If we accept the broader definition of TBNRM that includes harmonizing resource-use policies and practices within ecosystems that are divided by national property or land-use zoning boundaries, then there are numerous past and ongoing examples of intranational TBNRM. National TBNRM typically has and continues to be motivated by protected-area managers or conservationists working in protected areas who seek to minimize the adverse environmental impacts of either local communities or private sector enterprises in adjacent lands. This is not uniquely so, however. In Cameroon, passage of a 1994 forestry law provided for the establishment of community forests, mandating profit sharing between the timber industry and local residents. As a result, local communities are beginning to demand more information from timber companies about land-use practices in logging concessions adjacent to community lands.
National TBNRM activities, like their international counterparts, have primarily focused on reducing illegal hunting of wildlife within protected areas. Clearly not exhaustive, the following brief case studies are intended to illustrate the range of past and current national-level TBNRM activities:
In northern Republic of Congo, the national government and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) are seeking ways to ensure the long-term persistence of biodiversity within the Nouabale–Ndoki National Park. One approach has been to develop a working relationship with the timber company, Congolaise Industrielle de Bois (CIB), that has the rights to log in the three concessions directly adjacent to the park. This informal relationship was promoted by park staff to minimize the adverse environmental impacts of nearby logging. WCS and CIB are working cooperatively to eliminate the hunting of protected animal species, to designate “no-cut” zones for sensitive wildlife areas, to establish local hunting regulations for non-endangered game, to minimize the extent of road development, and to close down roads following logging.
In the mid-1990s a graduate researcher, Emmanuel de Merode, worked with a senior chief of the Zande ethnic group in northern Democratic Republic of Congo to confiscate firearms and reduce poaching of wildlife on community lands and in the adjacent Garamba National Park (de Merode 1998). The chief was concerned that the land-use practices of his subjects were adversely impacting the park and the populations of trophy animals that potentially could generate safari hunting revenue for his communities.
In March, 1996 the government of Cameroon signed a decree creating the Banyang–Mbo Wildlife Sanctuary—the first such protected area in the country. Unlike national parks, local communities are allowed to sustainably use nonprotected resources within wildlife sanctuaries. Establishment of the Banyang–Mbo sanctuary has provided the opportunity to develop and test an alternative forest resource management system within Cameroon that actively involves the participation of local communities. WCS is providing technical assistance to Cameroon’s Ministry of the Environment and Forests (MINEF) to develop a pilot program, financed by the Dutch Spearhead Program on the Environment (DGIS), that will promote local community involvement in the management of this new protected area. The long-term goal of the project is to “conserve the forest’s exceptional and unique biological diversity and to develop a conservation approach modeled on community participation.” The five-year objective of the project is to put in place a process for establishing the baseline information and human capacity needed to design and pilot community-based natural resource management systems within a set of villages that have traditionally used the resources that are now within the Banyang–Mbo sanctuary.
The Mount Cameroon project in southwestern Cameroon has helped hunters to form user groups with the legal authority to regulate who hunts within “their” forest, and to enforce hunting regulations developed by the hunters in collaboration with MINEF. These user groups have successfully excluded outsiders from poaching their wildlife, and have sanctioned members for infringing the group’s hunting regulations. Formation of hunters’ groups is a step toward reducing unsustainable wildlife exploitation within community lands and within the Bambuko Forest Reserve on the northwest flank and the Mokoko Forest Reserve on the lowland western fringes of Mount Cameroon.