Authors & Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the staff of the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MINEF) of Cameroon—in particular Abena Joseph Claude, Tabi Tako-Eta Philip, Nti Mefe Solomon, Pettang Jules Blaise, Samba Dagobert and Ntsengue Levodo — for their fruitful and ongoing collaboration. Without their vision and assistance, this project and the resulting atlas would not have been possible. Likewise, we recognize the staff of the project’s core Cameroonian partner agencies: Jean Sylvestre Makak and Kenneth Mbinkar of Cameroon Environmental Watch (CEW) and Jay Meehl and Patrice Ngalla of Limbe Botanical and Zoological Garden (LBZG, a Technical Operational Unit under MINEF). We also thank the World Conservation Union’s Regional Office for Central Africa (IUCN-ROCA) for facilitating GFW activities in Cameroon.

Assistance with data collection, quality control, and other aspects of the development of this atlas was provided by numerous private companies, such as: La Forestière de Campo, Pallisco, the Forestry and Industrial Society of Doumé (Société Forestière et Industrielle de la Doumé - SFID), the Industrial Society of African Timber (Société Industrielle des Bois Africains - SIBAF), Thanry/Vicwood, and Wijma; as well as organizations and institutions, including: the Bushmeat Crisis Task Force (BCTF), the Central Africa Forests Commission (Commission des Forêts d’Afrique Centrale - COMIFAC), the Conservation and Rational Use of Forest Ecosystems in Central Africa (Conservation et Utilisation Rationnelle des Ecosystèmes Forestiers d’Afrique Centrale - ECOFAC), the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI), the Integrated Forest Monitoring System for Central Africa project of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA-INFORMS), the National Institute of Cartography of Cameroon (Institut National de Cartographie - INC), Nature Plus, the International subsidiary of the National Office of Forests (Office National des Forêts International - ONFI), the Dutch Development Organization (SNV), the Tropenbos Cameroon Programme (TCP), the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

Special thanks go to the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Central Africa Regional Program for the Environment (USAID-CARPE) for providing the bulk of financial support necessary to produce this atlas and associated documents. The World Bank played an important role in supporting the development and implementation of the Memorandum of Understanding between MINEF and Global Forest Watch (GFW) that made the project possible. Key financial and technical assistance was also provided by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, European Union (EU) and the German technical cooperation agency (GTZ). The Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) and Leica Geosystems (ERDAS) supported the effort by providing software licenses at reduced cost for the collaborators in Cameroon.

We also thank the staff of World Resources Institute (WRI) in Washington, DC, for their invaluable assistance with this first version of the Interactive Forestry Atlas of Cameroon. Ralph Ridder of GFW played a leadership role in project conception and development and helped guide its implementation. David Jhirad, Yumiko Kura, Bill LaRocque, Jon Maidens, Pierre Méthot, Carmen Revenga, and Fred Stolle reviewed draft versions of the atlas and provided helpful comments. Lauriane Cayet helped review the data and statistics.

We also thank the external reviewers—Lyna Belanger, Mathias Heinze, Nadine Laporte, Serge Menang Evouna, and Benoit Mertens—for their useful input. Many others, too numerous to name, also contributed to the development and production of this atlas.