Luc Mathot

Luc Mathot is an engineer in forestry and wildlife from the Belgian University of Gembloux. He fell in love with Central African Forests and worked in forest management in Gabon and Cameroon for Nature+, mainly on wildlife management.

He was then representative of The Aspinall Foundation in Congo for four years, and managed the Leso-Louna project (Project Protection of Gorillas). This project is focused on the management of a protected area where orphan gorilla victims of the wildlife trade are reintroduced. It gave Luc the opportunity to develop with Ofir Drori, the PALF project (Projet d’Appui à l’Application de la Loi sur la Faune) in Congo. It was the first replication of the LAGA model.

Luc finally created the Conservation Justice NGO in 2010 and started to collaborate with Gabonese authorities in order to create the AALF project (Appui à l’Application de la Loi sur la Faune). Luc still manages the AALF project in Gabon and supports the EAGLE network in Togo and Benin.

Following the demand of Gabonese authorities, Conservation Justice also developed the ALEFI project (Appui à la Lutte contre l’Exploitation Forestière Illégale) in order to fight against illegal logging. Several arrests of illegal loggers and officials have been achieved. It is the first example of such a partnership between a Government and a NGO on illegal logging. Nevertheless, there are still many issues and corruption and illegal logging is still common, with many complicities.