The effective management of the Reserve depended on the willingness of core staff - 8 wardens and 1 science officer - to remain on the nature reserve despite the countrywide lockdown and restrictions. This staff chose to stay on the island to carry out MPA activities instead of being at home with their families. For context, Cousin Island is relatively remote. Staff live on the island without partners or families, and have the opportunity to get off the island over the weekend. However, during the Covid-19 lockdowns, their limited movement was further curtailed by restrictions.

The purpose was to  enhance knowledge on the assessment tools and to collect data for informed decisions. For the Intergrated Management Effectiveness Tool (IMET), this involves collecting comprehensive data on the ecological and management attributes of the park and for the Site Assessment on Governance and Equity (SAGE), it involves collecting data on the views and needs of all the stakeholders to facilitate a joint understanding of the governance and the key issues faced in governance of the site. This data is then collectively analysed and provides transparency for all stakeholders present as they have contributed to the data and the analysis. 

Data collection is digitised using technological applications often selected to meet the needs of a particular project. In wildlife monitoring and protection, SMART for Conservation was identified as a suitable software for it provides a quick form to record incidents while tracking the distance covered by each team. Further, data collected in this manner needs to be used alongside other datasets for well informed decision making. To achieve this, an integration with Earthranger (an online visualization platform) was instituted to allow visual analysis of incidents and patrol coverage against other components such as tagged animals, live streaming images from security cameras, points of interest and environmental hazard reports.

The purpose of this building block is to ensure that the broader communities are involved in the conservation efforts through activities that they are passionate about i.e youth through sports, school children through reading programmes. This helps to improve the connectedness that the local people have with the rhinos and they value the rhino more. 

In June 2019, RRFB started the first larval propagation project in Bonaire in collaboration with SECORE International. The goal of the partnership is to establish a technical cooperation in which RRFB provides local knowledge, manpower, field logistics, and a facility, and shares all field trial results, monitoring data, and qualitative feedback on methodologies and technologies provided by SECORE Int. In return, SECORE Int. provides techniques, methodologies, expertise and training sessions on larval propagation. This partnership's knowledge was crucial for successfully implementing larval propagation techniques in Bonaire. By consistently sharing results and lessons learned, the technique was improved, leading to greater success and scalability for future project replication.

• Sensitization of the Ministry Management on the project for endorsement of the activities as the PA is managed by the government.
• Identifying facilitators who are knowledgeable about the tools with assistance from IUCN as this was the first time the training were conducted and there was no expertise in the country. 
• Identifying  assistant facilitators from the Ministry to assist with logistics and interpretation. Assistant facilitators, especially youth should also come from members of the community for them to feel free to provide information and feel the need to implement the findings together.
• Stakeholders identification for each workshop training was based on the type of data to be collected. The target participants for SAGE training were mostly the local authorities (Chiefs, local council) and other structures  involved in decision making in biodiversity conservation related matters. The target participants for IMET were mostly technical people involved in conservation related issues. Line Ministries were engaged in the training workshop to provide technical expertise on conservation related activities outside PCAs in their respective departments and to agree on the working relations to link conservation inside and outside the PCA

The IMET evaluation of Mangabe Reserve in 2020 revealed weaknesses in infrastructure, capacity and communication that hamper effectiveness of the Reserve. Sustainability of the Reserve depends entirely on the capacity of the local communities to manage it. This is compounded by poor education levels of the population and difficult access to the villages. Over the past years, we have been bringing technicians from the towns to inform and train community members. It is now time to make this knowledge available locally so that youth who are better educated can access and use them as needed. Our challenge until 2030 is to establish an information center at each of the ten villages within Mangabe Reserve. In 2021, we started the initiative to build three information centers in three villages (Mangabe, Andranomandry, and Avolo) within the Mangabe Reserve. At the center, all community members will be able to obtain information about the Reserve and the existing regulations from one place. They will also be able to learn about improved farming techniques and read documents on financial management, personal development, etc. The center will represent the permanent presence of the Reserve that people will know and respect. As a result, we expect annual forest cover loss to decrease below 250ha from 2022.