The Support Service for Local Development Initiatives (SAILD) has produced a documentary highlighting the assets and challenges of Deng Deng National Park, located in the East Cameroon region.
The thirteen-minute feature film, released in November 2024, presents the protected area as a jewel of Cameroon’s natural heritage.
The Deng Deng National Park (PNDD) covers an area of 68,264 hectares in the East Cameroon region. It was created in 2010 with the aim of preserving natural resources and restoring the ecological balance disrupted by infrastructure projects in the region. “In the PNDD, there are fars species such as the elephant, chimpanzee, gorilla, sitatunga and giant pangolin. Others include the bushpig, the hylocher, etc.,” enthused Jean Josselin Meka, curator of Deng Deng Park.
The park also boasts a variety of vegetation, with vast, dense forests in the central and southern parts, and savannahs in the north.
The park’s periphery includes nineteen villages whose populations are heavily dependent on natural resources for their livelihoods. This is one of the threats to the protected area highlighted in a sequence of the film. “With the population of the village, we don’t have an area where we can grow our crops. The park came and made us leave a large part of our plots, and today we have no more arable land; we are obliged to violate the park’s boundaries”, reveals Pierre Garba, Lom 1 village chief.
The documentary also highlights other problems that could jeopardize the long-term conservation of the PNDD. Notably, “the expansion of agricultural activities motivated by the demographic growth of neighboring villages; illegal deforestation caused by the need for arable land and firewood; the weakness of financial and human resources dedicated to park management, sometimes hindering the effective implementation of protection measures; and the uncontrolled and illegal exploitation of natural resources”.
Collective mobilization is essential
To counter this, the Cameroon Ministry of Forests and Fauna, supported by a number of national and international organizations, has set up a number of measures. These include SAILD, which has been working for eighteen months to implement several actions aimed at limiting deforestation and degradation of the PNDD in 3 riverside villages, including Tête d’Eléphant, Liguim and Lom.
These actions include the setting up of Comités Riverains de Gestion Participative to strengthen the participation of local communities in the conservation of the PNDD.
conservation of the PNDD, the introduction of agroecological practices to reduce the expansion of cultivation within the PNDD, the restoration of 7,000 forest and fruit trees, and the introduction of income-generating activities to diversify the population’s sources of income.
However, given the size of the Park’s local communities – nineteen in all – these initiatives appear insufficient to ensure the sustainability of conservation actions and to resolve all the problems facing Deng Deng National Park. A sequence was put to good use, with the aim of popularizing prospects for solutions. These included the massive involvement of local populations in conservation efforts; the strengthening of park monitoring and management infrastructures; the intensification of local community awareness programs and the promotion of responsible ecological tourism. Achievements which, according to the documentary, are possible thanks to cooperation between local communities, the authorities and the international community. The PNDD film therefore calls on all concerned to mobilize collectively:
“Let’s act together now so that Deng Deng National Park continues to demonstrate our determination to preserve Cameroon’s natural heritage”.
- Sharon Maché
