Red-tailed guenon - by Robbie Whytok, San Diego Zoo Global
Ebo Forest: a hotspot for conservation research under threat Cameroon’s Ebo Forest is the most biologically diverse area in the Gulf of Guinea. But with government plans to create two long-term logging concessions in the forest, its future is uncertain
D
uring the course of his research in Cameroon’s Ebo Forest, biologist Dr. Ekwoge Abwe made a discovery that would launch his career. He stumbled across a troop of Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees in the forest canopy cracking open coula nuts with stones and wooden clubs. Later he witnessed the same chimpanzees ‘fishing’ for termites with sticks – making them the only known chimpanzees in the world to both crack open nuts and fish for termites. Discoveries of this scale have become a defining characteristic of Ebo Forest over the last few decades. Early one morning on a research
45
trip in 2002, Abwe’s mentor, Dr. Bethan Morgan, awoke to the distinctive sound of a gorilla beating its chest, in a forest where gorillas had never been scientifically recorded. The group that she subsequently observed live in a section of the forest 200 km away from the nearest neighbouring gorilla population. Given their location, scientists have yet to determine whether the Ebo population belongs to the subspecies of Cross River Gorilla, Western Lowland Gorilla, or represents a subspecies previously unknown to science. Such discoveries contributed to the decision of the Cameroonian government to begin the
