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afrol News/WWF, 23 January - Traditional leaders (chiefs) of 19 village communities around Mount Kupe are playing a leading role in helping the WWF Coastal Forest Programme conserve this rich but threatened montane forest in Southwest Cameroon. Mount Kupe, in Southwest Cameroon is one of the last remaining areas of montane forest in Cameroon. Covering an area of about 30 sq. kilometres, and rising to a hight of 2,050 metres above sea level, Mount Kupe is covered in pristine forest. It is home to many rare and unique species - such as the Mount Kupe Bush Shrike (Malaconotus kupenensis) - a bird thought to be extinct until 1989, as well as five other threatened bird species, several species of highly threatened chameleons, a number of vulnerable and threatened primates and an increasing list of new plant species. It is also a place of great importance to the Bakossi people, for whom it provides food, water, medicine and building materials - as well as being the sacred home of their ancestors. However the proximity of the mountain to a major highway has encouraged an ongoing influx of non-native people from other parts of the country into the area. The population around the Mount Kupe conservation site is today estimated at 140, 000 inhabitants spread over an area of 350 sq. kilometres. Subsistence farming is quite intensive in the forests along the mountain slopes with some farms being found as high as 1,000 metres above sea level. The use of the forest by this increasing population, together with attempts to derive subsistence from the natural resource base of the area, constitute important threats to the conservation of wildlife and plants in the forest and the mountain. To address some of the issues facing the mountain and the people who live around it, the Kupe All Chiefs Meeting, representing 19 village communities from the area, meets regularly to discuss problems facing the natural environment and mobilise local people to seek solutions to them. Chief of Tombel, Professor Dr. Bernard Ebong Salle speaks for his peers; "When the chiefs were told what WWF stands for and the threats facing our environment, we have never turned our backs to the message. If checks were not placed on rampant hunting, rampant felling of trees, with the possibility of erosion, then we have no future for our children." - We are showing our concern by making these meetings a permanent body and creating a resolutions committee to ensure that demands and proposals to government are not only seen to come from the Co-ordinator of the project, but from the chiefs and society at large, he says. WWF has been working with the local people to demarcate a farm/forest boundary around the mountain and ensure that farms do not take over the entire mountain. By this demarcation, no farms can be cultivated above 1,000 metres on the mountain slopes. The farm/forest boundary is four (4) metres wide and a total of 40 kilometres have so far been demarcated. Traditional boundary markers (Dracaena) have already been planted on 30 kilometres of the demarcated boundary. Patrol teams are being set up in areas where demarcation has been accomplished to make sure people do not encroach on the conserved areas within the boundary. Here again, the chiefs will be on the frontline. - It’s thanks to the chiefs that we have been able to accomplish this much, says Theophilus Ngwene, Kupe site Manager of the WWF Coastal Forest Programme. "They have been playing a very big role. They move round their villages, sensitise their people and each chief leads his village demarcation team. When conflicts arise, the chiefs are there to resolve them." When demarcation is over, the conserved forest will be gazetted, maps will produced and community management plans will be drawn up. However WWF's funding for the Mount Kupe Forest Project has now run out, and more funds are now being sought to help the chiefs ensure the on-going protection of this important area.
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