There is minimal online documentation as to specific violations that have occurred under park management since Conkouati-Douli’s inception, however, a 2017 report by The Rainforest Foundation UK titled ‘The Human Cost of Conservation in Republic of Congo’ provides an extensive historical overview of issues with the park and its poor treatment of Indigenous communities. While it is somewhat outdated, particularly following the 2018 change in management, anyone interested in further learning about Conkouati-Douli National Park and its history of green colonialism should read this report. The Rainforest Foundation outlines that the approximately 7,000-8,000 people who live in and near the park have suffered under its outdated management plans, which have poorly communicated the laws impacting local inhabitants and their rights to enter and sustain their livelihoods across the National Park ecologies. Food insecurity, poverty, and hunger are worsening issues Restrictions in place have had a detrimental impact on Indigenous lifeways and subsistence activities, such as hunting and gathering. On the coastal side of the park, the village of Tandou-Ngouma’s inhabitants have reported decreases in fish and agricultural harvests due to the protected area’s restrictions. Due to the inadequate co-management of the park under WCS, farmers in the region have had issues with elephants from the National Park destroying their produce, and livestock, and even causing danger to the community itself. Economic displacement has been extensive and funds garnered by the National Park through tourism and unlawful oil concessions have not delivered reparation of the damage and losses to livelihood endured by affected communities. 

Concessions for seismic testing, the storage of building materials, and the extraction of natural resources such as oil within the buffer zone of the park have been regularly approved by the Government without any consultation process with Indigenous communities to ensure their free, prior and informed consent. This is also a violation of Article 5 of the Conkouati-Douli creation decree, which denies any permit to be authorized within the buffer zone.  At the time of the report’s creation, it was reported that ten families from the village of Koutou had seen their lands dispossessed and expropriated from the establishment of Sintoukola Potash, a large Congolese-based potash mining project being developed by UK-led mining company Kore Potash. Sintoukola Potash has been carrying out exploration activities in the Kouilou region since 2009, and their prospecting activities within the eco-development and buffer zones of Conkouati-Douli caused a gas explosion in 2015, requiring the evacuation of the Koutou village in which their places were looted and crops destroyed. 

Eco-guards in Conkouati-Douli are notorious for exceeding their powers and overstepping the laws to attack communities, often hounding people in the forest and unlawfully seizing their game and products for their own profit (ie. to only sell this game at the market stalls in Pointe-Noire themselves). In 2009, a young resident from the Koutou village was carrying smoked gazelle meat and was intercepted by eco-rangers who then severely beat and injured him. A protest by members of the Youbi, Kouta, and Sintoukola villages was arranged denouncing arrests and violence by eco-rangers, to which the station’s chief ordered the eco-guards to fire on the protests. Three villagers were killed and two others were seriously wounded. The eco-guards responsible for the killings were detained but then quickly set free, many returning to work at different posts within the park. No formal trial was held despite the families’ efforts to open an investigation.^[1]