Arthur Sniegon
While active in the interior and north of the Republic of Congo with numerous arrests and seizures since 2015, the PCR Sniffer Dog Program has limited access to another crucial wildlife protection region of Congo – the coastal province of Kouilou with several protected areas and the major port and international airport in the country - Pointe Noire. We are seeking for establishment of a new permanent canine unit presence based in Tchimpounga nature reserve in order to cover the region aiming at bushmeat, life animals, ivory, pangolin and ammunition smuggling within and out of the country.
A routine search in the luggage compartments of a public bus.
The development of this extension of sniffer dog program is a natural evolution of our conservation-aimed canine activities in Congo. The Sniffer Dog Program has been launched in 2014 to achieve first results in 2015, with a steady pace of important detections of illegal wildlife matter every time we are in the field. With the growing number of suitable sniffer dogs (our own litter) and with growing professionalism of the local dog- handlers, we want to expand our activities towards the coast. In our work elsewhere we see a strong deterrent value of the canine units for poachers and traffickers trading pattern and we need to be present in Kouilou as well for this reason. Until now, no regular force of this kind (thorough effective controls) is present there.
The existing Sniffer Dog Program is now the only canine project in Congo (and far beyond) to be able to address the problem. Upon deep planning and after years of positive collaboration on other aspects of the conservation with the Tchimpounga nature reserve (releasing of captured animals, information sharing, media work, donation of one of our dog), we now want to launch together an extension and upgrade of the existing program.