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Community Mapping of Forest Resources in Cameroon

The document discusses a participatory mapping project in Southwest Cameroon that engaged local communities in mapping their forest resources. Villagers drew maps on the ground indicating locations of non-timber forest products, roads, and rivers. They then collected GPS data from the forest and transferred it to spreadsheets. A GIS specialist then processed the data to produce validated maps of the community forests, identifying resources like bush mango, eru, and njansang. Local cartographers were trained and collected over 300 data points in Tinto and over 200 in Akwen and Agborkem. The maps will help villagers manage forest resources and estimate quantities of products like 2500+ bush mango stems in Tinto and 12

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Ayuk
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22 views3 pages

Community Mapping of Forest Resources in Cameroon

The document discusses a participatory mapping project in Southwest Cameroon that engaged local communities in mapping their forest resources. Villagers drew maps on the ground indicating locations of non-timber forest products, roads, and rivers. They then collected GPS data from the forest and transferred it to spreadsheets. A GIS specialist then processed the data to produce validated maps of the community forests, identifying resources like bush mango, eru, and njansang. Local cartographers were trained and collected over 300 data points in Tinto and over 200 in Akwen and Agborkem. The maps will help villagers manage forest resources and estimate quantities of products like 2500+ bush mango stems in Tinto and 12

Uploaded by

Ayuk
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

Mbu Mbi Ayuk

Email- georgemoney46@[Link]

Community Engagement, Instrumental in


Mapping Forest Resources in SW
Cameroon
Today, it becomes more than important to integrate communities in
the management of forest resources. Communities living within forest
areas, are meticulous in acquiring deep knowledge of where they live;
the dense forest milieu.
In spite of this mastery of the forest environment, the communities of
Woteva in Fako Division, and Tinto, and Akwen / Agborkem in Manyu
Division, all in the Southwest of Cameroon, live adjacent to a dense
forest. Unfortunately, management of the forest resources have
always been a problem. Much of the forest resources are untapped;
those exploited are unevenly distributed.
The Environment and Rural Development Foundation (ERuDeF)
recently launched the “participatory mapping “, a model of
conservation wherein communities adjacent to forest areas take active
part in the management of their forest resources. The model is also
instrumental in the DRYAD project, which is geared towards
promoting the development of local businesses from the extraction of
Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFPs) from the community forests.
The participative approach engages villagers in the mapping of
community forests with the help of a facilitator. The mapping process
involves ground mapping, the collection of data, processing and the
establishment of a concise map. At the level of the ground mapping,
the villagers draw the space of their community forest on the ground
by indicating the position of all elements including roads, rivers, non-
timber forest products (NTFP) among others. Thereafter, they transfer
the map got on the ground to the spreadsheet with all the details.
At the level of data collection, the villagers go to the forest for the
acquisition of data using different tools that facilitate the collection of
the data like GPS smartphones, and navigation GPS among others.
Those who go to the forest have been trained beforehand on the
manipulation of the tools of data collection, they are called the local
cartographers. The data collected are given to the facilitator who
processes them using the innovative technologies, produce the soft
copy of the map that is validated by the entire community.
It is within this framework that the GIS specialist of the Environment
and Rural Development Foundation (ERuDeF), Mr Dogmo Eugne,
carried out Maps production, based on identification of forest
resources of Tinto in the Upper Bayang Subdivision, Akwen and
Agborkem in the Eyumojock Subdivision all in Manyu Division of
Southwest Cameroon. Five resources, Bush mango
(Irvingiagabonesis), Eru (Gnetumafricana), Bush pepper (Piper
nigrum), timbers and Njansang ( Ricinodendronhendelotti), were
selected to represent in the map.
In each community, at least three (03) local cartographers were
trained on maps production with emphasis on the production of the
ground mapping.
In Tinto, the local cartographers collected more than 300 points in
their community forest while in Akwen and Agborkem, the local
cartographers collected more than 200 points. The maps of the
community forests have been produced and validated by the villagers
of those communities with the facilitation of the GIS specialist from
ERuDeF.
Now, the villagers acquired supplementary knowledge to reproduce
and to update the map of resources in their forest area. By the end of
the process, it is aimed to realized that the resources are dense in the
different community forests. Taking the case of bush mango for
example, the quantities are very important. In the community forest of
Tinto, the number of stems of bush mango is estimated at 2500 stems
and more whereas in the one of Akwen-Agborkem, the number of
stems of bush mango is estimated at 12000 stems and more. All these
to be realized in 2023.

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