GAYE TOWN, Liberia – Deep in the Liberian bush, there’s a dispute about what to do with a big swath of rainforest. The conservation group Wild Chimpanzee Foundation (WCF) and Liberia’s Forestry Development Authority (FDA), backed by the EU, are looking to establish a new 172,000-hectare (425,000-acre) national park. However, advocacy NGOs say they’re bypassing the land rights of nearby communities. It’s an argument with potentially serious repercussions for biodiversity in Liberia. The proposed Kwa National Park would be one of just a handful of strictly protected habitats for chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis) and pygmy hippos (Choeropsis liberiensis). The land it would protect is under real threat — commercial cocoa farming is destroying forests in the region at an accelerating pace. Some people from the surrounding villages have sent migrant workers inside Kwa’s proposed boundaries to build new cocoa farms. They now want the Liberian government to excise these areas from the park. “We want the [Forestry Development Authority] to push the boundary line back small,” said Tommy Yarkpawolo, an elder from the tree-ringed village of Gaye Town. He has a 600-hectare (1,482-acre) farm with 30 workers inside Kwa that just earned him more than $400 — enough to start building a new mud-brick house, he said. Cacao saplings underneath burned trees in the proposed Kwa National Park. Photo by Ashoka Mukpo / Mongabay. Many of his neighbors oppose the idea of moving the boundary back. They told Mongabay the negotiations with WCF and the FDA were…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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