A Congolese conservation organisation building a living corridor between two of the DRC's great forests, in the conviction that the surest way to protect them is to put them in the hands of the communities who live there.
Strong Roots Congo works in the forests of South Kivu, between the Kahuzi-Biega National Park and the Itombwe Nature Reserve, home to the endangered Grauer's gorilla and to communities whose lives are woven into the forest. Founded in 2009 and led by a Congolese conservationist whose own family was displaced by a park, it rejects the idea that people and forests are enemies.
Instead it helps communities secure legal title to their forests and manage them, knitting protected areas together into a single biodiversity corridor of a scale rarely attempted. Conservation here is not fences and guards but ownership, livelihoods and trust.
Strong Roots was founded in 2009 by a Congolese conservationist from a community displaced when the Kahuzi-Biega park was created, an experience that shaped its founding belief: lasting conservation cannot be built against the people of the forest, only with them. That conviction has since been recognised with one of conservation's most respected international awards.
The organisation helps communities secure Local Community Forest Concessions, legal title to the forests they have always used, and supports them to manage and benefit from them. Around that core it builds livelihoods that make conservation pay, from beekeeping with Batwa communities to sustainable forest enterprise.
Its ambition is landscape-scale: to connect the Kahuzi-Biega park and the Itombwe reserve into a single corridor across which gorillas, other wildlife and forest can move freely, stitched together from dozens of community-held forests.
Strong Roots works at every scale, from securing one community's forest to connecting two great protected areas, with people at the centre of each.
Strong Roots helps communities obtain Local Community Forest Concessions, legal recognition of the forests they depend on, and supports them to govern and steward those forests for the long term.
Dozens of community forest concessions secured, covering hundreds of thousands of hectares
Communities holding legal title to the forests they have always lived in
Figures reported by Strong Roots Congo and independent coverage of its biodiversity-corridor work, 2025.
From Bukavu, Strong Roots works the landscape between the Kahuzi-Biega park and the Itombwe reserve, in the territory of Mwenga.
Headquarters: coordination and partnerships, on the shore of Lake Kivu in South Kivu.
Strong Roots is founded to protect the forests of South Kivu with their communities, not against them.
Its community-led conservation is honoured with a major international award.
Dozens of community forest concessions, hundreds of thousands of hectares, knit a corridor between two protected areas.
