Elephant Corridors Important For Sustainable Biodiversity Conservation
The South/Western elephant range is among the important forest elephant areas in Cameroon and contains more than 300 forest elephants. Mount Cameroon National Park, Korup National Park, Banyang Mbo and Takamanda National Parks along with Mak-betchou forest are the main corridors important in this range.
Protected areas in the Southwestern Region also contain many threatened and endemic species with key wildlife species such as forest elephants, Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees, Drills, Mandrills, Cross River gorillas, buffaloes and many others.
The Grey-necked picathartes (picathartes oreas) and the Preuss’ Geunon (Cercopithecus preussi) are rare in the area. Significant density of reptiles and amphibians including an important population of globally threatened and endemic birds such as Francolinus camerunencis and Speirops melanocephalus, which are common in the Mount Cameroon region are also present. Forest/habitat fragmentation and human-elephant conflicts are among the key factors that are of great concern to conservationists as far as achieving the goals of elephant conservation within their range states is concerned. Although much has been done in some protected areas in the Central Africa Sub-region in general and in Cameroon in particular on forest/habitat fragmentation and human-elephant conflicts. Very little, however, is known about this situation in the South West Region. The absence of such a valuable baseline data has created a knowledge gap that needs to be closed and at the same time provide the management bench of the landscape with appropriate tools for decision making. Development of highways, industrial establishments, human settlement along the migration corridors have fragmented the areas and adversely affected the migratory movements of the elephants and others animals in the locality. These corridors are, however, necessary to facilitate dispersal and the migration processes, which are critical to species persistence.
Creation of wildlife corridors would, therefore, be important for five main reasons:
-If an animal or plant population declines to a low level or becomes extinct in one area or habitat patch, individuals from another patch can immigrate and rescue the population from local extinction.
-If a small population is isolated, it will lose genetic variation over a long term and suffer from inbreeding. A corridor allows immigrants to support new genetic variation into isolated population.
-A corridor increases the area and diversity of habitat over and above the area of the two habitat patches that it connects.
-If the habitat of one area becomes unsuitable (because of climate change), organisms (both plants and animals) can move along corridors to reach suitable habitats and thus be rescued.
-Some protected areas do not encompass the range of ecosystem requirements needed by certain fauna and flora. Migrating species for example, especially mammalian herbivores and associated carnivores move outside and/or between protected areas. They may also used corridors like dispersal areas.
It has been noted that killing of elephants is common in the locality. Reports indicate that in 2012, one elephant was killed within the Mount Cameroon National Park and just recently, another carcass of an elephant was discovered in Mak-Betchou forest probably killed by tusk hunters. Following these incidents, restoration and protection of wildlife corridors in the southwestern part of Cameroon represents a serious and urgent challenge that is vital for long-term conservation of the rich biodiversity of the area. This is a call to draw the attention of all stakeholders including national and international funders to be aware of the situation and take immediate action.
