Comoé National Park (PNC), the northernmost element of the “ecological diagonal” crossing the country from southwest to northeast, is a major element of the network of protected areas in Côte d'Ivoire. Classified as a North Region Park in 1926, then as Bouna Wildlife Reserve in 1942, it obtained national park status in 1968. In terms of area, the PNC is the largest protected area in Côte d'Ivoire, the third largest in West Africa after the Aïr-Ténéré Reserve in Niger (7,736,000 ha) and the Banc d'Arguin National Park in Mauritania (1,200,000 ha). On an area of 1,149,150 ha, its natural resources and its invaluable ecological role of international interest earned it, among the scientific community and the world of conservation, its classification as a Biosphere Reserve in 1982 and as a World Heritage Site in 1983.
The PNC is located in the transition zone between the Sudanian savannah and the forest formations of the Guinean domain, this situation being at the origin of the variety of its landscapes and its great biological diversity. In terms of tourism, the park offers the best perspectives for viewing large wildlife. The classified forests and the sites of the Tingui and Warigué Mountains, which border it to the north-west, west and south, constitute an area of natural areas of approximately 300,000 hectares. A vast area in the North-East of the country - nearly one million five hundred thousand hectares - is thus devoted to the conservation of natural resources and forms a particularly important unit from an ecological point of view.
The PNC is managed by the Ivorian Office of Parks and Reserves (OIPR), one of whose objectives is to develop management tools for all national parks and natural reserves in Côte d'Ivoire. However, the desire to provide the PNC with a planning document dates back to 1974 with the development of a development plan. It was during a workshop held in Kafolo in June 2000, within the framework of the Transitional Programme for the Conservation of Protected Areas in Côte d'Ivoire, with funding from the European Commission, that a Development and Management Plan was drawn up and adopted for this park the following year. It could not be implemented due to the crisis situation that Côte d'Ivoire experienced beginning in 2002. The takeover of the PNC, within the framework of the Project to Support the Relaunch of the Conservation of Parks and Reserves of Côte d'Ivoire (PARC-CI), financed by the Global Environment Fund and the World Bank, provided an opportunity to update this PAG.
After a participatory process, this document, which covers the period 2015-2024, was prepared based on the 2001 version. It is the first to be approved in accordance with the provisions of the law of February 2002 and its development was carried out through a process that was both participatory and educational, oriented towards operationality, while complying with the standard PAG plan established in 2005 by the OIPR. It thus includes five titles:
- a presentation part of the park focusing on the state of the ecosystems, the socio-economic environment as well as the management actions undertaken (Title I),
- the legal and institutional framework (Title II),
- management measures, addressing the problem of park conservation before presenting the strategic guidelines and developing the actions envisaged (Title III),
- the programming of activities and costs as well as monitoring Assessment of its implementation (Title IV)
- a final part, more succinct since the development of a business plan is also planned, is finally devoted to financing the implementation of this plan (Title V).