Community biocultural mapping reveals historical occupation and enables defense of African rainforests

Global conservation maps often overlook community lands, impacting decision-making and reducing local agency. We focus on the high-profile and regionally important case of Massaha's ancestral territory (Ibola Dja Bana Ba Massaha). In Gabon, the forest is largely gazetted into logging concessions and described as an Eden-like wilderness despite long-term human presence. We compare Massaha's biocultural maps to global, colonial, and post-colonial maps, in a community peer review process. While these maps show Ibola Dja Bana Ba Massaha as devoid of logging and settlement, Massaha's maps show long-term settlement, sacred areas and industrial logging. Massaha used their maps to request the government to protect their forest from logging and update the forestry code to enable community conserved areas, prompting a national debate on the legal recognition of "territories of life", while revitalising ancestral practices. We show that "big data" conservation mapping must account for biocultural knowledge if it is to be effective in guiding conservation decisions.