The scale and global impor- tance of the Gola Rainforest

The Greater Gola Landscape is situated at the heart of the Upper Guinean biodi-versity hotspot. It is a transboundary re-gion encompassing key protected areas across Sierra Leone and Liberia: the Gola Rainforest National Park, the Gola Fo-rest National Park, the Foya Proposed Protected Area, the Tiwai Island Wildlife Sanctuary, the Kambui Hills Forest Re-serve, as well as surrounding areas of buffer zone and community-managed forests. Together these create the largest remaining single block of the Upper Gui-nean Forest. The total size of this lands-cape is around 3500 km². The vegetation and soils of the Greater Gola Landscape is a major carbon sink of great value. In 2014, the Gola Rainforest National Park in Sierra Leone was established as the first Reducing Emissions from Defores-tation and Degradation (REDD) project in West Africa. By 2021 this will have conserved nearly 5 million tonnes of car-bon dioxide by keeping it locked in the forest and soils.