Mbam Djerem National Park

The Mbam Djerem National Park is found in Cameroon. It was established in 2000 and covers 4234.78 km².

A protected area was created in January 2000 in this ecosystem in the centre of Cameroon, and named the Mbam Djerem National Park. It covers 4200 square kilometres, of which about half is lowland tropical forest, and half is Sudano-Guinean tree and woodland savannah, with a wide ecotone belt between the two. This straddling of two major vegetation zones gives Mbam Djerem probably the highest habitat diversity of all the protected areas in Cameroon. The new National Park boasts gallery forests, transitional forests and rainforests, different types of savannahs ranging from almost completely closed woodland through bush savannah, to open, seasonally flooded grasslands next to the major rivers one of which has a spectacular waterfall. Standing on any hilltop in the Park affords a view of ridge after ridge vanishing into the distance, some of them forested, some savannah, and all valleys clothed in a strip of gallery forest along the water’s edge.The Park is watered by the upper Sanaga basin: the main river of the Park is the Djerem, which becomes the Sanaga itself further south. This river is navigable throughout its length in the Park and allows access from the savannahs of the north into the heart of the forest.

Surveys have covered much of the Park and the major vegetation zones have been explored. The first survey took place in March 2000, and covered the eastern half of the Park. The survey team were navigating using the maps available from the Centre Geographique Nationale, which, although printed in 1976, were produced from aerial photographs taken in the 1950s and 1960s. The maps show most of the south of the Park to be savannah. However, when the team approached the centre of the Park, although the map showed that the habitat should be bush savanna, they found themselves walking through shady woodland. On closer inspection, all the trees were not only mostly the same species (Xylopia aethiopica), they were all about the same age. Mixed in among this forest were dying individuals of typical savannah trees and bushes (Hymenocardia acida, Piliostigma thonningii, Bridelia ferruginea … ). There was little grass on the forest floor. Older local people interviewed from the villages to the west of the Park remember the area from forty years ago as grassland and bush, with gallery forests along the rivers. Closed-canopy lowland forest was found much further to the east, near the Djerem River. The forests of Central Africa go through long cycles of expansion and reduction, linked with long-term climatic cycles. At the moment the forests are expanding- or they would if bushfire (almost always lit by people) did not burn back the edges every year. Left to itself, the forest is reclaiming the savannah lands. In fact, as people had moved away from the Mbam Djerem area to the cities, the regular burning and grazing of this ecosystem had diminished since the 1950s. Thus the forest has regenerated, and continues to do so. On the recent satellite image it is clear that about half of the Park is now forested, and the other half is still savannah.