In the heart of southern Benin’s Bohouezoun Sacred Forest, Vodún priest Gilbert Kakpo stands beside a huge sacred tree, one of many believed to be the home of spirits. The forest, with its thick canopy and cool shade, is revered by local communities as a sanctuary of healing and protection. “Our divinity is the protector of women,” Kakpo says, explaining that many who come here seek relief from infertility and other ailments. “Our divinity is the protector of women,” he says softly, laying his palm on the sacred bark. “If a woman comes here after many miscarriages, she will not suffer again. The forest heals because the spirits live here.” Around him, the sacred grove embodies a centuries-old spiritual bond between the people and the trees. But this bond is now threatened as these forests continuously shrink under pressure from farming and development.

“When (the government) brought roads to our region and we had to stop everything in the sacred forest, people started getting sick and having all kinds of problems,” Benoit Sonou, Vodún priest from Houeyogbé, says. Because here, ancient Vodún beliefs are shaping one of Africa’s most innovative grassroots conservation movements, actively protecting rare species and critical habitats.

The Republic of Benin is a West African country sitting between Togo and Nigeria. This place is widely believed to be the birthplace of voodoo, known by locals as Vodún, an Indigenous spiritual system that honours nature’s elements, from rivers and trees to lightning and wind. However, for the local Gbe-speaking peoples, including the Fon, Aja, and Mina, every natural object holds some divine powers.

As such, these sacred spaces are considered ecological treasures. In fact, according to Benin’s Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development, the country has nearly 2,940 sacred forests covering about 18,360 hectares, that is some of the last remnants of dense vegetation in the south. These groves provide sanctuary for rare monkeys, antelopes, birds, and medicinal plants, preserving biodiversity that has vanished elsewhere due to deforestation.

In some areas, the elderly locals recall how leopards used to move freely, and giant trees offered canopies during ritual ceremonies. Now, even the small patches of sacred land are religiously guarded as “living temples,” which could be easily identified by clay altars, wooden effigies, and sacred drums used to invoke the forest spirits. For villagers concerned about the collapse of their spiritual ceremony places, these groves represent the idea of both safety and survival.

But these pockets of biodiversity face different threats that show no sign of ending. It’s because of rapid urbanization that charcoal production and agricultural land expansion are eroding the forests, which were known as a shelter for the voodoo spirits and wildlife. Between 2005 and 2015, Benin’s forest cover decreased from 7.6 million hectares to 6 million hectares, representing a 20% decline in a decade.

Still, where parks owned by the government always fail, faith takes the space and has been succeeding. The reason? It lies in Vodún’s enduring respect for nature and the people who protect it, demonstrating that spiritual belief can function as an effective conservation mechanism.

Chief Atawé Akôyi, the Prince of the Atawé community in Avrankou, grew up in the sacred forests of Abomey watching his elders perform rituals and collect herbs for healing. “Everything we are comes from the Earth,” he says. “When the forest dies, we die too.”

In 1996, Akôyi founded the Groupe de Recherche et d’Action pour le Bien-être de l’Environnement (GRABE-Bénin) to bridge the gap between spiritual wisdom and environmental science. Buoyed up by the desire to empower Vodún devotees in Benin, GRABE-Bénin came into existence, seeking to protect the sacred forests using both traditional beliefs and modern conservation tools. Through GRABE-Bénin, Vodún practitioners can now actively monitor biodiversity, map sacred groves, and enforce ecological programs that prevent illegal logging and hunting. So far, the organization trains community leaders and exuberant youth in how to map sacred groves with GPS, monitor biodiversity, as well as document customary rules. Hence, its advocacy has helped inspire Benin’s 2012 Decree No. 2012-418, which legally recognizes sacred forests as part of the national protected area network. It’s the first law of its kind in West Africa.

“Vodún offers moral authority stronger than any government decree,” says Juste Djagoun, a conservation scientist for the Eco-Bénin, another organization working alongside GRABE. He also says, “Fear of divine punishment protects mangroves more effectively than police patrols.”

Over time, GRABE’s collaboration with traditional priests has expanded to more than a dozen communities across southern and central Benin, including Ouidah, Bohicon, and Kpomassè. This partnership ensures that the sacred forests are preserved, traditional rituals are maintained, and biodiversity is well safeguarded. The group ensures that it organizes annual festivals where sacred forest custodians share traditional chants and healing rituals with scientists and government officials. These gatherings, Akôyi says, help bridge two worlds often divided by misunderstanding: the world of belief and the world of evidence.

Because of that, voodoo believers are now legally empowered to guard their groves, a relationship that blends ancestral rituals with modern environmental stewardship.

At the same time, GRABE focuses on forests in the inland, Eco-Bénin extends the same philosophy to the country’s coastlines and mangrove ecosystems.

In the Mono Biosphere Reserve, villagers have merged faith and ecology through a practice known as “sacralisation.” In this practice, village elders carve out certain mangrove zones as the dwelling places of Vodun god Zangbeto, the guardian of the night that transforms them into sacred areas where activities like artisanal fishing, logging, or small farming are prohibited.

At one recent ceremony in the village of Togbin for the ritual blessing of regeneration, women in indigo wrappers chanted while pouring palm wine into the roots of new mangrove seedlings. “The trees will grow faster when they are blessed,” says 36-year-old fisherwoman Séraphine Houngbédji. “They belong to the sea goddess; we only borrow them.”

As done before, these sacred designations are complemented by science-based reforestation. Accordingly, since 2013, Eco-Bénin’s Mangrove Carbon Project has helped communities restore more than 2,500 hectares of degraded mangroves while introducing sustainable livelihoods such as eco-tourism, oyster farming, and improved fish-smoking to bolster the income of local populations.

“We don’t destroy the mangroves because we believe they are alive,” says Adjo Tchibozo, a fish seller in Hêvié village who joined a women’s cooperative supported by Eco-Bénin. “They protect us from floods, and they feed our families. The gods live there.”

In 2022 alone, forest restoration around Togbin and Gbékon villages expanded mangrove cover from 94 hectares to more than 400, making them among the most successful conservation efforts led by local communities in the West Africa sub-region.

Despite these gains, though, there are challenges in the loop. One of them is the spread of urban development; another is that evangelical churches and globalised culture have weakened traditional beliefs among young people. Because of this, many now dismiss Vodún as superstition.

To rebuild this link, GRABE-Bénin is running intergenerational dialogue programs where village elders share sacred ecology knowledge with young students, and Eco-Bénin integrates environmental education into local schools. Through the use of storytelling, art, and community rituals, the young people are learning that their cultural identity and their environment co-exist in order to ensure that future generations continue to safeguard both biodiversity and Vodún culture.

In the past, communities often protected these areas through rituals, taboos, and ceremonies that forbade logging or hunting, turning spiritual reverence into an effective conservation. By combining the beliefs of faith with ecological knowledge, Vodún helps ensure that both culture and biodiversity endure for future generations. “The sacred forest is a vital area,” said Dada Daagbo Hounon Hounan II, the Supreme Spiritual Voodoo Chief of Benin, based in Ouidah. “It’s an area that enables the spirits to live.”

“The sacred always has its place,” says Djagoun. “People may ignore international conventions, but they don’t ignore their gods.”

Together, GRABE-Bénin and Eco-Bénin have helped communities protect hundreds of sacred forests and thousands of degraded hectares of mangroves, have trained dozens of local monitors, and have influenced national conservation policy. More importantly, they have reframed traditional faith as a very effective conservation tool. This directly contributes to the preservation of Benin’s biodiversity and cultural heritage.

Moreover, the impact goes beyond ecosystems. In many communities that have suffered forest destruction, restored groves have rekindled popular traditional medicine practices and trimmed down conflicts over land ownership. “These forests gave us shelter, food, and medicine, and within them lay the sacred natural sites which are so important to our Vodún (Voodoo) culture,” says Chief Akôyi.

“We have been walking a long road towards restoring both our forests and the communities that should be looking after them. We have to heal both at the same time,” Chief Akôyi emphasised.