Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFPs) play a vital role in the livelihoods of many communities around protected in southeast Cameroon. These NTFPs abounded in agro-forestry zones and community forests that the local people obtained with the support of WWF, providing food for local communities and serve as source of income-generation enabling the local communities to meet their healthcare and other basic needs.
However, years of intensive logging and illegal forest exploitation have contributed to the disappearance of many of these trees important for the communities’ wellbeing.
Scarcity of NTFP in agro-forestry zones and community forests and increase in demand for these forest products in big cities in Cameroon and abroad are pushing local communities to trek tens of kilometres into the forest in search of the precious nuts.
To enable the local people to replant these fast disappearing NTFPs plants and raise revenue, the Mobilising More for Climate (MoMo4C) project has supported three community based groups in Yokadouma and Ngoyla Municipalities in the TRIDOM Cameroon landscape to create NTFPs plants nurseries. Fifty Bantu and indigenous Baka community members belonging to the three groups - an all-women group in Ngatto (Gic Grandes ambitions) and two Baka groups in Ngoyla; GIC Leka and ASBANGO - were trained in setting up, managing and monitoring nursery to produce NTFP and fruit seedlings. They also received material to enable them to till the soil, build the nurseries and continuously water the plants. Two plant nurseries for NTFP and fruits were created in Ngatto and Ngoyla, with each nursery comprising 1500 seedlings of njansang (Ricinodendron heudelotii), bush mango (Irvingia gabonensis), safou (Dacryodes edulis), lemon and avocado (Persea Americana).
Given that NTFPs are important for communities in the area, these groups will generate income by selling the young trees from their nurseries to community forest managers and other buyers who may want to use them in their fallows.
Madam Eliane Ebol, Coordinator of Association Grandes Ambitions of Ngatto in Yokadouma Municipality, explains her motivation for creating an NTFPs plants nursery.
“With logging that has taken place in our forests, it is not easy to find NTFPs in our nearby forest like before as most of these trees important to us have been felled. We have to trek long distances into the forest to find them. We thought of planting them in our farms and community forest so that our children can find them nearby. By selling some of these plants, we will also make some money for our group,” Eliane states.
“These plants will be used to increase shade in cocoa farms, regenerate degraded farm lands and exploited portions of community forests,” Eliane adds.
A key challenge that these communities might face is to tend these nurseries till the plants are ready for transplanting, given their limited technical capacity. To meet this challenge, besides the training they have received, a dedicated MoMo4C project staff is working with the groups to ensure monitoring and follow up of the nurseries.
However, years of intensive logging and illegal forest exploitation have contributed to the disappearance of many of these trees important for the communities’ wellbeing.
Scarcity of NTFP in agro-forestry zones and community forests and increase in demand for these forest products in big cities in Cameroon and abroad are pushing local communities to trek tens of kilometres into the forest in search of the precious nuts.
To enable the local people to replant these fast disappearing NTFPs plants and raise revenue, the Mobilising More for Climate (MoMo4C) project has supported three community based groups in Yokadouma and Ngoyla Municipalities in the TRIDOM Cameroon landscape to create NTFPs plants nurseries. Fifty Bantu and indigenous Baka community members belonging to the three groups - an all-women group in Ngatto (Gic Grandes ambitions) and two Baka groups in Ngoyla; GIC Leka and ASBANGO - were trained in setting up, managing and monitoring nursery to produce NTFP and fruit seedlings. They also received material to enable them to till the soil, build the nurseries and continuously water the plants. Two plant nurseries for NTFP and fruits were created in Ngatto and Ngoyla, with each nursery comprising 1500 seedlings of njansang (Ricinodendron heudelotii), bush mango (Irvingia gabonensis), safou (Dacryodes edulis), lemon and avocado (Persea Americana).
Given that NTFPs are important for communities in the area, these groups will generate income by selling the young trees from their nurseries to community forest managers and other buyers who may want to use them in their fallows.
Madam Eliane Ebol, Coordinator of Association Grandes Ambitions of Ngatto in Yokadouma Municipality, explains her motivation for creating an NTFPs plants nursery.
“With logging that has taken place in our forests, it is not easy to find NTFPs in our nearby forest like before as most of these trees important to us have been felled. We have to trek long distances into the forest to find them. We thought of planting them in our farms and community forest so that our children can find them nearby. By selling some of these plants, we will also make some money for our group,” Eliane states.
“These plants will be used to increase shade in cocoa farms, regenerate degraded farm lands and exploited portions of community forests,” Eliane adds.
A key challenge that these communities might face is to tend these nurseries till the plants are ready for transplanting, given their limited technical capacity. To meet this challenge, besides the training they have received, a dedicated MoMo4C project staff is working with the groups to ensure monitoring and follow up of the nurseries.
