PROCOBHA Research station

Research at this small field station in Moukalaba-Doudou NP has been ongoing since 2001, when Kyoto University started a long-term gorilla habituation project. In 2009, they partnered with the Gabonese Institute of Research in Tropical Ecology (IRET) and created the project PROCOBHA (Projet de conservation de la biodiversité en forêt tropicale à travers la coexistence durable entre l’homme et l’animal). This site is one of two ecological field stations run by IRET in Gabon. A large, multidisciplinary research programme is conducted here by Japanese and Gabonese researchers, including the health, population genetics, ecology and behaviour of great apes and other mammals, in addition to socio-economic studies. The site is linked to a newly created laboratory at IRET in Libreville, for microbiological and basic genetic analyses.