When War Silences the Forest: Armed Conflict Cripples Conservation in Cameroon’s Biodiversity Hotspots

Deep in the Lebialem Highlands of Cameroon’s South West Region, a cluster of forested hills harbours one of the most extraordinary concentrations of biodiversity on the African continent. Here, in the dense canopy above the Tofala Hill Wildlife Sanctuary, the critically endangered Cross River gorilla moves through the mist-shrouded trees, one of fewer than 300 individuals left on Earth. Not far away, in the forests of Manyu Division, the Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee clings to a disappearing habitat. And in the hills around Kumbo in the North West Region, endemic species of birds, plants and amphibians thrive in ecosystems found nowhere else on the planet.

But since 2016, an armed conflict between Cameroonian security forces and Anglophone separatist fighters, the so-called Ambazonia crisis, has turned these ecosystems into frontlines. Scientists, conservationists and rangers can no longer safely access the very territories they are charged with protecting. The consequences for wildlife, biodiversity and the climate itself may prove irreversible.

Access Denied

“We have not been able to conduct a gorilla census in Lebialem since early 2017,” says Dr Ekwoge Abwe, a primatologist who has spent more than a decade studying the Cross River gorilla in Cameroon. “The conflict has made it impossible. Armed groups control the forest edges. Researchers would be risking their lives.”

The Lebialem Division sits at the epicentre of the armed violence, sandwiched between rival forces whose confrontations have killed hundreds of civilians, displaced more than a million people across the two anglophone regions, and reduced entire villages to ruins. Conservation stations have been burnt. Park rangers have been kidnapped. Camera traps set by wildlife researchers have been stolen or destroyed.

In Manyu Division, home to vast tracts of lowland forest that form part of the Congo Basin, the world’s second-largest tropical forest and a crucial global carbon sink, rangers from the Takamanda National Park report that they have been unable to conduct regular anti-poaching patrols since 2019. “When we try to go into the forest, we encounter armed men,” one ranger, who asked not to be named for his safety, told News Wire in May 2026. “We don’t know who they are. We turn back. The forest is being left without protection.”

In Kumbo, in the Bui Division of the North West Region, the story is equally alarming. The Kilum-Ijim Forest, one of the most important montane forests in Central Africa and home to the endangered Bannerman’s turaco, a bird found only in Cameroon, has been repeatedly cut off from researchers and conservation teams since 2017. A 2022 assessment by BirdLife International warned that the conflict was exacerbating deforestation in the Kilum-Ijim area, as displaced communities desperate for survival cleared forest edges for farmland and fuel.

Poachers Step In Where Rangers Cannot

The vacuum created by the conflict has been exploited ruthlessly. With rangers absent and law enforcement otherwise occupied, poachers have intensified their activities across the conflict zone. Bushmeat hunting, already a serious conservation threat in Cameroon, has reportedly surged. Community informants in several Lebialem villages told News Wire in June 2026 that they had seen hunters return from the Tofala forest with animals that community elders identified as species normally protected under Cameroon’s wildlife law.

“Before the crisis, there was a community agreement not to hunt gorillas and chimpanzees,” said Mforteh Samuel, a community conservation volunteer in Menji, Lebialem, reached by phone on 3 June 2026. “That agreement has broken down. People are hungry. People are desperate. And there is nobody to stop them.”

Conservation organisations working in the region have not stood still. The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the Africa Conservation Foundation have attempted to maintain some community-based monitoring programmes by training local volunteers who can more safely move through the conflict zone. But these efforts are constrained by funding, communication blackouts and the ever-present risk of violence.

A Carbon Crisis Within a Climate Crisis

The stakes extend far beyond the fate of individual species. The forests of Lebialem, Manyu and the Kumbo highlands are significant carbon stores. Healthy tropical forests absorb and lock away vast quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, playing a direct role in mitigating global climate change. When those forests are degraded, through illegal logging, uncontrolled burning or the creeping encroachment of displaced communities, that stored carbon is released.

Satellite imagery analysed by Global Forest Watch in 2025 showed a measurable increase in forest cover loss across parts of the Anglophone Crisis zone between 2018 and 2024, compared with the preceding decade. While attributing specific tree cover loss to the conflict requires careful analysis, researchers say the correlation is troubling.

“The conflict is a climate problem as well as a humanitarian problem,” says Dr Abwe. “Every patch of forest that is cleared or burnt because of this conflict is contributing to the carbon burden that the whole world is trying to reduce. The international community does not see that connection clearly enough.”

By Yanick Fonki Ndeley l CCMN l South West Chapter

Tagged as: Cameroon, CCMN, Peace Journalism.