Bakossi National Park

About

The Bakossi National Park (BNP) is a protected area within the Bakossi Forest Reserve, created by a decree in early 2008. The park covers 29,320 hectares (72,500 acres), and was justified on the basis of preserving plant diversification.

The Bakossi Mountains are part of the Cameroon Line, running inland in a northeasterly direction from Mount Cameroon. The mountains have an area of about 230,000 square kilometres (89,000 sq mi) and typical elevation of 800 metres (2,600 ft) to 1,900 metres (6,200 ft). The highest peak is Mount Kupe at 2,064 metres (6,772 ft). The mountains contain what may be the largest area of cloud or submontane forest in West-Central Africa. The area includes the national park and the proposed Muanenguba ecological reserve to the east and Kupe ecological reserve to the south of the park. The climate has a dry season between November and March, and a rainy season from April until October. The hottest month is January and the wettest month is August. The temperature ranges from 22 °C (72 °F) to 32 °C (90 °F), Rainfall is between 3 metres (9.8 ft) and 4 metres (13 ft) annually. Humidity is between 70% and 85%. The mountain slopes are mainly covered by fertile volcanic soil in which crops grow easily.

The Bakossi Landscape Area is part of the Cameroon Highlands ecoregion. The Bakossi landscape area includes a wide range of habitats at different heights. Staff from Kew Gardens and the IRAD-National Herbarium of Cameroon worked on preparing an inventory of plants in the Kupe-Bakossi region between 1995 and 2005. The area had not been known to have particularly rich diversity of plant life. The botanists found 2,440 plant species, a huge number. Of these, one in 10 species was new to science. 82 were strictly restricted to the area and 232 were threatened with extinction according to International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) 2001 criteria. One of the most interesting of the newly discovered species is Kupea martinetugei (Triuridaceae), a new species of saprophyte that completely lacks photosynthetic tissue. The species is part of a new genus and a new tribe. It is critically endangered, so far found only in two sites, each just a few square metres in area. The area is home to important large mammals that include the drill, African forest elephant, chimpanzee, and Preuss's red colobus. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), which facilitated creation of the park, has engaged in geospatial mapping of the distribution of key large mammals in the park. They are concentrated in the north and south of the park, perhaps due to greater availability of food and shelter and lower levels of hunting and farmland encroachment.

A field consultation program for gazettement of Bakossi National Park was completed in 2004, jointly supported by the World Wildlife Fund's Coastal Forests Programme and the San Diego Zoo's Center for Conservation and Research for Endangered Species. The local communities were involved in the process, and over eighty villages signed the legislative support for the Park's creation. Some boundary changes were recommended, as were rules to define and preserve the legal rights of the communities. It was expected that sacred forest areas would be incorporated into the park, expected to be legally created in 2005. After some delays, the Bakossi National Park was created in 2007 and officially inaugurated early in 2008 by a decree signed by Prime Minister Ephraim Inoni and Minister of Forests Elvis Ngollengolle. The signature followed shortly after the December 2007 release of the film "The Mists of Mwanenguba", which documents the importance of conservation in the Bakossi mountains. The film was viewed by the Minister of Forests and the Paramount Chief of Bakossi in January 2008. Unusually for national parks in the region, the main justification was to conserve plant diversity. Creation of the park resulted in an improvement of the funding level of the area by WWF Sweden in mid 2008. The WWF-CFP announced a strategy for introducing conservation-based income generating activities. This was handicapped by lack of organization and record-keeping in the local communities, inappropriate agricultural activities, lack of proper benefit sharing, gender insensitivity and other issues. Nevertheless, there were hopes that the Village Forest Management Committees would come to play an essential role in initiating and maintaining sustainable forestry management practices in the park as long as the needs of the villagers were respected. A 2011 report noted that outstanding tasks included completing the establishment process, demarcating boundaries and finalizing the management plan. Eco-guards had to be recruited, trained and equipped, and the community educated in conservation and involved in ape surveys.

Adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA). Photography via Wikimedia Commons.