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

Future Conservation and Management of the Takamanda Forest
Reserve, Cameroon
Terry C. H. Sunderland, Jacqueline L. Sunderland-Groves,
James A. Comiskey, Julius S. O. Ayeni, and Marina Mdaihli
The studies presented in this volume reflect the overall
biological importance of Takamanda Forest Reserve
(TFR), the urgent need to protect the area to ensure its
viability into the future, and, ideally, implementation of
sustainable management practices. The studies also
provide an important biological baseline for initiation of
long-term monitoring that will aid evaluations of
conservation and management interventions. Both flora
and fauna in the area are extremely rich and diverse. The
Reserve holds a wealth of biodiversity of national and
regional importance.
Three primary challenges face conservation efforts
in the Reserve, as described here.
1. Uncontrolled hunting and unsustainable harvest
levels of non-timber forest resources such as the
hunting of wildlife for bushmeat. If conservation
measures are not undertaken in the near term, the
Reserve may well become yet another “empty
forest” (Redford 1992) in Cameroon.
2. Loss of forest cover to developments such as
construction of the Mamfe-to-Akwaya road. This
road will have several impacts: (a) the opening of
natural forest in the Reserve to large-scale motorized
travel for people who normally pass through the area
on foot; (b) the proliferation of trade routes; (c)
increased access for even more intensive
exploitation of the Reserve’s resources, notably
timber and bushmeat. At the moment, a significant
swath of forest is being cleared and converted to
cocoa and coffee plantations in anticipation of the
Mamfe-to-Akwaya road.
3. Current legal status of TFR. The Reserve is a
“production forest,” a designation that leaves open
Chapter 13
the potential for future commercial logging. Failure
to ensure legal protection for the Reserve
immediately augers ill for the area’s outstanding
biodiversity.
Conservation in an area where people rely on
exploitation of forest resources for their livelihoods is a
sensitive and complex challenge. Despite considerable
investments related to resolving this issue in recent years,
there are few successful examples or models of
integrated conservation and development initiatives
where improved quality of life and conservation
objectives have proved to be mutually compatible (Oates
1999).
In Takamanda, an area that is still relatively isolated,
local amenities are few and far between. There are no
piped water facilities, no electricity, few schools, and
only one health center that is seldom staffed and carries
few supplies. Local peoples are desperate for such
amenities and view construction of the Mamfe-to-
Akwaya road as a huge step forward in connecting their
villages to the rest of Cameroon. In conjunction with this
enthusiasm for “progress,” however, is the need to create
an awareness of the grave environmental problems that
roads and other alterations in forest cover create
(Trombulak and Frissell 2000, Wilkie et al. 2000)—
changes that may alter not only the environment but the
very lifestyle of the villagers and which must be
constantly monitored to ensure the minimum amount of
environmental damage.
Despite such complex issues, a number of activities
are underway to address future conservation and
management of the area. Since 1998, researchers have
been conducting surveys focusing on the Cross River
gorilla and other large mammals in TFR and adjacent
SI/MAB Series #8, 2003, Pages 181 to 182