The European Union (EU)’s flagship conservation initiative, Support Program for the Preservation of Biodiversity and Fragile Ecosystems in Central Africa (ECOFAC), has left a “difficult legacy” in Cameroon’s Dja Wildlife Reserve after 30 years of implementation, according to research by Evidence for Better Policy (ADE) and the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF).
Dja Wildlife Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage Site which covers an area of 526,000 hectares, is Cameroon’s largest protected area. The unique species-rich rainforest has attracted the attention of national public authorities and the international community thanks to the presence of numerous remarkable plant and animal species, including endangered western lowland gorillas, chimpanzees, white-collared mangabeys, mandrill forest elephants, and many more.
In their evaluation report, the authors note that the results of ECOFAC’s conservation efforts in the protected area and its environs since 1992 are mixed.
Positive prospects
Notable among ECOFAC’s successes in the area are an increase in awareness of the protection of biodiversity through radio broadcasts and mobile caravans, and strong growth in infrastructural development, which is reflected in the number of established living bases and offices, among others things.
In addition, the authors cited community support, capacity building, concern about the consequences of poaching, safeguarding and promotion of local Indigenous Baka cultural heritage, advocacy to secure Baka land and resources, and the protected status of the area as some of the resounding impacts.
The programme has also facilitated the incorporation of local residents in patrol teams, set up community surveillance networks, bolstered eco-tourism, enriched existing cash crop plantations with fruit trees, and provided funding for income-generating activities in over 34 villages – including support to women’s groups.
The researchers also observed that micro-savings and -loans schemes had been created for more than 18 groups. Thanks to the intervention, local residents had also begun to produce banana and plantain seedlings using advanced techniques; cultivate vegetables such as chilli and carrots; and breed, sell, and consume high-quality breeds of chicken.
The fifth and sixth phases of the programme were shown to be instrumental in stabilizing the populations of large mammals including elephants, lowland gorillas and chimpanzees. This followed inventories carried out in the Dja and its periphery in 2018 and 2021 which formed the basis for monitoring the impacts of conservation activities on the mammalian fauna in the wildlife reserve and peripheral areas.
According to the researchers, the results of the 2021 inventory underscored the need to maintain ecological connectivity between the Dja Wildlife Reserve and the adjacent Ngoyla Wildlife Reserve, since the population density of great apes is very high along the Dja-Ngoyla corridor. They also posit that a landscape management approach would be best for the Dja, its surroundings and the tri-national Dja-Odzala-Minkébé (TRIDOM) protected area complex which straddles Cameroon, Gabon, and the Republic of Congo.
Missed opportunities
Despite these achievements, CIFOR-ICRAF researcher Jean-Charles Rouge, who was one of the authors of the report, said that some of the programme’s interventions were not well adapted to their context. “There are imported and poorly implemented ideas with moderate sustainability and without much involvement of local civil society organizations,” he said. “In addition, little emphasis has been placed on the development of value chains.”
Overall, the researchers found that the social dimension of the intervention was underemphasized, staff were largely drawn from outside the area, and there was a feeling of abandonment amongst the local inhabitants. Though the reserve’s development plan was revised in 2020 with the support of ECOFAC and its partners, and its five management programs are effectively operational at branch level, resources remain very limited to ensure effective management of the reserve.
Despite the efforts of rangers and partner organisations, many stakeholders observed that poaching remains very worrisome due to the rise in demand for bushmeat, organized and international trafficking of wildlife products, corruption and impunity of offenders, and the inadequacy of preventative measures – anti-poaching campaigns, for instance, are irregular and don’t cover the entirety of the reserve and its periphery.
Though the deployment of new monitoring systems such as the Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool (SMART) and camera traps could faciliate better surveillance of the Dja and surroundings, the research shows that the lack of trained rangers remains the primary obstacle to the effectiveness of such surveillance.
ECOFAC’s sixth phase has pumped in around EUR 4 million to the reserve, but a funding deficit still exists as the budget allocated annually by the government of Cameroon is insufficient to cover all activities, especially the fight against poaching. This situation is compounded by a lack of local financial autonomy, which frustrates timely resolution of daily problems, said the stakeholders.
The shortfall in financing is partially covered by funds mobilized by partner projects to support conservation and awareness actions. However, the Dja Wildlife Reserve’s mode of financing is not sustainable and does not cover actual needs in terms of surveillance, planning, ecological monitoring and support for the local development of peripheral communities, the researchers concluded.
According to CIFOR-ICRAF senior scientist Richard Eba’a Atyi, another author of the report, the ECOFAC program has failed to halt the degradation of habitats and ecosystems in the Dja. He said that degradation for agricultural reasons, notably slash-and-burn for family farming, and logging, are still very prevalent throughout the Dja. In addition, Atyi said the construction of the Sangmélima-Djoum road led to enormous forest losses, as did the building of the Mékin hydroelectric dam and the industrial-scale cultivation of rubber trees by Sud Cameroun Hévéa.
Acknowledgements:
The evaluation was conducted thanks to the Central African Forests Commission (COMIFAC), and its technical and scientific entity Central Africa Forest Observatory (OFAC), through the Strengthening and Institutionalization of the Central African Forest Observatory (RIOFAC) initiative.
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