Ebo Wildlife Reserve


The Ebo Wildlife Reserve is protected area and proposed national park in Cameroon that covers of lowland and montane forest mosaic with a high proportion of disturbed forest.

Geography and history

Ebo Forest is 20 km north of the Sanaga River. The Ebo Forest Research Station was established in April 2005, and preliminary biological inventories suggest the Ebo Forest has comparable biodiversity to other centres of endemism in the Cameroon-Nigeria highlands region.
Forty nearby communities—including those of the —rely on the forest's wildlife for food, water, medicine and culture.

Wildlife

Being half of the Yabassi Key Biodiversity Area, Ebo Forest is the most intact ecosystemystem in the Gulf of Guinea.
The critically endangered Preuss's red colobus has been recorded within the area. Other animals there include Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees, western gorillas, goliath frogs, African forest elephants, Drills, grey-necked rockfowls and grey parrots.
During a research trip, biologist Ekwoge Abwe discovered Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees cracking nuts and using sticks to collect termites, the only known instance of chimpanzees doing so. Another biologist, Bethan Morgan, observed a possibly undescribed gorilla subspecies in the area. In 2011, the Cameroonian government created the Nigeria-Cameroon Chimpanzee Action Plan.

Threats

The biodiversity of the reserve is threatened by hunting, poaching, deforestation and other types of forest conversion, a phenomenon that is increasingly common in tropical and equatorial forests, particularly in Africa. Ebo Wildlife Reserve has been particularly threatened by the establishment of a palm oil plantation on an area of 123,000 hectares, near the forest.

Logging

On 4 February 2020, minister of forestry Jules Doret Ndongo and prime minister Joseph Ngute enacted two proposals to reclassify Ebo Forest for logging, both of which cover most of the forest. A group of scientists sent a letter to Ngute for the reversion of the proposals, and the decision was reverted. In July, it was redesignated for logging, a decision which was again reverted in August. In 2022, a road began construction through the southern portion of the forest, but was later suspended. On 27 April 2023, the area was reclassified for logging.