By Ikome Christie-Noella Eposi
The regional validation meeting for the revised management and business plans of the Korup National Park took place recently at the P and T school conference hall in Buea under the canopy of the representative of the Governor of the South West region, Bernard Okalia Bilai. It was the program for the sustainable management of natural resources in the South West region of Cameroon.
Aimed at presenting the draft management and plans for the park in the last 5 years, and establishing guidelines for the coming years, the workshop sought to shed light on the management of National Parks in Cameroon, overview of the park, zoning plan for the national park, management considerations and measures, proposed management programs and areas of interventions and business plan discussions.
In the welcome speech presented by the 1st deputy mayor of the Buea council, Motombi Mbome, he thanked the ministry of Forestry and Wildlife and the staff of the Korup National Park for such a workshop which will go a long way to assess the level of development made so far as well as look for measures for a way forward.
The director of Wildlife And Protected Areas at MINFOF Mr Lekealem Joseph told The SUN that; “this validation workshop at the regional level is very important for the sustainable management of the Korup National Park because, the management plan is a technical document which specifies all the activities that are going to be carried out in this park for the period of five years. So without the document, it will be difficult for us to implement all the activities and attain the objectives that we want for Korup national park.
“We are expecting contributions from stakeholders to improve the draft document that we have presented to them and the process had already started long ago. So this is a largely participatory approach that we are implementing to get to the final document”. Mr Lekealem added.
Presentations were done by Mr Antoine Njiang, Mr Fotendong Ferdinand Lateh, Mr Achankap Bakia and many others.
The Korup National park was created as the Korup native administration forest reserve by order Number 25 of October 14 1937 and it was established in October 1986 with a size of 1269km²/126 900 HA.
After its creation in 1937, it was later modified by Kumba western council to Korup forest reserve by order of January 27 1962.
For the past 5 years, Korup National Park boasts of 35 civil servants and 17 support staff. The park has also engaged in construction, rehabilitation and maintenance of park infrastructure and also the purchase of field and office equipment. Aside from all of the above, much still needs to be done in the Korup national park reasons why the workshop was organized in order to look for the way forward.