Community conservation of endangered primates in Ivory Coast

The Forêt des Marais Tanoé-Ehy (FMTE) is a community forest of 12,000 ha, located 70 km from Abidjan, in the south-east of the Ivory Coast. This tropical wet swamp forest is home to the Roloway’s Diana’s Cercopithecus (Cercopithecus diana roloway, EN) and the Crowned Spittlebug (Cercocebus atys lunulatus, EN), 274 species of birds, 33 species of amphibians and 279 species of plants,  many of which are endemic, due to the inaccessibility of the forest, which is flooded for a good part of the year.  This forest constitutes an important massif with the Kwabre forest, (2,500 ha) in Ghana, from which it is separated only by the Tanoé river. The main threats to the FMTE are poaching, illegal logging and the development of agro-industrial activities (cocoa, rubber and in particular palm oil).

ACB-CI has been working for the conservation of FMTE since 2006 by participating in the work of RASAP-CI (Recherche et Actions pour la SAu Protection des Primates en Côte d’Ivoire), an association of Dr. Inza Koné who has been working for about 15 years for the protection of this forest and primates. The objective of the project is to achieve on the Ivorian side what was achieved on the Ghanaian side by a PPI project, led by the WAPCA association, and which made it possible to transfer forest management to communities with the objective, to term, to create a cross-border community reserve.