Goal
Increased resilience of the Faro landscape in the northern region of Cameroon as a result of more sustainable and inclusive management of natural resources, habitats, and keystone species such as the iconic Lord Derby eland.
Size
2,036,395 acres
The Faro National Park (FNP) and its surrounding hunting concessions (ZICs), like other protected areas in northern Cameroon, are threatened by cross-border cattle herding (transhumance), small-scale and commercial poaching, illegal fishing and gold mining in the Faro River.
The Faro-Bénoué-Bouba Ndjida landscape consists of three anchor national parks and 28 government gazetted ZICs (i.e. hunting blocks), plus a handful of community-owned ZICs that together buffer the national parks and provide critically important linkages across this invaluable central-west African landscape.
Cameroon, and specifically the Faro-Bénoué-Bouba Ndjida protected area complex, represents one of the most valuable, relatively intact and connected natural landscapes that remains in all of central Africa. The complex lies predominantly within the North Cameroon Region, but also extends southwards into the Adamawa Region, and is representative of Sudano-Sahelian climate and biota with some transitional Sudano-Guinean representation where there is a suitable microclimate.
It is a regional stronghold for critically endangered wildlife, such as the central-west African lion and elephant subspecies and the iconic Lord Derby eland.
Primary Threats
This landscape is under severe pressure from a diverse array of threats, and urgent intervention is required to secure lasting landscape connectivity and healthy ecosystem functioning. Increased immigration and escalating human needs are resulting in the expansion of areas being cleared for agriculture, increasing livestock encroachment, growth in all forms of poaching, and the illegal extraction of natural resource in and around the protected areas.
