Programmes » Biodiversity Conservation

Our biodiversity conservation programme seeks to create economic incentives for conservation by adding value to natural resources. Through a variety of long-term conservation projects, from small-scale community tree planting to internationally-sponsored biodiversity monitoring plots, our goal is not only the understanding of African forest biology and ecology, but to provide data on the relative abundance of economically valued species. This information helps us to decide which species to put into production and which to protect or cultivate, as well as the right policy mix and regulatory mechanisms to facilitate the emergence of a local productive sector. It is our hope that these measures will create a countermeasure to reduce the anthropogenic pressure on forests.

Biological Resources

In collaboration with various national and international agencies, we are conducting inventories of West and central African forests. Small biodiversity monitoring plots have been established in the Oban-Boshi-Okwangwo forest complex (Nigeria), the Mabeta-Moliwe forest, the Campo Ma'an, the Ejagham forest. Working with the Center for Tropical Forest Science, we equally initiated action on the establishment of a 50ha plot at the Korup National Park (Cameroon), for long-term monitoring of forest dynamics

Valuing Nature

Our projects include:
· Valuation of the resources related to pharmaceutical development,
· Non-timber forest products presently being used by the community;
· Potential for increased commercialisation of some of these products;
· Environmental services rendered by this intact natural system; and
· Potential for timber and tourism.

We assess local cultural values in an attempt to obtain the best use of the resource for all.
Bioprospecting

We have developed innovative and successful methods of biological prospecting for medicines, cosmetics and crop protection agents that are based on leads from traditional ethnobotanical knowledge and ecological indicators. Our major in-country focus is on the development of cures for malaria and other tropical diseases. We have also developed partnerships with developed countries, in order to strengthen our search for treatments to fight cancer and AIDS. In these projects, full recognition and compensation is given to the sources of knowledge and raw materials.

Biopartnering

BDCP helps West-Central African communities establish buffer zones and extraction reserves, and to cultivate selected tree crops as food, fuel and erosion barriers.
· Akampa Deep Forest Farm (Cross River state, Nigeria) for cultivation of Physostigma venenosum, a highly prized medicinal plant.
· The Pygeum Project (Bamenda, Cameroon, for the planting of Prunus africana, an endangered medicinal plant.

 

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