Fisheries in the Southern Border Zone of Takamanda - Impact ...

118 Sunderland-Groves and Maisels
Bushmeat is still a prominent source of income and
protein for villagers in TFR. Although traditional hunting
rights were granted to the local communities during
establishment of the Reserve, the use of firearms has
been prohibited since 1934. Still, firearm hunting is
widespread throughout the area. Until recently, access
was limited mostly to footpaths, but hunting has been
relatively intensive and will only increase with the new
road if normal tropical forest trends (Bennett and
Robinson 2000a) apply. In 1988, Thomas reported that
the Takamanda Forest Reserve probably contained the
most significant populations of large mammals in
Cameroon west of the Sanaga River. This is no longer the
case. We found that the perceptions of local people were
paradoxical: on the one hand, hunters claimed that their
forest resources such as bushmeat would never
disappear. On the other hand, most people admitted that
bushmeat was easily found ten years before our study,
but had become very hard to find by 1999. This is a
familiar story throughout forested Africa, where the
forest itself “hides” the fact that the fauna is vanishing
(Redford 1992, Bennett and Robinson 2000b, Redford
and Feinsinger 2000, Robinson and Bennett 2000c).
Although Takamanda still hosts a wide diversity of fauna,
unsustainable hunting rates are having a rapid negative
effect on wildlife populations. If such hunting practices
continue at the current rate, more of the large mammal
species found today will vanish.
In most humid tropical forests, protein requirements
of local communities are either partly or almost entirely
provided by wild animals, including mammals, birds,
fish, and insects (Wilkie and Curran et al. 1998, Wilkie
and Sidle et al. 1998, Bowen-Jones and Pendry 1999,
Robinson et al. 1999, Robinson and Bennett 2000c). In
tropical forests, the carrying capacity for people who
depend exclusively on wild meat cannot greatly exceed
one person /km 2 (Bennett and Robinson 2000a, b). No
commercial hunting (that is, hunting for income rather
than protein) of wild animals in tropical forests has, to
date, been proved sustainable over the long term
(Robinson and Bodmer 1999, Bennett and Robinson
2000c). In 1999, the human population density in the area
within and around Takamanda Forest Reserve was
estimated at about 3.6 people/km 2 (Groves and Maisels
Takamanda: the Biodiversity of an African Rainforest
1999) and has more recently been estimated at more than
4.6 people/km 2 (Schmidt-Soltau et. al. 2001.) Clearly,
use of wildlife as the sole source of protein by the
populations of the Takamanda area is unsustainable,
particularly when coupled with commercial hunting.
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by WWF Netherlands
through the WWF Cameroon Program Office, Yaounde.
We thank Cameroon’s Ministry of Environment and
Forestry (MINEF) and Ministry of Scientific and
Technical Research (MINREST) as well as the Chiefs
and Traditional Council members of the villages in the
Takamanda Forest Reserve. A note of appreciation goes
to John Oates, Steve Gartlan, Jaap Schoorl, Terry
Sunderland, Bryan Curran, and all at the Mount Kupe
Project, Cameroon, for their support and assistance. We
are grateful to the field team—Albert Ekinde and Mpako
Johannes—and guides Zacharia Abang, Martin Tiko,
Jasper Obi, Dennis Agbor, Martin Ashu, and many
others. Thanks to Dan Slayback for preparing the maps.
References
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