The goal of the West Africa Biodiversity and Low Emission Development (WABiLED) project is to promote biodiversity conservation and climate-resilient low emissions development in West Africa. It is a four year project funded by USAID. WABILED has three core objectives namely: 

1. Combat Wildlife trafficking and enhance great ape conservation

2. Reduce deforestation, forest degradation  and biodiversity loss in key transboundary forest landscapes and

3, reduce green house gas emissions  and increase carbon sequestration from forestry and land use 

The Geographic focus of the project include Benin,
Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo.

In Sierra Leone, Reptile and Amphibian Program Sierra Leone (RAPSL) is implementing a grant titled Building Capacity to Monitor Forest Vegetation in the Upper Guinea Forest through Tetrta Techa, USAID implementing partner.

The key objectives of this grant implemented by RAPSL involves:

1. Develop the capacity of forestry, national park service, university staff, and students in long-term forest monitoring and
train same in data archiving in international databases. 

2. Quantify tree biodiversity, carbon stocks, and resource use by local communities along a disturbance gradient in four forest
landscapes. 

3. Use tree inventory data and focus group discussions to identify the status of tree species red-listed by the CITES and IUCN,
the degree to which they are used by local communities, and the effect of resource use on the species’ population structure. 

4. Develop a simple learning and decision-making tool and disseminate it to stakeholders along with results; and make data
accessible to others contributing to broader studies of West African forests.