Campo Ma’an Site

The region

The Campo Ma’an component is situated in the heart of the equatorial forest in the far south west of Cameroon. It shares its southern boundary with the international border with Equatorial Guinea. The site is part of the Precambrian base and it extends some 120 km from the Atlantic coast into the hinterlands and reaches on some hills an altitude just over 1,000 m.

Campo Ma’an is a site with great biological diversity. It has coastal ecosystems, tropical lowland forests belonging to the Guinean-Congolian forest biome, mountainous areas and freshwater rivers. Its vegetation and fauna are characterised by a large number of endemic and endangered species.

In all, the Campo Ma’an Technical Operational Unit (TOU) has a population of approximately 60,000 inhabitants. The majority lives in one of the 120 villages (35,000 people) and the rest is concentrated in 17 camps attached to two agro-industrial plantations (25,000 people). There are 7 ethnic groups in the area: Bulus and Ntumus (farmers and hunters), Batangas and Iyassas (fishermen), Mabeas and Mvaes (farmers, hunters and fishermen) and the Bagyelis, pygmies living as almost permanent migrants in withdrawn and isolated camps in the heart of the forest (hunters and gatherers).

The Campo Ma’an site, being in the focus of the world's attention, has benefited from compensatory measures to the negative effects on the environment caused by the construction works of the Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline.

The project

The Campo Ma’an Project is active all over the entire Campo Ma’an TOU, of which the Campo Ma’an National Park is a key part.

Executants: MINEF Delegation of the Ocean Division, SNV, Tropenbos International
Headquarters: Kribi
Surface area: 7,710 km2 extending across the Ocean, Ntem Valley and Mvila Divisions of the South Province.

History of the project:

The Campo Ma’an Biodiversity Conservation and Management Project started in 1997 and is executed by SNV and Tropenbos International in close collaboration with the Ocean Divisional Delegation of MINEF. The project follows the creation of the Campo Wildlife Reserve in 1932 and the Ma’an Production Reserve in 1980, both of which were joined since 1999 in the TOU. The project was involved in the creation of the Campo Ma’an National Park in 2000, as a compensation site to environmental damage caused by the construction of the pipeline.

Objectives:

  1. Strengthen biodiversity conservation and better surveillance of the exploitation of wildlife resources, including the construction of forestry posts
  2. Carry out biological and socio-economic surveys and in-depth forestry research
  3. Draw up a management plan for the conservation area and a master landuse plan for the priority site
  4. Draw up and implement an ecological monitoring system
  5. Launch of community development micro-projects.

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