A New Deal for Cameroon’s Forests?

The highly diverse forests of Cameroon in West Africa are representative of the biological diversity of forests in the Congo Basin, which is home to about 80 percent of Africa&s;s moist forests and 20 percent of the world&s;s tropical moist forests. Cameroon&s;s forests range from wet evergreen forest in the shadow of Mount Cameroon in the southwest to the semi-arid Guinea Savanna Woodlands of northern Cameroon. Deforestation occurs mainly in the dry forests in the northern part of the country, which is the country&s;s most fragile and threatened ecosystem. The most important non-timber forest product activities in the moist forest zone of Cameroon are the poaching of bushmeat. Operating in a symbiotic relationship with logging concessions, hunters place snares along newly created logging tracks to supply urban markets and logging camps with smoked and fresh game. The non-market values of Cameroon&s;s forests have yet to be transferred into local incentives and therefore have little influence over forest sector policy.