- Mengame Gorilla Sanctuary was created to protect some 26,780 hectares in southern Cameroon, and is the only large functional protected area in the region.
- In addition to critically endangered western lowland gorillas, Mengame is a refuge for an abundance of wildlife, including forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis) — also critically endangered — and endangered chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).
- Logging concessions and villages surround Mengame, and satellite data show forest loss encroaching on the sanctuary and trickling into it.
- Cameroonian civil society organization Action for Sustainable Development investigated encroachment into the reserve after noticing deforestation alerts via satellite data.
Spanning nearly a tenth of the vast Congo Basin’s rainforest, the transboundary Dja-Odzala-Minkébé (TRIDOM) landscape is a nearly unbroken green canopy, stretching across Cameroon, the Republic of Congo and Gabon.
Human population density and deforestation rates are generally low, making the entire region a high-priority landscape for carbon sequestration and the conservation of endangered and critically endangered animals like forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis), western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) and chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).
A quarter of the TRIDOM landscape is now under protection, encompassed by eleven protected areas. Of these, southern Cameroon’s Mengame Gorilla Sanctuary at 26,780 hectares is one of the smallest.
A young western lowland gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) strikes a sassy pose in Gabon. Image by Rhett A. Butler / Mongabay.
That may be why it receives little attention, says Genevieve Ndjiki, president of the Action for Sustainable Development, a civil society organization in Cameroon. Yet research indicates the sanctuary supports “important” populations of apes, even when compared to other protected areas in Central Africa.
Initially, Mengame was paired with the nearby proposed Kom National Park, a 68,050-hectare protected area to the east. But whilst Mengame was officially gazetted in 2008, the proposed Kom National Park was converted to a forest management unit sometime around 2021.
When ASD began monitoring Mengame via the Global Forest Watch (GFW) platform they became concerned when they noticed satellite-detected deforestation alerts appearing and proliferating in the reserve. And, realizing that the sanctuary didn’t have an outside conservation partner, they wanted to see what was going on.
Mengame Gorilla Sanctuary is the only functional protected area amidst a sea of areas earmarked for logging, a sea that now includes the once-proposed Kom National Park. Satellite data show logging is already taking place in Kom, and that forest loss has been encroaching on Mengame as well.
In early 2023, with funding from GFW’s Small Grants Fund, they started a project on participatory monitoring in the sanctuary. Working in six villages in the region, they met with local community representatives, government rangers and civil society organizations to figure out what was triggering the deforestation alerts, and set up a monitoring system.
Communities around the reserve mostly practice subsistence agriculture,