Rainforests in Cameroon: Facts and Conservation

Nov 30, 2025 0

The Congo Basin forest, spanning six Central African countries, is not just the largest tropical forest on the continent, but also the second-largest in the world. Cameroon, located on the central western shore of Africa, plays a vital role in this ecosystem. The country’s dense forests are inhabited by screaming red and green monkeys, chimpanzees, and mandrills, as well as rodents, bats, and numerous birds-from tiny sunbirds to giant hawks and eagles. A few elephants survive in the forest and in the grassy woodlands, where baboons and several types of antelope are the most common animals.

Map of the Congo Basin

The Importance of the Congo Basin

Because the Congo rainforest plays just as vital a role in our planet’s health. The Congo Basin forests span around 500 million acres, an area larger than Alaska, and cover six countries: Cameroon, Central African Republic (CAR), Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Republic of Congo (RoC), Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon. Accounting for over 70% of Africa’s tropical forests, the region is a hot spot for biodiversity, including the critically endangered forest elephant and the largest number and diversity of great ape species.

The basin’s forest, marine, and freshwater ecosystems are some of the Earth’s most important-encompassing a rich mosaic of rivers, dense forests, savannas, and wetlands, including the world’s biggest tropical peatlands. These ecosystems provide services critical to the well-being of people locally and globally. The colossal scale of the Congo Basin and the relative intactness of its habitats contribute to its extraordinary vitality and species richness.

Key Facts About the Congo Rainforest

The Congo Basin is vital to human life, inside and beyond the forests’ borders.
1 in 5 of all of Earth’s living species live in the Congo rainforest.
They possess vast, in-depth knowledge of the forests, local animals, and medicinal plants.
The regional population across the six countries is estimated at over 157 million people, of which some 60 million people rely directly on Congo Basin forests for food, medicine, materials, and shelter.
Among the 150 ethnic groups in the Congo Basin, the BaAka, BaKa, BaMbuti, Efe, and other Indigenous peoples have lived there for centuries and are profoundly connected to the ecosystem.

Threats to the Rainforest

Despite ever-increasing recognition of the Congo Basin’s value and the crucial services it provides, the region faces numerous threats, as reflected by the high degree of poaching and escalating rates of forest degradation and deforestation. The Congo Basin has abundant natural resources, such as timber, petroleum, and minerals. Damaging and unsustainable extraction practices cast an ominous shadow over the future of this vast area. In addition, excessively high levels of ivory poaching and commercial bushmeat hunting are wiping out the resident wildlife, especially charismatic megafauna. Poverty remains a serious challenge in the region.

Deforestation

Two-thirds of global forest cover loss occurs in the tropics and subtropics, where vast clusters of deforestation hot spots-also known as “deforestation fronts”-are destroying the important ecosystem services forests provide. The Congo Basin is one of 24 hot spots around the world. The amount of Congo Basin forest disturbed by human activities has increased annually since 2009, the Observatory for Central Africa Forests reports. At this rate, 27% of the region’s forests will be wiped out by 2050.

Besides logging, deforestation results from fuelwood collection and subsistence farming. Overall, Cameroon lost 13.4 percent of its forest cover or 3.3 million hectares between 1990 and 2005 and deforestation rates have increased by 10 percent since the close of the 1990s. Deforestation is beginning to have a significant environmental impact in parts of the country. In the north, deforestation has been blamed for increasing soil erosion, desertification, and reduced quality of pastureland.

Demand for Natural Resources

Global demand for the Congo Basin’s natural resources, including wood, oil and gas, diamonds, gold, iron, and coltan (used to make cell phones), continues to rise. A large and growing percentage of the Congo Basin is under concession to logging and mining companies. While these sectors are important sources of employment, those who come to work in the region’s extractive industries put pressure on the forests. They often rely on subsistence methods to meet their basic needs, cutting down trees for fuel and hunting animals for food.

Cameroon once had one of the strongest economies of sub-Sahara Africa, but in the late 1990s the declining price of commodities including oil, coffee, and cocoa, hit the country very hard. In the recovery following the economic crisis caused by the devaluation of the CFA Franc, building and public works projects increased domestic demand for timber products. Lacking an effective forest conservation program and suffering from endemic and pervasive corruption-it annually ranks near the top of the list for the world's most corrupt countries-Cameroon has found logging highly damaging to the rainforest environment.

Illegal Wildlife Trade

The regional commercial bushmeat trade and poaching of species such as elephants, pangolins, and parrots are the leading causes of wildlife loss in the Congo Basin. The commercial and unsustainable bushmeat trade for urban consumers is driven by a burgeoning market for animals such as monkeys, antelopes, gorillas, and bonobos. In the DRC alone, people consume more than 1 million tons of bushmeat annually.

Read also: History of Cameroon Soccer

Threatened and endangered species in the Congo Basin also face international demand for their parts and products, including illegal elephant ivory, pangolin scales, and endangered bird species. This is threatening the survival of many wildlife species, which is leading to local extinctions and risking the loss of forest elephants in their entirety.

The trafficking of bushmeat thrives in Cameroon in conjunction with the timber industry.

Conservation Efforts

Twenty-five years ago, WWF-Cameroon took a visionary step by bringing together the 'forest countries' within the Congo Basin. In March 1999, for the first time on the African continent, presidents and leaders from the region gathered in Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon, to reflect on the protection of the Congo forests.

Across Africa, WWF country offices support various transboundary conservation landscapes and national parks, such Lobeke, Nki and Boumba Bek National Parks in Cameroon, the Dzanga Sangha Protected Areas in the CAR, Salonga National Park in DRC and the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park in the Republic of Congo. WWF negotiates access rights for indigenous people and local communities to natural resources and also providing training for government eco-guards on human rights.

Conserving Cameroon's forests should be a top priority given their high level of biodiversity. The country has some 936 species of birds, 211 mammals, 322 reptiles, 192 amphibians, and 8,260 species of plants. Some of the better known protected areas in Cameroon are Campo Maan National Park, Dja Reserve, Lobek National Park, Waza National Park, and Korup National Park.

We’ve supported communities in the Congo rainforest for many years. We fund projects in the Congo rainforest, including beekeeping, solar panel installations and knowledge sharing workshops. You can learn more about our work in the Congo rainforest and how we’re supporting communities living there. They have an abundance of knowledge of the forest and know what it takes to protect it.

Forest Cover and Deforestation Rates

The following table shows the forest cover and deforestation rates in Cameroon:

Forest Cover	Data
Total forest area	21,245,000 ha
% of land area	45.6%
Annual change in forest cover (2000-2005)	-220,000 ha
Annual deforestation rate (2000-2005)	-1.0%

Mother gorilla with her baby in the Congo rainforest