“I will plant these trees in my compound here in Bokova so that my children and grandchildren will harvest and use for furniture, fuelwood and medication when they grow up. They will not have to go deep into the forest in search of them like us,” Pa. Dede Matthew, a resident of Bokova in the Mount Cameroon Area said shortly after receiving some indigenous threatened tree species from Voice of Nature (VoNat).
VoNat donated the threatened trees including pygeum (Prunus Africana) and Mahogany (Entandrophragma angolensis) to 20 households in the Mount Cameroon Area recently as part of its programme to conserve endangered species in the Mount Cameroon Area, funded by New England Biolabs Foundation. This initiative aims to conserve and promote the sustainable use of threatened tree species in Mount Cameroon through domestication, community engagement, and sustainable forest management.
According to Pa. Dede Matthew, Pygeum, mahogany and other tree species have been severely depleted in the Mount Cameroon National Park to the extend that they have become very difficult to find. This is a testimony of the increasing pressure on this protected area from adjacent communities as a result of population growth, unsustainable exploitation, poor natural resources management and other issues related to poverty and armed conflict. VoNat is therefore seeking funding and donations to upscale its threatened domestication and agroforestry in order to provide alternative furniture and fuel good sources that will divert the attention of adjacent communities from deforesting this biodiversity hotspot.