Illegal logging threatens rare Cameroonian hardwood with extinction

When a towering African zebrawood tree falls within the forest, it definitely makes a sound.

Throughout a survey of the Ebo forest from August 2020 to March 2021, Eric Nana and his workforce from Cameroon’s Agricultural Analysis Institute for Improvement (IRAD) witnessed the destruction triggered every time one in every of these forest giants, supported with enormous buttress roots and topped with feathery leaves, is felled.

“Some have been there for a whole bunch of years,” Nana stated. “Slicing down only a single tree destroys all of the smaller timber round it. It significantly opens up the forest, and permits all of the undergrowth species to come back up. Development from different forest tree species turns into tough.”

A quick report on the IRAD survey, revealed in September within the journal Oryx, estimates that no less than two metric tons of wooden from this now-rare species — listed as critically endangered by the IUCN — is being illegally faraway from the Ebo forest every month. That’s equal to 2 or three massive timber, Nana informed Mongabay: a heavy toll on a slow-maturing species that’s already scarce.

“Chinese language retailers [in the port city of Douala] pay folks to enter the forest, harvest the tree and produce it again to them,” stated Nana, who led the survey to evaluate the standing of African zebrawood (Microberlinia bisulcata) and different threatened species within the forest, which covers an space of round 1,500 sq. kilometers (580 sq. miles).

The value of a cubic meter (equal to 1 metric ton) has risen to $600, from round $300 in 2018. Loggers are paid as much as 100,000 CFA francs (round $180) per tree. The unlawful loggers solely noticed off round 40-50% of every tree they fell, leaving the remainder to rot.

“It’s simply an enormous waste,” Nana stated. “All standing timber we recognized final 12 months have been lower.”

Rising demand for its lovely wooden, lax native regulation enforcement, and civil strife are pushing the critically endangered African zebrawood tree towards extinction in Cameroon’s forests, conservationists say. Nana stated zebrawood is used to make high-value furnishings.

The timber — whose pale and darkish wooden grains resemble the patterns on a zebra cover — are solely present in fragmented pockets in southwestern Cameroon, together with in and across the Ebo forest, within the nation’s southern Littoral area. However delays to plans to show the vital gorilla and chimpanzee refuge right into a nationwide park are fueling the tree’s unlawful extraction.

The forest is dwelling to endangered primates, together with western gorillas (Gorilla gorilla), Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes ellioti) and Preuss’s purple colobus monkeys (Piliocolobus preussi).

The survey discovered that locals had been deeply concerned within the unlawful harvest and commerce. On one event, a authorities official, recognized domestically as a sous-préfet, was witnessed sending out harvesters to chop down zebrawood.

“After they noticed us, they thought at first we had been police brokers coming to regulate them,” Nana stated. He added the official was relieved after they assured him they weren’t.

“He made a name in entrance of us, telling these loggers within the forest that, ‘These guys usually are not police brokers, they’re simply researchers.’

“The entire worth chain goes from harvesters proper as much as folks in authorities,” Nana stated. “With out the help of locals eager to curb it, will probably be tough to cease.”

He and his workforce advocate that zebrawood be added to a CITES listing to forestall its unlawful commerce. This will even strain the federal government into defending it, he stated.

IRAD, a authorities analysis institute, and the Nationwide Herbarium of Cameroon have established nurseries across the Ebo forest to develop zebrawood seedlings. Thus far 4,000 have been produced — an insurance coverage coverage in case all of the seed-bearing timber are worn out.

Blended alerts from the federal government

For no less than 20 years, there have been plans to show a lot of the Ebo forest right into a nationwide park. However Cameroon’s authorities has additionally granted numerous permits for logging and the creation of oil palm plantations across the forest. In 2020, a logging concession inside Ebo was granted — after which suspended following an outcry from native and worldwide conservation teams.

However unlawful logging continues, and formal logging has been permitted alongside Ebo’s northern border by Cameroon’s Ministry of Forests and Wildlife, in response to two official notices seen by Mongabay.

One of many new logging areas is adjoining to gorilla habitat, stated Ekwoge Abwe, of the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance’s African forest program.

“The brand new technique is to allocate smaller parcels [known as ventes de coupes] in and across the forest for logging,” Abwe stated.

Abwe’s Ebo Forest Analysis Venture has been working within the space since 2002, when gorillas had been found within the north of the forest. The undertaking works with greater than 40 communities residing round Ebo, in addition to grassroots conservation teams like Membership des Amis de Gorilles (Gorilla Guardian Membership) attempting to guard its biodiversity.

“We discover unlawful logging exercise not solely of zebrawood, however different species as properly,” Abwe stated.

“The wooden is sawn into planks for simpler transportation. The unlawful logging is facilitated by the truth that the western and southern elements of the forest had been logged about three a long time in the past. The logging roads and trails ease entry [for today’s] unlawful loggers.”

Six years in the past, Abwe carried out a survey to evaluate, amongst different issues, the provision of fruit-bearing timber for the forest’s chimpanzee inhabitants. Although the survey wasn’t geared toward discovering African zebrawood particularly, it did produce a helpful database that means the species doesn’t develop within the north, which is extra mountainous, however does develop within the lower-lying south and west: the identical areas being focused at present by unlawful logging.

“It’s possible that the species has a restricted distribution even throughout the forest,” Abwe stated.

“Ebo might be its final stronghold and hope.”

Limbi Blessing Tata is government director of Ecological Steadiness Cameroon, an environmental nonprofit based mostly in Buea, a metropolis on the slopes of Mount Cameroon within the nation’s Southwest area.

In 2015, Tata, a educated botanist, led a undertaking to preserve African zebrawood timber within the area’s Mokoko Forest Reserve. On the time there have been 900 seed-bearing zebrawoods rising there.

Workshops had been held with locals to show them in regards to the significance of preserving the timber, and a community of informants (she known as it the “CIA of the forest”) was set as much as warn of any threats dealing with them.

“However permitting locals to derive worth from non-timber merchandise shall be important to preserving it sooner or later,” she stated.

Tata stated Korup Nationwide Park is one other stronghold of the African zebrawood within the area. However the nation’s four-year-long Anglophone disaster, pitting rebels in opposition to authorities forces within the Southwest and Northwest areas, has meant Korup and Mokoko at the moment are “no-go areas” for conservationists.

“As we communicate, one in every of two issues has occurred,” she stated. “Both the disaster has scared loggers and the species is prospering, or the remaining mature timber which served because the seed banks have been destroyed.”

Cameroon halts logging plans in Ebo Forest, dwelling to tool-using chimps

Citations

Nana, E. D., Takor, C. M., Nkengbeza, S. N., Tchiengue, B., Ngansop, E. T., & Tchopwe, E. (2021). Unlawful logging threatens to wipe out the critically endangered African zebrawood Microberlinia bisulcata from Cameroon’s Ebo forest. Oryx, 55(5), 652-653. doi:10.1017/s0030605321000910

Abwe, E. E., Morgan, B. J., Tchiengue, B., Kentatchime, F., Doudja, R., Ketchen, M. E., … Gonder, M. Ok. (2019). Habitat differentiation amongst three Nigeria–Cameroon chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes ellioti) populations. Ecology and Evolution, 9(3), 1489-1500. doi:10.1002/ece3.4871

Banner picture: A member of the IRAD survey workforce inspects the stays of a felled African zebrawood in Ebo Forest. Picture courtesy Eric Nana.

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