Qualla: Bakossi National Park

Bakossi National Park: Introduction

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Most national parks are created to protect animals. Bakossi is different. When botanists from Kew Gardens and the National Herbarium of Cameroon spent a decade surveying the Kupe-Bakossi region between 1995 and 2005, they expected modest results. The area had no particular reputation for botanical richness. What they found instead was staggering: 2,440 plant species, 82 of them found nowhere else on earth, and 232 threatened with extinction. One in every ten species was entirely new to science.

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Bakossi National Park: Discovery in the Highlands

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Bakossi landscape encompasses a wide range of habitats at different elevations across its 29,320 hectares in southwestern Cameroon. Tropical lowland forest gives way to montane habitats as the terrain climbs, creating ecological niches that have allowed plant species to evolv...

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Bakossi National Park: Eighty Villages Said Yes

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Creating a national park in a region where people depend on the forest for their livelihoods is never simple. The field consultation program, completed in 2004 with support from the World Wildlife Fund's Coastal Forests Programme and the San Diego Zoo's Center for Conservation an...

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Bakossi National Park: A Park Still Finding Its Feet

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Creation was only the beginning. A 2011 report noted that the park still needed to complete its establishment process, demarcate its boundaries, and finalize a management plan. Eco-guards had to be recruited, trained, and equipped. Communities needed education in conservation pra...

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Bakossi National Park: The Shadow of Palm Oil

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Even as the park struggled to establish itself, a new threat emerged. The US-based Herakles Farms acquired a Cameroonian palm oil operation whose original concession included 132 hectares of the national park itself. Conservation groups sounded the alarm, calling the project an e...

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