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6.1. INTRODUCTION
General conclusions and implications for biodiversity conservation
The Campo-Ma’an rain forest is recognised to be an important site within the
Guineo-Congolian Regional Centre of Endemism (White, 1979 & 1983). Its
conservation value is high at local, national, regional and global levels (Gartlan,
1989 & 1992; Foahom & Jonkers, 1992; Thomas & Thomas, 1993; Davis et al.,
1994; de Kam et al., 2002). However, despite its great biological importance, the
Campo-Ma’an forest has suffered and continues to suffer from intense human
pressure that has led to the degradation of most of the forest along the coast and the
lowland forest around settlements. It is largely in order to ensure the conservation of
biodiversity and the sustainable management of its natural resources that a Technical
Operational Unit (TOU) was created in the Campo-Ma’an area. The main
components of the TOU are a National Park, five forestry management units, two
agro-industrial plantations and several agro-forestry zones (Chapter 1). So far, the
National Park exists only on paper since in reality it has not yet been gazetted, and it
has no boundary and management plan. Taking into consideration the fact that there
was limited baseline biological information, essential for the elaboration of the
Campo-Ma’an strategic and management plans, it was of vital importance to carry
out sound taxonomic and ecological research in order to identify conservation
priorities and hotspots for biodiversity conservation.
During this study, a vegetation map of the Campo-Ma’an area was produced and the
various vegetation types were described with information on their structure and
composition (Chapter 2). A plant species checklist (Annex 3) made of 2297 species
of vascular plants, ferns and fern allies was generated from inventory data and from
2348 herbarium specimens and 4789 ecological specimens. They belonged to 851
genera and 155 families. Furthermore, a list of 92 threatened species recorded in
IUCN (2002) and WCMC (1998), and a list of 141 plant species of high
conservation priorities were produced, with information on their growth forms,
guild, chorology and conservation status (Chapter 5). The distribution maps of
species of high conservation priority such as endemic, rare, threatened, and bioindicator
taxa, were produced and used to identify and locate potential hotspots for
biodiversity conservation, and to confirm the existence of a postulated Pleistocene
rain forest refuge in the Campo-Ma’an area (Chapters 4 & 5).
6.2. GENERAL CONCLUSION
The most important phytogeographic studies of Africa are those of White (1979 &
1983) who divided Africa into floristic units (phytochoria) based on chorological
criteria such as shape, surface and geographic position of species distributions and
on the occurrence of endemics. This led him to distinguished Regional Centres of
Endemism defined as phytochoria that show a total of more than 1000 endemic
species and to which more than half of the total number of its species is confined.
The southern part of Cameroon falls under the Guineo-Congolian Regional Centre
of Endemism that is reported to be species-rich with high levels of endemism
(White, 1983; Davis et al., 1994). The Guineo-Congolian region comprises three
sub-divisions, Upper Guinea, Lower Guinea and Congolia. The Lower Guinea subregion
comprises the Atlantic Biafran forest zone that extends from Southeast
Nigeria to Gabon and the Mayombe area in Congo (Letouzey, 1985). The Campo-
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