This letter from Edito De Geoffroy MAUVAUS, Coordinator of Papaco, quickly reports the results of a study conducted during the second half of 2011 on the various actors involved in the management of protected areas in West Africa. The study lists the different types of governance of protected areas in West Africa by analyzing the role of each category of actors and by characterizing the main modes of official and/or real governance through concrete case studies in Burkina Faso, Benin and Senegal, and bibliographical studies in other West African countries. The theoretical formulations of governance put forward by protected area managers and their partners are compared with real governance practices, in their diversity and their relative weight in West Africa. This analysis makes it possible, among other things, to identify innovative, poorly represented or poorly known practices that could be a source of information for protected area managers in the sub-region.