Gola Rainforest National Park protects 710 km2 of Sierra Leone's largest tract of Upper Guinean rainforest in the southeast of the country. It is jointly managed by the Gola Rainforest Conservation LG, a not-for-profit partnership of the Government of Sierra Leone, RSPB, the Conservation Society of Sierra Leone, and the seven Gola Chiefdoms. Inscribed as part of the Gola-Tiwai Complex UNESCO World Heritage Site in July 2025 under natural criteria ix and x, it is West Africa's only active REDD+ project and a globally significant refuge for threatened species.
Ten dimensions, each scored 1 to 5. Tier 1 dimensions carry more weight than tier 2. The composite is the weighted result, not a simple mean of this column.
| Dimension | Score | Tier |
|---|---|---|
| Biodiversity protection | 5 | Tier 1 |
| Ecosystem services (carbon and water) | 4 | Tier 1 |
| Security and anti-poaching | 3 | Tier 2 |
| Governance and accountability | 4 | Tier 2 |
| Ecotourism infrastructure | 3 | Tier 1 |
| Ecotourism revenues | 2 | Tier 2 |
| Community development | 4 | Tier 1 |
| Political and community leadership | 4 | Tier 2 |
| Budget | 3 | Tier 1 |
| Fundraising performance | 3 | Tier 1 |
PACE rates how well a protected area is actually run, not how important it is or how much wildlife it holds. A 5 on a dimension means that part of the operation is working. A 1 means it is not. Across the 200 areas Canopy rates, composites run from 1.23 to 4.29, so a 3 is a middling park and not a bad one.
The composite hides variation and that is the point of the table. An area can hold a respectable composite while failing on security or on budget, and those two failures need completely different responses. Anyone using this to make a decision should be reading the dimension, not the headline.
Small gaps are not differences. PACE has been reliability-tested once, on 20 areas, and the composite came back at 0.86 with a 95% interval from 0.61 to 0.97. That is a wide interval on a small sample. Two areas within a few tenths of each other should be treated as the same area until something else separates them.
Whether to fund this area. Canopy does not make that call. The score separates questions rather than ranking answers: a low budget dimension and a low security dimension point at different instruments and different diligence.
What is happening on the ground this week. PACE is a periodic assessment, last scored 2026-09-01. It is not a monitoring feed and it does not move when something changes on site.
How thin the evidence behind it is. This area carries a Medium evidence confidence tier, defined above. 182 of the 200 areas sit there, so it is the norm across the set rather than a mark against this area.
Whether money can reach Gola Rainforest National Park is a separate question from how well it is run, and it is answered at the country level. Sierra Leone scores 2.61 of 5 on C-RISK. Read the Sierra Leone profile for the risk dimensions and the estimated cost of running the country’s protected areas.
| Score date | 2026-09-01 |
|---|---|
| Scoring version | pace-v1.1 |
| Model run | 2026-09-01 |
| Schema version | 1 |
| Evidence confidence | Medium |
| Boundary and area source | WDPA-Apr2026 |
| Operator | Gola Rainforest Conservation LG |
| Operator type | partnership |
| IUCN category | II |
| Established | 2011 |
| Canonical URL | https://canopyconservation.com/park/gola-rainforest |
The full method is published, not summarised: the PACE methodology, including the rubric each dimension is scored against and the limits Canopy puts on it. What PACE has been tested against, and where it came back null, is at model validation.
Boundaries and area come from the World Database on Protected Areas, WDPA-Apr2026. Operator reporting is read as-of-2026-07-01 (incl. African Parks 2025). Scores are set against Canopy’s published rubric, pace-rubric-v1.1.
Canopy is a nonprofit and everything here is free to use. The one condition is attribution.
Canopy (2026). Gola Rainforest National Park, Sierra Leone: PACE conservation effectiveness 3.69 of 5. Canopy Conservation, pace-v1.1. Retrieved from https://canopyconservation.com/park/gola-rainforest
https://canopyconservation.com/park/gola-rainforest
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