Conservation and Sustainable Use of Non Timber Forests Products in Favour of Local Communities in Integrated Forest Management Plans in Central Africa

Recently adopted reforms of forest legislation in Central African countries take into account the interests of local communities. As organizations of different kinds have been promoting this aspect, all stakeholders of the timber sector are compelled to consider it. However, the practical implementation of this aspect often remains undefined.
For vegetal NTFPs, the existing studies are typified by either a purely descriptive (ethno)botanical approach (lists of species used by an ethnic group) or by processing studies (transformation, conservation, economic value and commercialization of products) or by inventories defining the densities of certain species. Only a few studies examine the productivity of certain species.
Within this context, one can conclude that there is a lack of studies that monitor the pressure exerted by local communities on the available products. The forest manager remains destitute while trying to monitor the level of exploitation of the ecosystem, while implementing a sustainable exploitation of the available resources or when he tries to set up conservation measures.
This study aims at solving this problem. At first, a quantitative follow-up of the pressure exerted on vegetal NTFPs by a local Badjoué community living at the border of the Dja Reserve (Cameroon) is presented. This community of hunters and farmers (317 inhabitants) can be considered as representative of the way of life of many ethnic groups in rain forests. Pressure exerted is defined in terms of consumed quantities of each product and during several seasons. The consumed quantities are then converted into numbers of fructifying trees. Main results are twofold: on the one hand, the consumption of major exploited NTFPs can be expressed in terms of consumed quantities per habitant and per day during a certain period. On the other hand, we were able to calculate the number of tree stands that should be available to cope with the demands of the local community (with about 300 members). We could conclude that it is necessary — for our Badjoué community — to have 26 fructifying Irvingia gabonensis trees, 17 Baillonella toxisperma trees, 7 Ricinodendron heudelotii trees and 71 Trichoscypha spp. trees.
Such research allows forest managers to consider the needs of local communities.
Finally, the example of the Moabi (Baillonnella toxisperma Pierre) is chosen to illustrate the usefulness of this kind of approach for forest management planning.