Tofala-Mone East Corridor To Genetically Connect 200 Gorillas

The Environment and Rural Development Foundation (ERuDeF), with the support of Tusk Trust and other international partners, is embarking on a three year project geared towards genetically connecting some close to 200 Cross River Gorillas sub population within the landscape between the Tofala Hill Wildlife Sanctuary and Takamanda National Park in the Southwest Region.

Dubbed the Tofala-Mone East Corridor Rainforest Community Conservation Project, this intitiative according to the President/CEO of ERuDeF, Louis Nkembi, will also provide genetic linkage to all other wildlife population using the Tofala Mone East Corridor as a migratory road.

“This genetic connectivity will not only benefit primate population but will also benefit all the wildlife population using the corridor as migratory road. Besides the close to 200 Cross River Gorilla sub population, we have a few thousands of Nigeria Cameroon Chimpanzees, a hundred African Elephants, and unknown population of Drills and Buffaloes amongst others” he reiterated.

Aimed at providing long term conservation to the biodiversity of this unique tropical rainforest through the community and municipal collaborative management approach, the ERuDeF Boss posits that the project has as key target creating four community forests with 100% community participation, and updating the management plan of the Forest Management Unit (FMU) 11002.

The attainment of this key target according to Mr Nkembi, will help in the protection of over 45,000ha of pristine forest between the Tofala Hill Wildlife Sanctuary and the Mone Forest Reserve as well as contribute towards the long term protection of the over 630,000 forest ha in the Lebialem Highlands Conservation Complex.

Quizzed on the short and long term benefits of such a project to the 15 communities living within the corridor, the ERuDeF CEO said the project has as plans to establish local cottage industries, which will create more job opportunities and significantly improve on the livelihood on the communities.

“The project will induced ecotourism over time, which will also go along to induce the socio-economic development of the area and new community forestry businesses will also be developed” he added.

The Tofala-Mone East Corridor Rainforest Community Conservation Project, to end in 2018, commenced early this early. The Project Coordinator, Assongacap Floribert, says a lot has been achieved so far.

“We have so far been involved in carrying out feasibility studies in this area, raising awareness and sensitizing local communities on the importance of Community Forest and the procedures for attribution of community forest management norms and forming legal entities that will manage the community forests on behalf of their communities, carrying out mapping with villages within the corridor area to agree on the area to be proposed as community forests within their villages. We have also conducted a participatory mapping on a participatory 3 dimensional model (P3DM),” Mr. Assongacap explained.

How Tofala Mone East Corridor Was Born

In a bid to ensure the long term conservation of the biodiversity of Western Cameroon, ERuDeF, with technical support from the African Conservation Foundation (ACF) and other partners, in 2003 launched a long-term research and conservation programme for the protection of biodiversity in the Lebialem Highlands.

This research led to the discovery of Cross River gorillas and the Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees in this landscape in 2004, which culminated in the creation of the Lebialem Highlands Conservation Complex in 2010 with the Tofala-Mone East Corridor constituting one of the conservation blocks. The outcome of this research work also saw the corridor proposed as a wildlife genetic corridor in 2010.

Since 2010, bio-monitoring/research have been going on in this area with over 150 chimpanzees, about 15-20 gorillas, unknown population of buffaloes, Drills, Water chevrotain and other endangered species of fauna and flora have been recorded in this rainforest corridor.

Based on the importance of this rainforest block, some of the 15 local communities living within, and depending on the forest corridor for about 90% of their survival, applied to the Cameroon government, through ERuDeF, to help them conserve this rich rainforest through the creation of a series of community forests.

This aspiration was soothed early this year with the launching of the Tofala Mone East Corridor Conservation Project by ERuDeF under the supervision of the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife, and swith funding from Tusk Trust, Waterloo Foundation, Global Forest watch and technical support from the African Conservation Foundation.

By Bertrand Shancho Ndimuh