 Through his understanding of the importance of habitat conservation for wildlife in Europe and his professional work on Congo at the museum in Tervuren, Derscheid became an instrumental figure in lobbying for the creation of the first national park in Africa, formally proposed in 1925.He became known to Carl Akeley of the American Museum of Natural History through his cartographic work revising the best available maps of the mountain gorilla habitat in the Virunga Mountains border region of Rwanda, Uganda and Congo.This map documented the loss of forest habitat.