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From 12 to 19 November 2025, a team led by PIFEVA with support from the Jane Goodall Institute surveyed twelve community forest sites across the Basile, Luindi and Batumba chiefdoms. The aim: to build a scientific foundation for ecological restoration and community governance.

You cannot restore a forest blind. Before planting, you need to know what grows there, what regenerates on its own, which species communities rely on, and which soils retain the capacity to recover. That is the purpose of the floristic inventory carried out by PIFEVA in the buffer zones of the Itombwe Nature Reserve, under the Women in Action project.

A multidisciplinary team

The mission brought together two botanists responsible for collection, identification and taxonomic validation; two officers from Mwenga's Territorial Service for the Environment and Sustainable Development; two PIFEVA facilitators handling community outreach and participatory surveys; and eight machete operators and marker-setters who opened the transects and staked out the plots. PIFEVA provided overall coordination, community mobilisation and logistical follow-up, while the Jane Goodall Institute – DR Congo contributed technical, methodological and financial support and alignment with international conservation standards.

Method: combining science with local knowledge

The team combined systematic walking transects, quadrat-based floristic surveys — 20 m × 20 m plots for woody species, 5 m × 5 m for herbaceous cover — GPS coordinate recording, habitat description, photography, and the collection of leaf, fruit and bark samples for taxonomic confirmation.

In parallel, semi-structured interviews were conducted with site owners, farmers, members of community forest concession committees and customary authorities. These conversations identified useful species, customary uses — food, medicine, timber, ritual — and species that indicate soil fertility or degradation. Analysis drew on Shannon and Simpson diversity indices, species richness and evenness, with vegetation classified into young fallows, old fallows, shrubby wasteland and forest relicts.

A record of land and ecological memory

Each site tells a story. At Kalambi, a concession once worked by a colonial settler, later taken over by the group chief and allocated to the national agricultural research institute, has lain fallow for four years and was granted to PIFEVA for reforestation. At Ilibo, former tea plantations were converted to food crops, with the surveyed plot fallow for more than a decade. At Irangi, land left fallow for five years is now being used for charcoal production. These trajectories explain the current state of the vegetation and shape the choice of species to replant.

What the mission demanded

Teams contended with remote sites on rugged terrain, degraded tracks, heavy rain that made some plots temporarily inaccessible, dense vegetation requiring intensive clearing, and movement adjustments due to the occasional presence of local armed groups. Each constraint produced a precise lesson: plan logistics in detail, budget for reliable measuring equipment, involve territorial environment services early, brief communities in advance, and keep the schedule flexible.

Recommendations

•   Prioritise the most degraded sites, notably Mashu and Bokilo

•   Introduce edible caterpillar host species into restoration plans

•   Protect wetland areas, particularly at the Venance site

•   Strengthen community forest concession committees and integrate floristic data into the simple management plan

•   Run six-monthly inventories, monitor growth of nature-based plantings, and carry out participatory mapping

The results show significant diversity, high natural regeneration potential and structural opportunities for nature-based solutions, directly linked to food security, the local economy, biodiversity conservation and climate resilience.

THE MISSION IN NUMBERS

12 sites surveyed

8 villages covered

3 chiefdoms: Basile, Luindi, Batumba

8 days of fieldwork, 12–19 November 2025

16 team members mobilised