ERuDeF together with the local government partners have once again put in place measures to ensure the planting of 5000 seedlings of threatened trees at the borders of the Mt. Cameroon National Park (MCNP) in the Southwest Region.
By Adeline Tengem
Following the establishment of the park in 2010, the Global Trees Campaign partnering with ERuDeF took up the mandate to support the development of skills required to identify, survey and propagate threatened tree species, as the first steps toward improving species management and conservation.
After propagation in nurseries, the species were transplanted into secured forests around the Mt. Cameroon area for the future benefit of the surrounding communities.
As planting was not permitted directly within the MCNP during the first phase of planting, 16,000 threatened trees, including African Zebra wood (Critically Endangered) seedlings were raised and planted into two adjacent community forests at Woteva and Bakingili in Buea Subdivision.
By ending 2016, it is hoped that the MCNP staff together with the adjacent communities will take up the project activities. Reason why it was necessary to start putting in place measures towards handing over this project to the MCNP and adjacent communities.
This handing-over process started on July 17, 2015 with a planning meeting held at the ERuDeF headquarters which brought together stakeholders including the MCNP staff in charge of research, ERuDeF’s Director of Programs (representing the President/CEO) and the project team (Project Coordinator and Assistant).
Immediately after the planning meeting, ERuDeF foresters went to the Bokwaongo forest adjacent to Mt. Cameroon for Prunus wildings collection. The field expeditions took the team two weeks (July 17-31) during which they collected 5000 wildings of Prunus and potted them at their central nursery located at the premises of the Southwest Delegation of the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife.
The activities were implemented together with interns from the ERuDeF Institute, the University of Buea and the University of Bamenda.
Meanwhile, the wildings raised, together with other threatened species, are hoped to be planted into the accessible and encroached areas of the Buea cluster boundaries of the MCNP by September 2015.
The species at maturity will be harvested and used by the beneficiary communities in the Buea cluster while natural regeneration takes place inside the National Park through agents of seeds dispersal of the species planted at the borders.
The Mt. Cameroon Threatened Trees Project is sponsored by Fauna and Flora International/Global Trees Campaign Program. It is implemented by ERuDeF together with the local government services and the communities.
