot for biodiversity. The RSPB has been involved in conservation here, alongside our partners, for over 30 years and we are delighted to share the news that Gola has now been declared a new UNESCO Natural World Heritage Site.

The new site, which includes the 71,000 ha. national park as well as nearby Tiwai Island Wildlife Sanctuary, will be known as the Gola-Tiwai Complex. Achieving World Heritage status puts Gola on a prestigious list alongside places like the Great Barrier Reef, Mount Kilimanjaro, and the Grand Canyon, recognising its outstanding international importance for nature.

Achieving World Heritage status comes after decades of hard work from a wide variety of organisations and individuals determined to protect Gola’s forests, explained Katie-Jo Luxton, Executive Director for Global Conservation at the RSPB.

Fomba Kanneh is Head of Gola at not-for-profit company Gola Rainforest Conservation which is responsible for the protection of the national park. Reacting to the announcement he said: "This recognition is not just a global acknowledgment of Gola’s extraordinary ecological value but also a powerful affirmation of the generations of stewardship by local communities. I feel honoured and humbled to be part of this historic moment.”

To be inscribed on the World Heritage list, sites have to undergo a rigorous nomination and assessment process to demonstrate that they hold ‘outstanding universal value’ for the planet. In recommending the Gola-Tiwai Complex for inscription, assessors from the IUCN explained that “the richness of biodiversity is outstanding, harbouring exceptional levels of endemism and numerous species which are globally threatened”.

One of the most important remaining fragments of the once vast Upper Guinean Forest system, Gola locks away an estimated 19 million tonnes of carbon while providing a home for a wide range of wildlife include over 600 species of butterflies, as well as threatened birds like Timneh Parrot and the bizarre-looking White-necked Picathartes.

Gola’s forest also plays a key role in supporting migratory birds, particularly insect-eating species like the Swifts that forage above its canopy during their migration before returning to Europe to breed during our spring and summer.

Parts of the Gola Rainforest were heavily logged between the 1930s and 1980s while more recently poaching and encroachment also had a major impact on its wildlife during Sierra Leone’s civil war between 1991 and 2002.

Since then, a huge amount of hard work has gone into protecting and restoring the forest and in 2013 the RSPB played a key role, together with our partners, in establishing a pioneering conservation project here.

The REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) project remains the only one of its kind anywhere in West Africa and funds the protection of the national park through a system of carbon credits which can be purchased by organisations after a regular and rigorous series of assessments and verification has taken place. The REDD+ project not only funds direct protection of the forest through ranger patrols, but also supports education, microfinance, and development initiatives in the 122 communities that surround the national park. For example, the project funds 600 school scholarships per year covering every one of the forest-edge communities while also supporting more than 2,500 farmers with training and equipment to grow forest-friendly cocoa and completing more than 70 development projects to deliver vital community infrastructure.

The process to achieve this important milestone began back in 2012 with lots of challenges faced along the way. The devastating Ebola epidemic of 2014, damage to facilities from severe storms, and the Covid-19 pandemic have all had to be overcome. This success is thanks to the determination and dedication of many organisations and individuals, and we would particularly like to acknowledge the people of the seven Gola chiefdoms as well as the Environmental Foundation of Africa, the Government of Sierra Leone, the Conservation Society of Sierra Leone, and Gola Rainforest Conservation. Without decades of their hard work and collaboration this success would never have been possible.

Tommy Garnett, Executive Direct of the Environmental Foundation for Africa which manages the Tiwai Island Wildlife Sanctuary, has been instrumental in the World Heritage nomination process. He hopes that its success will “serve as an example to be emulated in other parts of the country and the wider West Africa region”.

The protection of the national park is now managed by not-for-profit company Gola Rainforest Conservation, of which the RSPB is a partner alongside the Government of Sierra Leone and the Conservation Society of Sierra Leone.

The Gola Rainforest National Park sits within the vast Greater Gola Landscape, a 350,000-hectare area of tropical forest and community lands covering parts of both Sierra Leone and its neighbour Liberia.

While the new World Heritage Site currently only includes areas within Sierra Leone, there is an ambition to extend the site in the future to also include areas on the Liberian side of the border. This is one of the recommendations from the IUCN panel which assessed the application and we look forward to working with our partners both in Sierra Leone and Liberia to hopefully one day make this expanded ‘transboundary’ World Heritage site into a reality.

Beyond West Africa, the RSPB has also been supporting efforts to achieve World Heritage status for other vital sites for wildlife. 2024 saw the Flow Country in Scotland recognised as a new World Heritage site which includes our RSPB Forsinard Flows reserve. In England we are working hard alongside our partners to achieve the same recognition for the east coast wetlands, a network of sites which has been added to the UK Government's Tentative List for new World Heritage Sites, while in China and South Korea we have supported inscription of key wetland sites used by migratory birds along the Yellow Sea coast.

Did you know that you can support conservation of the Gola Rainforest just by eating chocolate!? Our forest-friendly Gola chocolate is made from shade-loving cocoa grown by communities surrounding the national park. Delicious Gola chocolate bars, truffles and drinking chocolate are available from our shops, catalogues, or you can buy online.