World Environment Day: meet the conservation fighter Adam Cassinga
The World Environment Day this year has set three simple goals for environmentalists all over the globe: reimagine, recreate and restore.
But what about the people that already do that on a everyday basis?
One of them is Adam Cassinga, founder of Conserv Congo.
Adam is a former investigative journalist who turned environmentalist and founded his own non profit organisation to fight for conservation.
Today, he defends not only the natural habitats in his country, the Democratic Republic of Congo, but also the species that live in it.
Adam recently brought back in the DRC two tons of pangolin scales and 200 kg of rare tree barks from Brazzaville, in the Republic of the Congo.
Conserv Congo worked along with the Interpol to bring back these illegal products that are threatening the biodiversity in the DRC.
The lot came from Kinshasa, the DRC capital, smuggled by three man who have now been convicted to two years in prison for wildlife crimes.
It is believed that the cargo final destination was going to be South Eastern Asia, a common route used by pangolin scales traffickers.
It is the first time that the DRC has brought back any seized wildlife contraband from another country.
Mainly because, according to the Government, they lack the founds to do this kind of operations.
Enters Adam and the Conserv Congo team.
So, who is Adam Cassinga and why is he recovering pangolin scales by himself?
Adam started off his career on the other side of the environmental business.
“After going back to school, I became an environmental consultant and in 2010 a gold mining company sent me to the DRC. My job was to minimise the company’s negative impacts, but I was really just counting how many trees we chopped down. One morning, I woke up and quit my job,” said Adam in an interview he gave to the World Wildlife Magazine.
That’s when he decided to found Conserv Congo, a non profit organisation that fights to preserve the natural habitat and to contrast poaching.
But recovering endangered animals remains it’s not their only occupation.
Adam and his team also teach local communities farming and beekeeping in order to protect their environment, rather than resort to poaching to earn money.
He explained to me over the phone:
“We started a bee farming project in the areas where elephants get killed. Elephants are scared of bees. So we’re gonna kill two birds with one stone in this way. We are going to make honey and generate incomes for the villagers. But we’re also going to stop the elephants from coming and destroying the villagers’ farms. In this way both animals and humans are gonna be safe.”
But why smuggling pangolins’ scales at all?
It’s the question some of you may be asking. Well, the answer lies in old superstitions and money coming from the East.
Apparently, the pangolin scales are used in several traditional Chinese medicines. In particular, people believe that a broth containing its scales has medicinal qualities, including helping women who have problems lactating.
This belief has never been supported by modern medicine and science, and yet people keep killing the pangolins and smuggling their scales.
And it doesn’t help that the Chinese government continues to allow the use of pangolin scales for traditional medicine.
The pangolin remain the most trafficked mammal in the world and it’s feared that it may soon be extinct if its illicit trade persist.
Since 2019, almost 90% of all seizures of pangolin scales made across the globe was from the DRC and most of the contraband remains unclaimed to date.
Which is why Adam and Conserv Congo decided to bring the smuggled scales back to DRC and to publicly burn them to ashes.
“It’s a way of sending a clear and loud message to traffickers of wildlife that their dirty work shall not be tolerated anymore,” explains Adam in a note.
Adam’s battle is one of the many necessary fights to save the DRC beautiful habitat and wildlife. And yet, this is another story that remained under the news.
