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Community-based conservation in Cameroon: an interview with Anya Dabite Abeh

Writer's picture: IBCPIBCP

20 January, 2025

By Alexander Trifunovic

Cameroonian wildlife conservation advocate Anya Dabite Abeh on the slope of Mount Cameroon. Photo courtesy of Anya Dabite Abeh.


1.              What can you tell us about your research and conservation activities in Cameroon?


AD: Currently there are two main things I am doing. First, I am an intern at the Programme for the Sustainable Management of Natural Resources in the South West Region of Cameroon, whose mission is to protect the unique biodiversity of this region while enhancing the livelihoods of local communities. I have been working on a project to estimate the population of elephants and chimpanzees using capture-recapture camera traps. There has been an increase in poaching of endangered species, which is why this program was created. We’re looking for a way to inform people, to involve the local communities in conservation activities, and to empower them financially so they do not always go back to the park to hunt. Apart from that, I am starting a bird club. I am a bird lover, and I love ornithology. My idea is to bring bird conservation to the classroom. My long-term goal is to add conservation, and particularly bird conservation, into the general education in Cameroon schools. Conservation is so minimized in my country; they fail to tell us that we depend on the environment for our survival. 

Anya holds a Cameroon Olive Greenbul (Phyllastrephus poensis) captured during wildlife research, before its release on Mount Cameroon. Photo courtesy of Anya Dabite Abeh.


2.                           How did you first become interested in birds?


AD: My father was a park ranger, and he worked all his life in Korup National Park. From there, I realized that my father had a strong connection with nature, and I became highly engaged and interested in bird conservation. At that time, African Gray Parrots(Psittacus erithacus) were very abundant, and you could find them all over. But then I realized within two years of coming to the university that these birds were getting very scarce due to poaching and other illegal activities. You might argue that man cannot exist without birds. A good percentage of plants cannot exist without birds. I realized that people were killing a lot of birds, sometimes killing birds for recreation. So, I asked the question: why are they killing them? Are they harmful to us or do they have so little importance? I decided to study to learn more about the birds around me. After investigating, I found that birds have more ecological importance than most people know.

African Grey Parrots (Psittacus erithacus). Photo by Nina R, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.


Then I started advocating for the birds. They do so much good - most of the trees around us are planted by birds! One species that really captured my attention is the Mount Cameroon Francolin, which is endemic to Mount Cameroon National Park. When I go up to do camera trapping research and planting acoustic devices, I realized there was a problem. Hunters go into the forest to hunt larger animals like bushbuck or antelope, and while they are in the forest they kill birds to eat as a temporary food source. So, I have been brainstorming with IBCP and others about how we can change this situation.

A camera trap photo of a Mount Cameroon Francolin (Pternistis camerunensis) taken on the slope of Mount Cameroon. Photo courtesy of Anya Dabite Abeh.


3.                           Do you have a favorite bird or group of birds?


AD: My favorite birds are the turacos. They are amazing birds! While in Mount Cameroon, I mostly encounter Yellow-billed Turaco, but at Ebo Forest, I mostly see Great Blue Turaco. So, I started asking: what is the ecological significance of seeing more of one or other, and what does that imply about human activities? There are a lot of anthropogenic activities in Mount Cameroon, and at Ebo Forest there is better protection, so what can the turacos tell us about the difference?

Yellow-billed Turaco (Tauraco macrorhynchus). Photo by Francesco Veronesi, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.


4.              Can you describe your career journey to get to where you are now?


AD: I was born in Mundemba near Korup National Park, and it was due to my father that I became a lover of biodiversity. The Department of Conservation Biology from the University of Göttingen in Germany brought a lot of students to Korup National Park, and I walked with them as an assistant. I came to the University of Buea for a degree in geography, and I did my research on the perception of local communities on the conservation of endangered wildlife in Korup. After my Bachelor’s, I had no financial support to continue my education, and I was doing odd jobs, but then there was a professor who sponsored me to do my master’s research on the effects of human activities on forest birds on Mount Cameroon. I did well in my master’s program, and my professor recommended I do a PhD. But then there was a political crisis in Cameroon, and they never launched the PhD program, so I am working as an intern now to estimate the population of chimpanzees and elephants and to gain more skills and ideas. My goal is to build bird clubs to be able to teach people more about bird conservation and conservation of other species around Mount Cameroon. If we can protect all of them, it will be best for us. During my master’s, I won a scholarship to attend a meeting for the Society of Conservation Biology, and this is where I met Nico of IBCP, and she saw how I loved birds. She sent me some information about scholarships to study abroad, but I prefer to stay in Cameroon and help the local communities that are close to national parks. 

Anya at a field camp. Photo courtesy of Anya Dabite Abeh.


5.              Can you tell me about the hornbill project you worked on with Colin Jensen at the University of Göttingen?


AD: There is an issue of a rising foreign market in Cameroon, especially the western region. My fellow Cameroonian Francis Guetsehelped expose how people buy the casques of hornbills from locals, possibly to send them to China, although we don’t know exactly who is buying them or why. On Mount Nlonako, there was a rapid increase in sales demand and an associated increase in the hunting of hornbills. To investigate the effect of this hunting on hornbills, we did point counts at Mount Nlonako and in Ebo Forest to estimate populations and then looked for signs of hunting to correlate the two. We also wanted to help the communities nearby to understand the impacts of their hunting and how their actions will affect the birds and themselves.

A pair of White-thighed Hornbills (Bycanistes albotibialis). Photo by Tommy Andriollo, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.


What we found is that hunting pressure on hornbills at Ebo is very little, as the market hasn’t reached there yet. But at Mount Nlonako, the forests are empty and there are very few hornbills. To see one hornbill at Mount Nlonako is a big deal, and the only one you can see has a very small casque. I talked with IBCP about doing a community-based approach to empower local people to conserve the hornbills. The idea is to educate them and implement community-based wildlife monitoring where they can earn something. Paying them to monitor hornbills could offset the need to sell hornbill casques for money, and it could create a sense of ownership, making people more likely to protect the forest.

Black-and-white-casqued Hornbill (Bycanistes subcylindricus), one of several species that occurs in Cameroon. Photo by benjchristensen, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.


6.                           What are some of the challenges of bird conservation in Cameroon?


AD: One of my main challenges is a poor perception of birds by Cameroonians. Most of them just don’t care about birds. If you try to talk to someone about bird conservation, even ecologists, most are not interested. Second, people hunt birds for financial gain. Africa has a lot of cultural rituals that demand animal sacrifice and parts of animals, such as the Crowned Eagle (Stephanoaetus coronatus) and other raptors, for which people pay very high prices. In addition to being killed for bushmeat, many birds like hornbills are also hunted and sold in the markets. I don’t blame the local communities, because conservation approaches tried to date in Cameroon have not been very lasting or effective.

Crowned Eagle (Stephanoaetus coronatus) with prey in a protected area. Photo by Bernard Dupont, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.


There is the challenge of poverty, which is causing people to go back to the park to hunt the animals. There is also part of the culture in Cameroon where people grew up assuming that they can eat any animal they want, so if you tell them to stop hunting you are just bringing a problem for yourself and creating a problem between you and them. Lastly, in Cameroon we have very little support and financial capacity for conservation. I have ideas, like the bird club, but without outside support, I lack the money to do it. I would love to make books and give them to students to learn about the birds and conservation. There are more than 200,000 students in Cameroon, so we need help! But it’s not easy to find people that believe in these ideas and make them happen. 

Anya taking photographs in the field. Photo courtesy of Anya Dabite Abeh.


7.                           What are some of your favorite memories from your fieldwork?


AD: There was a time I was birding at Mount Cameroon, and there was a flock of birds we were watching. I went on the ground to get a better angle with my binoculars, and a bird came and landed on my head! There was another time at Mount Cameroon where we were pursued by elephants. The elephants on Mount Cameroon are very aggressive because they are traumatized by poachers, so we all had to climb trees, and we sat up there for two hours while the elephants sat below and looked up at us! Two things you need to know before walking in the forest in Africa: how to climb a tree and how to swim.

A group of African Forest Elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis), the smaller of the two African species that occurs in a patchy distribution across central and western Africa. Photo by Matt Muir, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.


8.                           What would be your advice to young people looking to pursue a career in conservation?


AD: Many ecologists are focused on research as a basis for giving advice to the government, but this is not enough.  There is no doubt that ecological research is a very vital aspect of conservation. But ecology alone is not enough. You need to be able to balance ecology with the human aspects of conservation -- the local community members and the state. Knowing that there is Mount Cameroon Francolin in the national park and that it is decreasing is not enough to make the population stable. They are decreasing because the local community members are hunting them, so you need to find a balance between the government policies and the local communities’ reality to give people sustainable livelihoods so they can stop hunting endangered animals. A lot of money goes into research, but you need to apply the research and involve the local people to achieve conservation goals. There is sustainable management and then there is biodiversity protection. You can tell local communities to sustainably manage their local forest, like telling people not to kill an animal with babies, pregnant animals, or protected species while they are hunting. Biodiversity protection says that an area is protected under the law, and you cannot hunt there regardless of if an animal is protected or not. But despite these laws, many people risk their lives poaching in protected areas to survive. So, we need to see the bigger picture to change things.

Anya sits on a rock on the high elevation steppe of Mount Cameroon. Photo courtesy of Anya Dabite Abeh.

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