development : adaptive management of success in
Waza-Logone, Cameroon
Scholte, P.T.
Citation
Scholte, P. T. (2005, November 23). Floodplain rehabilitation and the future of conservation & development : adaptive management of success in Waza-Logone, Cameroon. Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML), Leiden. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/1887/4290
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of Conservation & Development
Adaptive management of succes in
Waza-Logone, Cameroon
I first learnt of the Waza-Logone floodplain rehabilitation plans in 1992 and was immediately thrilled by its perspectives. I expected that reflooding could trigger a cascade of developments and provide a new élan in a rather paralysed environment. At that time I was working in nearby Chad in a Sahelian environment where im-proved management without substantial inputs was out of scope under the reign-ing economic conditions. In Waza-Logone, an area still endowed with spectacular wildlife, we could start this unique experiment, improving the livelihoods of fish-ermen and pastoralists, rehabilitating wildlife habitat and, ‘on top’, triggering an improved management system. This study follows the quest of preparing, imple-menting, observing, discussing and analysing floodplain rehabilitation and, as proved necessary, developing the human capacity to assure that both wildlife and humans would benefit from the rehabilitation interventions.
This study reflects the development of my activities in the Lake Chad Basin in the 1990s. My assignment from 1990 till 1993 at the Programme Ecologie Pastorale at the Laboratoire de Farcha (Chad) was an excellent preparation for the research I carried out in neighbouring Cameroon at the Waza-Logone Projet (Maroua, 1993-1997) and at the Ecole pour la Formation des Spécialistes de la Faune (Garoua, 1998-2000). Temporarily back in the Netherlands, various organisations request-ed my presence in the region, through short-term assignments, in 2000-2003, allowing me to keep track of some of the latest developments.
The following chapters also reflect my personal development. I started in the Lake Chad basin as an ecologist with an interest for social and development activities, developing into an ‘environmental scientist’ in the CML-Leiden tradition. Yet, I did not neglect my field biological roots and was stimulated by the request to contribute to the ‘Important Bird Areas of Africa’ and ‘Mammals of Africa’. I discovered anoth-er challenge when teaching an MSc course on rangeland management at the Uni-versity of Ndjamena. I was captured by the exchange of experiences in professional education. In 1998 I was asked to initiate Garoua’s community conservation cur-riculum. Supervising students during their field research has been amongst my most rewarding experiences.
set-up of our monitoring and presenting a series of base-line studies and inventories, which laid a foundation for the later reported studies. This thesis has slowly grown through the elaboration of individual papers that, although based on the Waza-Logone and Garoua work, became small projects with their own objectives and con-clusions. This allowed me to take some distance from the project and concentrate on linkages with upcoming scientific discussions. In this process, a number of papers were ultimately discarded from this thesis, especially the older ones that were large-ly descriptive and the ones that did not sufficientlarge-ly contribute to the connecting (sci-entific) thread of this study, see annexed list of background publications.
The first half of this study ‘Impact of reflooding’ is predominantly based on eco-logical science. Chapters vary in scope, set-up and pretensions. Presented work on vegetation (Chapters 3,4) and pastoralist responses (Chapter 7) was developed and carried out as part of systematic research. Chapters on waterbirds- and antelope dynamics (5,6) on the other hand, compile a large number of surveys, carried out at various times for various purposes. The variety of survey methods and person-nel as well as their large temporal and spatial scale, prevent a strong analysis on causal relations. These latter chapters aim, based on best available science, to draw broad conclusions on developments in bird and antelope populations, the area’s ‘conservation assets’. Moreover, they are of value for the total picture to be drawn in Chapters 8 and 12.
worked in the field, as authors or as reviewers. Throughout this book I use ‘we’ to stress common work and ideas of my colleagues and I, and ‘I’ when I refer to my own specific opinion.
Throughout this book, indicated years of ecological monitoring refer to the rainy and flood-ing season and not necessarily the calendar year when the consequences of the refloodflood-ing were monitored. Vegetation composition monitored in May 1994 for example, was referred to as 1993 vegetation because 1993 was the year of the relevant growing (= rainy + flood-ing) season. To allow comparison of flooding differences, also bird and antelope counts have been referred to the relevant rainy and flooding season. The January 1995 waterbird counts and late April 1995 wildlife counts were thus indicated as 1994 counts. In descrip-tions not specifically related to ecological monitoring (Chapters 2, 8-11), years are indicat-ed as calendar years.
Nomenclature of woody plants follows Geerling (1982), grasses van der Zon (1992), and other plant species the second edition of the Flora of West Tropical Africa (Hepper, F.N. 1954-1972). Names of birds follow the checklist of the area (Scholte et al. 1999), names of mammals follow Kingdon (1997).
PART I – Introduction
1 General Introduction and Study Outline 13
2 The Ecological History of Waza-Logone: Constructing a reference
image for floodplain rehabilitation 65
PART II – The Impact of Reflooding in Waza-Logone
Impact on Vegetation
3 Floodplain Rehabilitation in North Cameroon: Impact on vegetation
dynamics 89
4 Maximum Flood Depth Determines Above-ground Biomass in African
Seasonally Shallowly Flooded Grasslands 107
Impact on Wildlife
5 Waterbird Recovery in Waza-Logone (Cameroon), resulting from
increased rainfall, floodplain rehabilitation and colony protection 129
6 Antelope Populations in Waza National Park (Cameroon) from 1960
till 2001: Impact of changes in rainfall, hydrology and human pressure 145
Impact on Pastoralists
7 Pastoralist Responses to Floodplain Rehabilitation in North Cameroon 161
PART III – Enhancing Conservation – Development Integration by Management Planning and Training
Risks: the overshoot of success
8 Immigration: A potential time bomb under the integration of
experience in consensual protected area management planning
in Cameroon 203
Foundation: development of human capacities
10 Curriculum Development at the African Regional Wildlife Colleges,
with special reference to the Ecole de Faune (Cameroon) 233
11 Wildlife Managers’ Perceptions of Community Conservation Training
in West and Central Africa 251
PART IV – Synthesis
12 Floodplain Rehabilitation and the Future of Conservation & Development:
Synthesis and concluding remarks 269
References 299 Summary 321 Samenvatting 329
About the Author 337
List of Background Publications 338
Acknowledgments 340
Introduction
1 General Introduction and Study Outline
2 The Ecological History of Waza-Logone: Constructing a reference
1
1.1
Introduction to African floodplains and their rehabilitation
‘From a European’s point of view Nuerland has no favourable qualities, unless its severity be counted as such, for its endless marshes and wide savannah plains have an austere, monotonous charm. It is throughout hard on man and beast, being for most of the year either parched or a swamp. But Nuer think that they live in the finest country on earth and, it must be admitted, for herdsmen their country has many admirable features’
Evans-Pritchard (1940) introducing the ecology of the Sudd (South Sudan), the largest stretch of seasonally flooded grassland in Africa.
African floodplains
No and name Country Area at peak flood (km2) Floodplain type
1 Senegal Delta Senegal 8 000 Coastal delta
2 Senegal Valley Senegal 5 000 Fringing floodplain
3 Inner Niger Delta Mali 30 000 Internal delta
4 Niger fringing plains Nigeria 5 000 Fringing floodplain
5 Niger Delta Nigeria 36 000 Coastal delta
6 Volta River Ghana 8 500 Fringing floodplain
7 Benoué River Nigeria 3 100 Fringing floodplain
8 Benoué River Cameroon 1 000 Fringing floodplain
9 Logone Floodplain Cameroon 5 000 Fringing floodplain
10 Chari and Logone Chad 63 000 Fringing floodplain
11 Congo River Congo ? Fringing floodplain
12 Barotse plain Zambia 10 750 Fringing floodplain
13 Kafue Flats Zambia 4 300 Fringing floodplain
14 Okavango Botswana 17 000 Internal delta
15 Shire River Malawi 1 000 Fringing floodplain
16 Kifakula Depression Congo 1 500 Fringing floodplain
17 Kamulondo Congo 12 000 Fringing floodplain
18 Sudd Sudan 92 000 Fringing floodplain
19 Tana Delta Kenya 1000 Coastal delta
Adapted from Drijver and Marchand 1986 and Welcomme 1979.
Since about 5000 BC, when the earliest systematic colonisation of the Nile, Meso-potaminan and Indus rivers occurred, there has been concentrated human efforts to tame the floods for agriculture and other purposes. Not all these developments have been sustainable. Overexploitation of renewable resources led to the collapse of some ancient societies, such as in Mesopotamia with its irrigated agriculture (Janssen & Scheffer 2004). Land uses that did not interfere with the hydrological regime such as grazing and associated burning and extensive agriculture, have also had a profound influence on the natural vegetation cover (Drijver & Marchand 1986).
The hydrology of the wetlands of sub-Saharan Africa remained, until about 50 years ago, relatively unchanged explaining their general natural appearance (Denny 1993). More recently, however, demand for water and electricity has resulted in an increasing number of water management projects (Drijver & Marchand 1986). Off-shoots off these developments were varied and include expansion of inland fisheries and irrigation schemes. Large man-made lakes not only flood valleys but also regulate the water flow in catchment and drainage areas, thus depriving the seasonally flooded grasslands of their main inputs of water and sediments (Denny 1993). The loss of seasonally flooded grasslands often meant the loss of the re-source base on which local communities and wildlife depend, with devastating impacts (McCully 2001).
Few of the large African seasonally flooded grasslands are effectively protected, al-though recently efforts have been undertaken to designate large parts of the Inner Niger Delta, Lake Chad and others as Ramsar sites (WCPA 2004). But even if these floodplains have an internationally recognised protected area status, such as Waza National Park and the Kafue Flats in Zambia, this has not necessarily stopped the upstream construction of dams. Lack of impact assessments was blamed for many of these interventions (Drijver & Marchand 1986). Even though such assess-ments are increasingly undertaken, as the one of the Jonglei canal in Sudan (Howell et al. 1988), large scale hydrological interventions have continued on the African continent (McCully 2001).
Floodplain rehabilitation
Unfortunately the knowledge about African wetlands remains poor (Denny 2004) and the few studies on the impact of processes, such as water releases from reser-voirs, do not surpass a ‘black box’ stage (Hollis et al. 1993). One is therefore inclined to look at experiences with floodplain rehabilitation experiments in Europe and the USA that have lately taken flight (INTECOL 2004). These nature restoration programmes are often carried out on a sub-landscape level only, in areas meas-ured in hectares and not in square kilometres. With such applied scales it is not surprising that most restoration programmes are based on a sectoral nature con-servation approach, studied by predominantly natural sciences. Larger-scale reha-bilitation efforts almost always associate people, and require interactions of natu-ral and human sciences. The subsequent increasing complexity makes it particu-larly difficult to transpose experiences from one place to another.
These observations were earlier voiced by Schouten (2001) and Nienhuis (1998) in their comments on rehabilitation experiments in the Netherlands and Europe respectively:
‘In many cases, nature rehabilitation cannot be isolated from the rehabilitation and management of the landscape...nor can the landscape be considered in iso-lation from various socio-economic functions. The integration of these layers of interest forms one of the biggest and most urgent challenges of spatial planning in the Netherlands’ (Schouten 2001).
and
‘...experiences in Europe with the rehabilitation of large rivers are rare, relative to smaller streams, due to the large numbers of interwoven societal demands on the river, the connected economic costs and the complexity of the physical and biological systems involved. Proposals and concepts for large river restoration are much more abundant than demonstrations in the field. The empirical large-scale testing of the models, connected to the political willingness of catchment-scale restoration, are forming the real bottlenecks’ (Nienhuis et al. 1998).
The Everglades (USA) hosts the best-known large-scale (sub) tropical wetland
rehabilitation program, aiming at restoring parts of the 5000 km2degraded area
(Kiker et al. 2001). Compared to African seasonally flooded grasslands, the Ever-glades’ oligotrophy, the dominance of Cyperaceae and the limited role of wild and domestic large herbivores is striking. Most striking differences are related with the area’s socio-economic context as can be expected from its location in the USA. This is illustrated by the Everglades restoration programme’s budget of approxi-mately 10 billion USD. In contrast, the budget of the Waza-Logone floodplain
reha-bilitation totals 20 million SFr, i.e. 1% of the recovery cost per km2of the
many questions remain on the impact of restoration on the Everglades ecosystem. This has led to a still rather basic restoration vision ‘to mimic as closely as possi-ble the appearance and behaviour of the system as if drainage and development had not occurred’ (Davis & Ogden 1994). The lack of a common vision is further illustrated by the repeated delays in the implementation of the Everglades restora-tion program (Grunwald 2002).
One can conclude that for the large-scale rehabilitation of tropical floodplains in developing countries, not only demonstrations hardly exist, but also the concepts and proposals (‘models’) have yet to be formulated. The present study analyses a floodplain rehabilitation test at a landscape level in a tropical floodplain ecosystem in North Cameroon and aims to contribute to the development of these concepts and proposals for future rehabilitation trials in other African floodplains.
1.2
Introducton to ‘Conservation & Development’ and capacity
building needs
The community conservation panacea
The image with which conservation organisations in Africa present themselves has changed over the last 20 years from wildlife protection to people-oriented con-servation (e.g. Adams & Hulme 2001). The protection focus of the colonial and early independence period was reflected in autobiographies of the last European directors in charge of protected areas in Sub-Saharan Africa with titles such as
‘Mourir pour les éléphants’ (Verschuren11970), ‘Les guardiens de la vie sauvage’
(Dupuy2& Dupont 1984 and ‘An impossible dream’ (Parker & Bleazard32001).
In the early 1990s, publications such as ‘The Myth of Wild Africa’ (Adams & McShane 1992) and ‘Out of Eden’ (IIED 1994) reflected the focus of an emerging conservation brand that refuted the concept of a ‘wild Africa that had to be pro-tected against Africans’. The new ‘leitmotif’ was ‘conservation with, instead of against people’ and ‘win-win scenarios’ (Inamdar et al. 1999). This new conserva-tion paradigm, so-called Community Conservaconserva-tion, was considered a means of re-conciling Conservation and Development by ensuring that the interests and knowl-edge of local communities were taken into account (Adams & Hulme 2001). Local communities were to be provided with trade-offs of the protected area through a share in tourism and hunting revenues or the (legal) use of specific natural re-sources. Alternatively, compensations should be provided for the opportunity
(non-1 Former director of wildlife of DRC (former Zaire). 2 Former director of wildlife of Senegal.
exploitation) costs of protected area resources by the initiation of small-scale devel-opment projects. For some, community conservation was also considered a prag-matic way of dealing with increasingly poor and often corrupt governments (Adams & Hulme 2001). Community Conservation (CC) embraces a range of initiatives such as Integrated Conservation-Development Projects (ICDPs), Community-Based Conservation (CBC), Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) (Adams & Hulme 2001). These expressions are often used as synonyms, despite their different (regional) origins.
The marriage of Conservation with Development has become an attractive target for international funding that, at the end of the 1990s, totalled annually hundreds of millions of dollars (El Ashri 2001). The development of the Community Con-servation concept in Africa was based on experiences of which the CAMPFIRE
ini-tiative on wildlife utilization in Southern Africa is one of the best known (Child4
1995). The community-based mountain gorilla tourism in Rwanda and Uganda with its high revenues per tourist funnelled into local communities was another experience that stimulated the early development of Community Conservation in Africa (Weber & Vedder 2001).
Community conservation, the debate
In the late 1990s, however, critical reports on Conservation-Development projects began to emerge (Berret & Arcese 1995; Kramer et al. 1997; Terborgh et al. 2002). Some biologists went further and questioned the underlying principles of Com-munity Conservation and pleaded for a return to the ‘fortress Conservation’ ap-proach (Oates 1999; Spinage 1998). This so-called ‘pro-park lobby’ is in an unlike-ly alliance with critics who detect in community conservation a shallow façade to hide old-style preservation (Adams & Hulme 2001). Although few protected area managers seem to follow this criticism, it has led to an emerging consensus that Community Conservation is not the panacea that it initially had appeared. Com-munity Conservation has its limits when wildlife resources or socio-economic cir-cumstances do not allow their sustainable use in sufficient quantities compared to the opportunity costs of the protected areas (Adams & Hulme 2001). The poten-tial of tourism and safari hunting has, most notably, shown to be more limited than previously assumed (Wilkie & Carpenter 1999ab). The practical organisation of community conservation has also proven to require long-term investments and stable and decentralised institutional environments (Adams & Hulme 2001). Sometimes, development near protected areas may do more harm than good. Ex-periences from West Africa, the Central African Republic and the one presented in this study have shown that development in the vicinity of protected areas may appear to be a Trojan Horse jeopardising conservation (Noss 1997; Oates 1998;
Scholte 1998). Outside Africa, the Galapagos islands are an example of the risks of developing ecotourism in a prime conservation area thus triggering massive immigration and over-exploitation (Grenier 2000). Some, like Oates (1999), have therefore pleaded for a total ban on Community Conservation.
Developing tools
One may argue that not enough has been done to develop the tools for Conser-vation-Development approaches that should also take into account the risks of development. At present Conservation-Development approaches through Inte-grated Conservation Development Projects remind us of the expression ‘If your only tool is a hammer everything looks like a nail’. Or, as Adams & Hulme (2001) concluded pragmatically ‘The real issue is not whether conservation should be done with people, but how’.
Developing the capacity of park managers
The changes mentioned above in conservation image notwithstanding, one has the impression that daily African wildlife management practice has, since the days of the last European wardens, little changed in its pre-occupation with poaching control as described by Parker & Bleazard (2001). The title ‘Wildlife Wars’ of the autobiography of the former director of the Kenya Wildlife Service (Leakey & Morell 2001), covering the period in the 1990s, is meaningful. I attribute this ‘business as usual’ at least partly to the limited efforts to involve protected area personnel in the design and implementation of conservation-development (see also Western 2003). ‘Approaches to natural resource management... tend to assume that the manager is outside the system being managed. However, where the objectives include long-term sustainability, ... the managers [are] integral components of the system’ (Walker et al. 2002). With the increasing international attention for Com-munity Conservation, the role of protected area managers has been further erod-ed into a caretaker with an agenda (i.e. management plan) fillerod-ed in at the nation’s capital. This situation contrasts the early days of independence when African Park
wardens were amongst the best-educated personnel in their country.5Early
grad-uates of the regional African wildlife colleges in Mweka and Garoua became later in their careers minister or occupied other high-ranking posts in their countries, a situation increasingly difficult to imagine. Their high-ranking positions allowed them to influence developments beyond the borders of the protected area. In this study I develop a pragmatic approach on Conservation-Development. The study further aims at understanding the role of management planning and the potential of raising the capacity of protected area managers, to offer a perspective of a ‘future for Conservation & Development’.
1.3
Reflooding in Waza-Logone
6This study discusses the quest for adaptive management that was started in 1993 with reflooding parts of the Waza-Logone floodplain in North Cameroon. The re-flooding aimed to rehabilitate vegetation, birds, wildlife, pastoral grazing and fish-eries that had come under pressure as result of the construction of an upstream dam and embankment in 1979. Initially, our attention was aimed at the monitor-ing of the impact of the refloodmonitor-ing and the design and discussion of large scale reflooding options. During this process, our attention shifted to the mitigation of existing and rising conflicts in the floodplain, in particular the one between Waza National Park and the surrounding communities. Learning by doing not only has given insight on the impact and consequences of reflooding but also highlighted the need to know more about the condition of the floodplain prior to the con-struction of the dam in 1979.
Following the widespread famine during the 1970s in the Sahel, the Government of Cameroon, assisted by several donor countries, initiated a number of large-scale irrigated rice schemes. One of them was a gravitation irrigated rice scheme, for which a dam and an embankment along the Logone river were constructed to form the Lake Maga reservoir (Fig. 1.2). In combination with lower than average
rainfall,7the depth, duration and extent of downstream inundations were reduced,
which led to serious ecological degradation of the Logone floodplain, both in and outside Waza National Park (see Fig. 1.2). Annual grasses invaded the productive perennial grasslands, limiting regrowth in the dry season and reducing carrying capacity for wildlife and livestock (Scholte et al. 1996a). Fishing resources also dropped dramatically, provoking an emigration of a significant part of the human population from the floodplain (Drijver et al. 1995). Leiden University, in collabo-ration with the Garoua Wildlife College, initiated several impact studies that showed not only the devastating impact of the rice scheme but also its failure in food pro-duction. In the 1980s, protests of local populations were still considered taboo; when desperate floodplain inhabitants tried to reopen a watercourse they were deterred by the army. Despite all investments, rice cultivation did not become suc-cessful and in the early 1990s half of the irrigated rice scheme area was left un-used. A climate was thus slowly opened in which measures could be discussed to mitigate and even counteract the impact of the dam and the embankment. This allowed the start of the Waza-Logone project in 1992, a collaboration between the Cameroonian Ministry of Environment and Forestry and the World Conserva-tion Union (IUCN), the Institute of Environmental Sciences (Leiden University), the Netherlands Development Organisation (SNV) and WWF-The Netherlands.
The overall goal of the project was to assist the government of Cameroon in pur-suing the integrated management of natural resources in the Waza Logone region, so as to provide a sustainable livelihood for the local people and to maintain the diversity of the biological resources of the floodplain.
Amongst the specific objectives8were:
• To investigate, design and implement an operational plan for the rehabilitation of the hydrological regime of the Logone floodplain
• To formulate and test an operational action programme for the management and development of the area around Waza National Park (IUCN 1999; Loth & de Iongh 2004).
Studies of the Waza-Logone project in 1993 identified a number of reflooding op-tions, which were expected to have a major impact on the floodplain, including its human population. When in early 1994, the hydrologists Emmanuel Naah and Hans Wesseling, topographer Paul Kouamou and I visited the floodplain after a year of reviewing studies on hydrology, ecology and land use, we realised how lit-tle we knew on the possible impact of reflooding. The extremely flat area, with a slope of no more than a few centimetres per km, made that even basic questions such as those on the direction of flooding had to remain unanswered, let alone the impact of reflooding on vegetation or land use. The plan described in the project
document, to prepare and implement a 1000 km2reflooding in one step, looked
increasingly grotesque.
Although not planned and budgeted for, subsequent discussions held at the Waza-Logone project lead to a strong backing of a pilot release as a learning by doing experiment. An ideal candidate, without the risk of flooding habitations and crop-land, was the opening of the Petit Goroma, a watercourse that was cut off by the embankment along the Logone river (Fig. 1.2). After discussions with communi-ties and authoricommuni-ties the pilot floodplain reflooding was initiated by breaching the
embankment, reflooding from September 1994 onwards 180 km2of desiccated
floodplain and raising water levels in an additional area of approximately 600 km2.
The impact of the reflooding, already in the first year, on especially water levels, fish production and grazing exceeded our expectations. But should we attribute this to
8 Although formulated as specific objectives, these are in fact activities or outputs of the project. Also mentioned:
• To contribute to ongoing government efforts towards regional development planning by means of field evaluations of the environmental impacts of existing development projects.
• To develop a methodology for the design and implementation of conservation and development activities in other situations in the Sudano-Sahelian region.
the opening of the embankment or were there other factors, such as the favourable rainfall, that interfered? The large impact of the pilot reflooding stressed the need to strengthen the management of Waza National Park and its direct surroundings to cope with the rapidly changing situation. Especially the attraction of pastoralists and fishermen to exploit the newly reflooded areas drew our attention. At the same time a hitherto relatively strong governmental presence, including a rela-tively well equipped and staffed Waza National Park, was disappearing. Solutions had to be developed to mitigate the negative impacts of these changes. Through the formulation of a management plan, such measures were formulated and pro-grammed with local communities, sedentary as well as nomadic, protected area authorities, traditional and administrative authorities and the Ministry of Environ-ment and Forestry. Experiences with the impleEnviron-mentation of this manageEnviron-ment plan highlighted, however, the low capacity of park personnel to deal with new forms of collaboration with local communities. This motivated the training of not only park guards of the national parks in north Cameroon, but also at the Garoua Wildlife College, thus increasing the impact beyond the Waza-Logone area. The Waza-Logone pilot reflooding was a unique large-scale experiment in tropical ecosystem and land use recovery. The induced changes in floristic composition and vegetation productivity challenged vegetation dynamics theory and generally as-sumed flooding – productivity relationships. Monitored changes in waterbird and antelope numbers questioned a simple recovery mechanism and highlighted in-teractions of wildlife with competing land uses, in particular pastoralism that showed a steady increase in grazing intensity. With an impact zone of several hun-dred square kilometers, the reflooding covered site-specific and landscape issues, linking local impacts, e.g. on vegetation composition, with region-wide changes, such as on transhumant pastoralism patterns.
1.4
Research questions and study outline
The present study is organised in four parts. The first introduces the area and avail-able information sources. The second part discusses the impact of the reflooding induced in 1994 on the Waza-Logone floodplain. The third part questions the risks of this floodplain rehabilitation that were mitigated by management plan-ning and traiplan-ning. The fourth part syntheses these experiences.
PART I – Introduction
How has our reference image of Waza-Logone developed in time?
The present knowledge of the ecology of Waza-Logone has developed in a period of widely fluctuating climatic conditions and a rapidly changing land use. I start this study with a presentation of the main sources of information on Waza-Logone in a time sequence over the last 150 years (Chapter 2). The presented historical dia-gram shows the link between available information and the reference image for floodplain rehabilitation. Presented information also stresses the ecological signif-icance of Waza-Logone, even in its degraded post-dam period, justifying the reha-bilitation efforts. The papers cited in the list of background publications provide additional information on these issues.
PART II – The Impact of Reflooding in Waza-Logone
The overall research question is: Does reflooding lead to the restoration of the Waza-Logone floodplain to its pre-dam structure and conservation and development functions? In other words, How resilient is this floodplain environment after the dam construc-tion? Has it switched into another state without possibility to return to its pre-dam state?
Vegetation composition
In Chapter 3 we synthesise the main findings of unpublished studies in the 1960s and 1970s, prior to the Maga dam construction and after the dam in the 1980s on the changes in vegetation composition, that were our de facto reference image. My colleagues and I systematised this monitoring to study the vegetation changes triggered by the 1994 pilot reflooding. We expected that reflooding would induce the restoration of perennial vegetation in five years to its pre-dam situation, char-acterised by the perennial grasses Echinochloa pyramidalis, Vetiveria nigritana, Hyparrhenia rufa and Oryza longistaminata (Wesseling et al. 1994). This optimism
was based on observations in a 40 km2area in the central, relatively well flooded
floodplain where the water level was raised by the construction of a small dam (Drij-ver & Kouahou 1995). Studies on hydroseries, the sequence of plant species along a flooding gradient, explained the impact of this water raising (van der Zon 1992). This use of hydroseries is, however, not uncontested (e.g. John et al. 1993; Leen-dertse et al. 1997). The area downstream of the Maga dam had become entirely desiccated and a slower or only partial vegetation recovery could alternatively be expected.
Above questions are linked to the discussion on ‘ (Gleasonian) Succession versus State and Transition’ alternatively called ‘gradual changes’ versus ‘catastrophic shifts in ecosystems’ (Scheffers 2001). This discussion has taken flight in range-land management in the 1980s (Westoby 1980; Westoby et al. 1989, see also Rietkerk et al. 1996), followed by aquatic and other ecosystems (e.g. Scheffer et al. 1993). Floodplains have been considered environments where cyclic (Gleasonian) succession takes place; the ‘lineair’ Clementsian succession model (evolving into a single state) is obviously of little use (Van der Valk 1992; Middleton 1999). The alternative State and Transition model predicts a different scenario, in which sud-den switches into different vegetation communities will take place only once a threshold has been passed. This unpredictably threshold may be difficult to pass hampering necessary interventions to reach the desired state. Following this model, reinstalling the pre-dam flooding regime would not automatically lead to the restoration to the pre-dam vegetation.
Vegetation productivity
with above-ground biomass at the end of the wet season allowing an assessment of the impact of the 1994 pilot reflooding.
Does reflooding lead to the recovery of birds and wildlife to their pre-dam numbers?
Waterbirds
Waterbirds constitute one of the principal conservation assets of the Waza-Logone area (Fotso et al. 2001), but have hitherto received little attention other than occa-sional, qualitative observations. The only quantitative information on the occur-rence of waterbirds prior to the Maga dam was on Black-crowned Crane, one of the area’s flagship species that numbered at least 10 000 individuals in the 1970s, almost as much as the present entire subspecies population. The resident Black-crowned Crane depends on moist grassland habitat during the crucial nesting and dry season periods. Its population drop to about 2000-2500 individuals in the early 1990s was therefore attributed to the Maga dam construction (Scholte et al. 1999; Sinibaldi et al. 2004). A comparison of the dominant habitats showed the importance of perennial grasslands and 20-40 cm deep water for waterbirds (Scholte et al. 2000a). Against this background, Chapter 5 investigates whether reflooding, that increased the extent of shallow water and allowed the recovery of perennial grasslands, has resulted in increased numbers of waterbirds. The rela-tively favourable rainfall that characterised the period since the reflooding, may also have influenced the observed waterbird numbers. This also holds for protec-tion, especially of vulnerable colonies.
Antelopes
Waza National Park is one of the last remaining areas in dryland West-Central Africa with abundant wildlife. Antelopes are amongst the wildlife most promi-nently present in the area, but the floodplain antelope Kob and Korrigum (‘Topi’) in particular have undergone a dramatic drop in population numbers after the Maga dam construction. Chapter 6 assesses the development of these antelope popula-tions from the early 1960s, allowing appreciating their possible (partial) recovery to the spectacular population size in the early 1970s. As discussed for waterbirds, the positive influence of the relatively favourable rainfall since the mid-1980s on the one hand and the increasing human pressure on the national park on the other hand was expected to influence possible reflooding impacts.
Does reflooding lead to full recovery of pastoral use of the floodplain?
Pastoralists
the organisation of discussion sessions with authorities in the pursuit of solutions to the reigning insecurity that troubled their daily life. In Chapter 7, we present the impact of the 1994 pilot reflooding on the pastoral migration pattern and the resulting increasing cattle grazing intensities. Three scenarios were formulated to capture potential reactions to reflooding: an overshoot scenario with a higher graz-ing intensity than resources available, a territorial scenario with a lower grazgraz-ing intensity and an ideal distribution scenario with a grazing intensity in line with the availability of resources. An important justification of the pilot reflooding was that the rehabilitated floodplain would become an alternative for grazing inside Waza NP. In the late 1980s and early 1990s incursions of cattle, searching for dry season forage and water, constituted a major source of conflict with the Waza National Park authorities.
PART III – Enhancing Conservation-Development Integration by Management Planning and Training
The overall research question is: If a rehabilitation is ecologically successful, how may then the ecosystem’s functions that underlie the balance between Conservation and Development be assured?
Risks: The overshoot of success
Chapter 8 shows that pastoralists and fishermen, attracted by the newly available resources, compete with waterbirds and floodplain antelopes, thus threatening the balance of the pursued conservation-development integration. I subsequently ana-lyse if comparable risks exist in other Integrated Conservation-Development Projects (ICDPs) and how these are dealt with. The immigration risks motivated the devel-opment of a policy, based on a categorisation of local communities, of which some first promising results are presented. The experiences from Waza-Logone are of great interest for other Conservation-Development Projects whose impacts are often difficult to distinguish from other development impacts.
Grip on the whole: Management planning
from inside Waza National Park. The plan also allowed the creation of a manage-ment committee in which, for the first time, park authorities and local communi-ties discussed problems related with the park management. I discuss the formu-lation process of this management plan and review its outcome based on an inde-pendent evaluation in 2002. These lessons are put in a perspective of some of the key issues of ongoing management planning in African protected areas (Chapter 9).
Foundation: Development of human capacities
The policies analysed were facilitated and driven by third parties, i.e. internation-al NGOs and expatriates mainly. Protected area managers played a rather limited role only, due to lack of training and experience, undermining their involvement in the development of conservation-development integration. I address necessary training of protected area personnel on two levels. In Chapter 10 I address train-ing requirements on an institutional level and discuss curriculum reforms at the Garoua regional wildlife college for West-Central Africa, through a comparison with the other regional African wildlife colleges in Eastern and Southern Africa. In Chapter 11, I evaluate courses addressing community conservation and park plan-ning. These pilot courses were developed at the Garoua Wildlife College during the Waza management plan formulation and implementation. Presented experi-ences are also relevant for other protected areas in West and Central Africa.
PART IV – Floodplain Rehabilitation and the Future of Conservation-Development: Synthesis and Concluding Remarks
In the concluding Chapter 12, I review the outcome of the reflooding. I compare the reflooding responses that, because of their different response times, caused a domination of human supported resources. I continue analysing the contribu-tions of management planning and capacity building to correct these undesired side effects of the otherwise successful reflooding. Based on these experiences I comment empirical concepts of ecosystem change most notably resilience and hysteresis. Especially the time dimension, that played such an overruling role in outcome of the floodplain rehabilitation, receives special attention. The normative ecosystem approach, is subsequently used to present the key findings of this study in a wider context.
1.5
The quest for adaptive management
Adaptive management, can be loosely defined as the learning by doing, relies on an accumulation of credible evidences to support a decision that demands action (Walters & Holling 1990).
In addition to the discipline specific discussions introduced in the preceding para-graphs, I would like to present this book as test of an integrated approach of trop-ical floodplain rehabilitation.
The 1980s and 1990s witnessed a blossoming of concepts and theories which tried to capture the ecological as well as social aspects of the management of ecosys-tems. The Ecosystem Approach (Mitchell 2002), Ecosystem Based Management (Pirot et al. 2000), Resilience management (Walker et al. 2002) are some of the more recent expressions, inspired by Adaptive Management, introduced by Hol-ling (1978). Adaptive management was justified by the difficulties to assess the control of all aspects of ecosystem management motivating ‘a shift to adaptive management, which relies on the flexible, diverse and redundant regulation, mon-itoring for responsiveness and experimental probing’ (Holling 1995). Key desirable attributes highlighted are the capacity for learning and to be flexible and adaptive, hence the link that is often made with ‘learning organizations’ (Mitchell 2002; Salafsky et al. 2001).
Walters & Holling (1990) classified adaptive management into three categories, ranging from trial and error, to passive and subsequently active adaptive manage-ment. For some floodplain resources, i.e. waterbirds, lack of any quantitative ref-erence information allowed us initially only to pursue a trial and error approach as outlined in the previous paragraph. For other resources, most notably perenni-al vegetation and floodplain antelopes, we started with a single hypothesis ‘requir-ing a natural habitat’, i.e. with as target ‘back to the pre-dam situation’. Over the years this passive adaptive management evolved into a more active adaptive man-agement and alternative hypotheses of floodplain rehabilitation were formulated, amongst others related with favourable rainfall conditions and unfavourable con-ditions related to human pressure.
2
The Ecological History of Waza-Logone:
Constructing a reference image for
floodplain rehabilitation
‘...the country, however, became exceedingly interesting and pleasant when we reached one of the numerous water-courses of these African Netherlands...., an open and clear river about seventy yards broad, which being fringed on each bank with a border of slender deléb palms or kamelutu, in the clear, magnificent morning sky afforded a most pitoresque view’
2.1
Historical periods and main ecological characteristics
Rainfall and flooding are the dominant factors, which trigger changes in vegeta-tion composivegeta-tion and producvegeta-tion (Chapter 3, 4), waterbird and large antelope population sizes (Chapter 5, 6) and pastoral migration and livestock densities (Chapter 7). They should be known in order to interpret the changes induced in 1994, subject of this thesis, in a wider, spatial and chronological/temporal context. Below, I will show that our reference image of the ‘pre-Maga dam’ period when the ‘floodplain was still intact’ was biased by the period from which information was consulted. Changes in hydrology, land use, vegetation and especially wildlife have often occurred already years earlier, but in several cases, the system’s re-silience has led to their recovery. The intensity and speed of changes in the post Maga dam period were, however, unprecedented in recent times, triggered by lower than average rainfall and man-induced drought.
I distinguished eight historical periods, based on criteria such as rainfall, hydrol-ogy and the impact of human interventions and, above all, the quantity and quality of available sources of information. Information sources prior to the 1930s encom-passed indirect information from excavations, travel descriptions and oral history, whereas scientific descriptions, contacts with scientists and local communities constitute our more recent sources of information.
Rainfall data was collected at nearby N’djamena (Chad) from 1905 till 1914 and from 1931 onwards (Figs. 2.1, 2.3). We therefore also have to rely on less detailed information on climatic periods in the region, derived from Lake Chad water lev-els during the last millennium (Fig. 2.2), and other geological, palynological and historical sources (Maley 1981; Nicolson 1986).
1 Prior to ±1820 Information sources
Sources of information on Waza-Logone prior to 1820 are essentially archaeological studies and travel descriptions, hand-written manuscripts in Italian or Arabic, which were translated and reinterpreted before being accessible (Hopkins & Levt-zion 1981; Rauchenberger 1999). One often has the impression that these second-ary sources are illustrative of the interpreter’s own perception and interest, making it difficult to draw conclusions on the state of the environment.
Rainfall and hydrology
Rainfall
Interventions
Flood
V
egetation & wildlife
Communities/pastoralists
W
aza NP management
2000
change of park warden (Saleh)
1999
Move of Baram (park village)
1998
W
aza Committee created
1997
reflooding 2 (7-10 m
3 s
-1 )
Management plan approved
1996 1995 1994
reflooding 1 (20 m
3 s
-1 ) enlarged with 180 km
2
Change of park warden (Habibou)
1993
start of vegetation monitoring
1992
Start WL-project
1991 1990
frequent crop raiding by Elephants
1987
low Kob numbers
1986
Civil war in Chad (1982-1987)
1985
none
start of dam impact studies
1984 none extinction W aterbuck 1983 none
emigration out of floodplain
1982
Designation as Biosphere reserve (1979 or 1982?)
1981
New park warden (Badjoda)
1980
first reflooding study (Wit & Grijs)
Park warden killed
1979 Maga dam reduced with 1500 km 2 1978 1977 extinction Cheetah 1975 end of F AO project 1974
construction of upstream embankments (1971-1977)
1973
limiting drainage into the Logone plain
FAO assistance project
1972
road construction
none
1970
Ecole de Faune created
1969 1968
W
aza NP created
1965 1964
Elephants destroying crops
crop protection unit created
1963 1962
park village Zeila burned
1960
Independence of Cameroon
1959 1958 1957
Flizot park warden (or earlier?)
1956 1955 1954 1953 1952 1951 1950
‘first’ Elephants appearing
1950
Dragesco 1952
‘first Elephants since memory in W
aza’
1940 1935
Zina-W
aza hunting reserve created
1930
no elephants observed
Dieguere village created (Musgum)
1920
creation of Andirni and Badadaye villages (Arab and Fulbe)
1913
major drought
1910
no elephants observed
rhino observed
creation of Mbili-2 by Musgum from Pouss
1900
Rabah defeated / colonisation
rise in ivory commerce
0= average
conquest of Rabah, massacre in Mahé
? 1890 rinderpest? (park village) buf falo present ? 1880
elephant dead, Niwadji
?
1870
Zina brisk market for ivory
Anané large village
? 1860 ? 1850 elephant prolific Figur e 2.1
– Historical chart, events in W
aza-Logone from 1850 onwards, with periods of major upheaval indicated (cf. collapsing panarchie
is sufficiently detailed to suggest the occurrence of drought-wet cycles with a length of approximately three-quarter of a century (Fig. 2.2).
Archaeological sources
Dwelling mounds, presumably man-made, are widely dispersed on the Waza-Lo-gone floodplain. Some of them are at present still inhabited, such as the district centre Zina and the villages bordering Waza NP in the East and North. It is as-sumed that all dwelling mounds used to be inhabited during wet spells, as they were the last spots of non-inundated land in a sea of inundated land. Inside pres-ent-day Waza National Park pottery remains can be found on virtually all dwelling mounds that witness the existence of (temporary) fishing camps. Several settlement mounds have been the subject of archaeological surveys. Daima in nearby Nigeria gives insight into the subsistence economy of its inhabitants during the last two and a half thousand years (Connah 1981). The large majority of bones found were from fish, suggesting a predominance of fish protein in daily consumption, as is presently also the case. Remaining bones found were from birds and domestic cat-tle, a few from small stock, presumably goats, and a small number of wild animals, including Bohor Reedbuck, Kob, Warthog, Gazelle and Elephant. It is likely that sorghum was already grown from the earliest occupation, but remained for some time below archaeological threshold visibility (Connah 1981).
Travel accounts
Amongst the first Arabian visitors to West Africa, Ibn Abi Zayd al-Qayrawani (922-996) and Al-Maliki (around 1057), pronounced themselves against the trade in elephants tusks: ‘It came from trading in ivory and I was loath to be involved in something which had received adverse comments from men of learning’ (Hopkins
t1, t2, t3: spilling into Bahr el Ghazal z1: complete drying up of lake Chad
Note: siltation caused the rise of the average level of the lake bottom (280 → 281) during the last millenium.
Figure 2.2 – Levels of Lake Chad (adapted from Maley 1981, 1993).
& Levtzon 1981). Yet 800 years later, increasing demand for ivory in Europe would ravage the elephant herds in Waza-Logone. Leo Africanus passed the northern part of the Waza-Logone area in the dry season of 1513-1514 (Rauchenberger 1999). From the Lake Chad area he mentioned slaves as main export product but only once noticed the export of ivory, in contrast with Dangala (Sudan) he visited and described as home to renowned elephant hunters.
Human populations
The Sao, ancestors of present Kotoko (Lebeuf 1969), were predominantly seden-tary and inhabited the various dwelling mounds in the floodplain such as present day Mbili, Baram and Mahe in the north and eastern part of Waza National Park. Fish was their predominant source of protein, probably supplemented through hunting. After the wet 17th century (Fig. 2.2), the first nomadic Fulbe and Arab Choa entered the area, diversifying the human exploitation by their pastoral way of life (see also Chapter 7). It seems likely that with their arrival local breeds of Bos taurus cattle, possibly related to the Kuri cattle still surviving in the Lake Chad (CIRAD-EMVT 1997), were replaced with the now dominant Bos zebu breeds well adapted to transhumance.
2 ±1820 – ±1900 Information sources
The first European travelers visiting the Waza-Logone area in the early 19th cen-tury found an area that had just undergone major changes with the arrival of Fulbe and Arab pastoralists bringing, amongst other things, the islamic culture into the area (Chapter 7). Denham & Clapperton (1826) travelled in the Lake Chad area and visited the sultan of Logone Birni in February 1824, who, though with far less authority, still reigns over the floodplain (Lebeuf 1969; van Est 1999). Unfortu-nately, Denham’s account provides hardly any environmental information of the floodplain. Thanks to later travellers, especially Heinrich Barth (1857), detailed first-hand descriptions of the floodplain environment became available. In March 1872, Nachtigal visited like Denham and Barth, Logone Birni and collected detailed, yet mostly secondary information on the floodplain on the eve of the turmoil caused by rinderpest and the conquest by Rabah that would change the area dra-matically.
Rainfall and hydrology
The 19th century had both droughts and wet spells, ending the 19th century as it started with a relatively wet period (Fig. 2.2).
Vegetation
dominant (Celtis africana, Ficus spp, Tamarindus indica), although some Sudanian savanna tree species, rather scarce in the area nowadays, were mentioned as well (Vitellaria paradoxa). The vegetation of the lower parts of the floodplain was large-ly comparable to the present one, although explorers paid little attention to its floris-tic composition.
Birds and large mammals
Birds did not attract the attention of most European explorers and their observations are therefore limited to either conspicuous species as Ostrich or to abundant and frequently eaten species such as Guineafowl (Barth 1857).
Nachtigal, who traveled several years in the Lake Chad Basin, remarked on his passing through Sudan in 1874: ‘When one recalled the large number of antelopes which the traveller encounters on all sides in the regions of Bornu, even in the neighborhood of inhabited places, the difference was astonishing’ (Nachtigal 1987). Even today, densities of larger mammals seem to be higher than in most other parts of the Sahel (Scholte & Hashim 2005). Of these large mammals, Giraffe attracted the attention of Barth (1857) who mapped these observations, showing the early importance of present Waza NP). Barth (1857) frequently mentioned Hippopo-tamus from the floodplain, where it is now reduced to Lake Maga and its direct environs.
Elephant is amongst the most conspicuous wildlife species of Waza-Logone, easily traceable by the deep prints they leave in moist soil, remaining well visible till the next rainy season. Elephant prints are still the fear of any driver and one of the horses with which Barth’s company travelled fell and his rider broke his arm. Without doubt the interest of the explorers for Elephants can also be explained by the increasing demand for ivory during the 19th century. UK ivory imports from Tripoli, through which most ivory from Central-West Africa was transported by camel, shot up in the early 1850s to some 70 tons a year remaining fairly constant and only reducing at the end of the 1890s (Johnson 1978). Barth (1857) described several encounters with Elephant herds in Waza-Logone and mapped some obser-vations and prints. Barth and his company frequently ate Elephant flesh, said to be the most commonly available. During the passage of Nachtigal, Elephant hunting had become so important that he described Zina as a ‘brisk market for ivory’ (Nach-tigal 1987). The slaughter of Elephants was also reflected by the naming of the vil-lage of Niwadji that, created in the late 19th century south of Waza NP, signifies the ‘place of a dead Elephant’.
Human populations: turmoil
of the entire sub region (Zeltner 1997, 1988). Apart from the resulting human tra-gedy, these developments have had a profound impact on the ecology of the area, still visible today.
From 1890s till deep into the 20th century, northern Cameroon was hit by rinder-pest that wiped out entire herds of livestock, not only upsetting the lives of pas-toralists, but the entire agro-ecology of the area (Beauvilain 1989). Losses of wildlife due to rinderpest have only been reported in the second part of the 20th century, but it is assumed that it was responsible for the start of the decline of African Buf-falo. ln Sudan, a link was laid between rinderpest and increased Elephants hunt-ing to reconstitute the depleted cattle herds (Cunnison 1960).
The spreading of rinderpest was triggered by the movements of people prior to and with the arrival of Rabah’s army that swept from East to West through the Lake Chad Basin and reached Waza-Logone in 1893. Rabah’s ‘Sudanese’ or ‘Arab’ soldiers targeted especially Kotoko villages of which 33 out of the 43 in the Logone sultanate were completely destroyed. In Mahé, a small village on the northeastern corner of Waza NP, 60 adult men were killed, nearby Garlé lost 20 adults and its remaining population was driven in slavery (Beauvilain 1989). Anané was men-tioned as an important village by Nachtigal (1987), whereas there remains at pres-ent only a waterhole surrounded with some Balanites aegyptiaca trees in the Acacia seyal zone of Waza National Park. The army of Rabah lived mostly off looting (Zelt-ner 1988), and combined with the increasing availability of firearms may have contributed to the decline of several large mammals, most easily detectable by the Elephant population dynamics (see below).
3 ±1900 – 1950 Information sources
Scattered reports by European travelers appeared, some of them with considerable zoological details (Herzog zum Mecklenburg 1912; Jeannin 1936; Zwilling 1940), yet none with the genuine observation quality of the earlier travelers Barth and Nachtigal. Our PRA-studies and other oral history surveys (Chapter 9; van Est 1999) clarified much of the local history.
Rainfall
The first part of the 20th century has known both droughts, around 1913 and 1934, and a relatively wet period from ± 1936 till 1945 (Figs. 2.1, 2.3).
Birds and large mammals
obser-vation locations (Scholte et al. 1999). Gide (1927-1928) and Allegret (1993) who travelled in 1927 downstream the Logone river, described in passing a conspicuous avifauna with abundant Black-crowned Cranes and ducks. No species were men-tioned which do not exist today anymore and their description gives an ‘impres-sion’ rather similar to the one that is presently available.
Jeanin (1936), a French North-Cameroon-based veterinarian, wrote the first account on the mammals of Waza reserve, and commented on their decline since 1900. For some larger animals his descriptions are sufficiently detailed to allow a semi-qualitative comparison with later estimates. Giraffe for example, had declined from 1900 onwards when groups of 30-40 Giraffes could still be observed (like at pres-ent), to a maximum groups size of 15 in 1935. The entire reserve was estimated to number 100 Giraffes only, compared with 1200-1500 in the 1970s and 1990s (Esser & van Lavieren 1979; Tchamba & Elkan 1994). Early 1900, African Buffalo Syncerus caffer used to be common in the floodplain: an inhabitant of Zina was said to have hunted over 100 specimens during flooding when animals concentrated on the non-inundated mounds. In 1935, African Buffalo was already rare in the area (Jeannin 1936). Jeannin (1936) observed Korrigum (‘Topi’) herds of 100-150, occasionally up to 250, like the present situation (see Chapter 6). In 1935, however, Korrigum’s distribution spanned the entire area between the Mandara Mountains and the Logone river, whereas nowadays Korrigum is largely restricted to Waza NP and the bordering floodplain. Kob was observed in ‘groups of 5-50 individuals’ and ‘near the villages of Mahé and Baram hundreds can be observed in a morn-ing’. Its population was under heavy hunting pressure, however. Once the area was gazetted as hunting reserve, numbers of Kob increased dramatically to the tens of thousands that could be observed the 1950s-1970s (see Chapter 6).
Human populations: settling
The relative security that arrived with the colonial rule triggered from the early 1900s onwards the migration of Musgum groups into the Logone floodplain. Rich fishing grounds and fertile soils for agriculture were the principle attractions. Temporary fishing camps developed into settlements on the dwelling mounds deserted after the turnoil of the previous decades. In several cases the Musgum set-tled in Kotoko villages, but created slightly separate quarters. The arriving Mus-gum conformed themselves to the authority of the Kotoko and their leaders till deep into the 20th century (van Est 1999).
Fulbe and Arab transhumant pastoralists settled increasingly at the sandier south-ern edge of the present Waza National Park. Most of these villages, such as pres-ent-day Badadaye, Andirni and AmKodje were already used as transitory camps because of the presence of water in their immediate surroundings.
Management
The ‘Waza-Zina Hunting Reserve’ was created in 1935 (CCTA 1953). Discussions in villages, with the sultan of Logone Birni and with Badjoda (former park warden) stressed the tensions in the negotiations of colonial authorities with the sultan of Logone Birni on the creation of the reserve. This resulted in a status-quo, lasting till present, of the presence of villages right on the border on the north and east side of the (present-day) national park (Chapter 9). In contrast, the lamido of Pette, reigning over villages on the southern part of Waza NP, agreed on the
des--500 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 1930 1934 1938 1942 1946 1950 1954 1958 1962 1966 1970 1974 1978 1982 1986 1990 1994 1998
cumulative deviation of mean annual rainfall (mm)
wet dry
wet d average d a w
no flooding
Rainfall with: increasing line > average horizontal = average decline < average
ignation of the hunting reserve and assisted in the retreat of villages from the bor-ders, creating the only de-facto buffer zone (see Chapter 9).
4 The 1950 and 1960s Information sources
After the Second World War, there was an increasing attention of French agricul-tural and veterinary officers for the Waza-Logone area, studying vegetation (Vaillant 1956; Letouzey 1968), wildlife (Robin 1954; Flizot 1962) and birds (Dragesco 1960, 1961).
Rainfall and hydrology
The 1950s and 1960s were characterised by abundant rainfall and floods (Figure 2.3). The hydrological situation of Waza NP described by Flizot (1962) illustrates the recent changes in environmental conditions (the post 1979 situation): Water has completely retreated at the end of February or March (December-January), afterwards the dry herbs are being burned and the subsequent regrowth forms an excellent pasture for the herbivorous animals. Approximately twenty water holes used to contain water till the first rains in May (March). The Yaérés give room to the entire fauna from mid March till June (from December onwards), with notable exception from Elephant and Giraffe, who remain dependent on the forage sources in the Acacia seyal zone (no changes).
Vegetation
Letouzey (1968) in his general account on the vegetation of Cameroon, described a dominance of Echinochloa pyramidalis, with Vetiveria nigritana as second and Oryza barthii (= O. longistaminata) and Hyparrhenia rufa as co-dominant. He fur-ther indicated an inundation depth of 1 to 2 metres (<1 metre) and gave a list of a number of species, which can still be found in association with before mentioned species, namely Sorghum arundinaceum, Dinebra retroflexa, Pennisetum ramosum and Ischaemum afrum.
Birds and Large Mammals
Dragesco (1960, 1961) reported his, mostly qualitative, ornithological observations, some of species (eg. African Skimmer Rynchops flavirostris) which have not been observed in recent times. Behind Waza camp, Dragesco observed Black-crowned Cranes Balearica pavonina pavonina, whose numbers he estimated in December 1958 at over 5000. On the same spot I observed them regularly during different periods in 1995-2000, yet never counted more than 1000.
of large mammals compared to the earlier reports by Jeannin (1936) probably because of the above-average rainfall and impact of protection measures.
Human populations
When we discussed the former floodplain conditions with people, they often re-ferred, with nostalgia, to this period. In 1960 Cameroon became independent and in subsequent years the state was further consolidated. It was not only peace and prosperity however. Zeila, Garle and other Kotoko villages that had rallied against the ruling party, were burned down and moved to neighbouring villages and towns. Zeila, inside Waza NP, has remained a deserted dwelling mound with its occa-sional lion pride. Badadaye, a Fulbe village, moved further from the Waza National Park boundary.
Management
Tourist numbers to Waza NP rose steadily up to 4000 persons per year, and made Waza amongst the best-known West-Central African protected areas. The number of park guards rose during the 1950s and 1960s steadily till fifteen, reflecting the increasing presence of the state in the Waza-Logone area (Fig. 2.4). Apart from this governmental personnel, Flizot appointed young men as so-called park guides in Waza and Andirni village near the main entrances of Waza NP. Their main task was to guide tourists inside the park for which they received a modest remunera-tion. In return for their exclusive position, park guides assisted park guards in incidental tasks such as anti-poaching campaigns and were held to inform the park authorities on any infraction in their area.
0 10 20 30 40 50 1953 1962 1965 1970 1974 1978 1980 1982 1985 1988 1990 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002
number of park personnel
line: park guides (unarmed) bar: park guards (armed)
+ village guards (unarmed)
5 1970 – 1979 Information sources
In the 1960s-1970s, wildlife conservation had captured the personal interest of the first president of Cameroon who guided several of his international visitors to Waza National Park where he possessed a lodge. The president’s interest in wildlife conservation was also expressed by the choice of the northern capital of Garoua for the regional francophone Wildlife College that was created in 1970s (Chapter 10). Staff and students of the Garoua Wildlife College would play a crucial role in the initiation of the first substantial ecological studies of Waza National Park. In the 1970s, a Garoua based FAO project supported the development of national parks, in particular Waza and Benoue NP for which several base-line studies would be carried out (Vanpraet 1977).
Rainfall and hydrology
The 1970s were characterised by the great Sahelian droughts of 1973-75. These droughts coincided with the construction of the Waza-Kousseri road, that cut off some areas of flooding of the Logone river as well as the ephemeral streams that drain the northern part of the Mandara mountains into the Waza area. At the same time, parts of the Logone upstream of the later Lake Maga were embanked, on both the Cameroonian and Chadian sides, further reducing flooding.
Vegetation
Staff of the Garoua Wildlife College conducted several studies on the vegetation of Waza NP and produced Floras on woody species and grasses (Geerling 1982; van der Zon 1989). Throughout this thesis, I refer to the discussions with Garoua eco-logists whose experiences have been used to reconstruct a qualitative image of the former vegetation (photographs and personal communications of Geerling, van Lavieren and Wit). Vegetation maps of respectively the entire area and Waza NP were produced based on 1:50.000 aerial photographs from the mid-1960s (Gaston & Dulieu 1976; Wit 1975). In the description of Gaston & Dulieu (1976), Hypar-rhenia rufa was indicated as dominant in the western parts of the floodplain with Vetiveria nigritana as second only. Amongst the communities of the wetter parts of the floodplain, the lack of Echinochloa pyramidalis was striking. Their descrip-tion differed from Wit (1975), who distinguished five plant communities for the floodplain of Waza NP:
1 Vetiveria nigritana community which was the most common type of grassland (observations confirmed by our discussions with pastoralists);
2 Sesbania pachycarpa community found on the slightly sandier parts of the floodplain (area of Zeila and Baram, NE Waza NP);
car-ried out in subsequent years, this difference is probably due to different loca-tions the authors have visited;
4 Echinochloa pyramidalis vegetation community was found to be locally domi-nant, especially on the Acacia seyal side of the plain, subject to less inundation, with large numbers of dead Vetiveria nigritana tussocks;
5 Forb communities: Just east of the Acacia seyal zone, on the relatively higher parts of the floodplain, a vegetation community without grasses was found. Vetiveria nigritana used to be common as well, given the fact that numerous dead tussocks were found.
Birds and large mammals
Waza-Logone was frequently visited in the late 1960s and early 1970s by mostly Nigerian-based ornithologists, coinciding with the construction of a tourist lodge (Fry 1970; Broadbent 1971; Greling 1972ab; Mundy 1972; Holmes 1972, 1974; Pettet 1976; Kavanagh 1977). Their visits were limited to the more accessible west-ern part and lasted a few days only. Only Greling (1972a) carried out a longer study of bird densities in the Acacia seyal shrubland and of the birds of the wooded savanna of the southern part of Waza NP. Thiollay (1978) was the first ornitholo-gist who reported the ornithological significance of Waza, based on his systematic raptor observations. Louette (1981) compiled most of these early observations from Waza-Logone in the first checklist of birds of Cameroon.
The staff of Garoua Wildlife College (see below) initiated wildife studies in Waza NP including the first published systematic large mammals census of Waza NP (Esser & van Lavieren 1979, see Chapter 6), as well as an ecological study on Giraffe (Ngog Nje 1983, 1984).
Human populations
The first Sahelian drought after a long period of good rainfall struck hard not only in Waza-Logone, but especially further North in Northern Nigeria and Niger. In-creasing land pressure caused a steadily influx of pastoralists from these areas into Waza-Logone.
Management
