- Sierra Leone’s Loma Mountains National Park (LMNP) includes the greatest mountain peak in West Africa, in addition to important environment for numerous threatened animals– consisting of seriously threatened western chimpanzees.
- Satellite information reveal the park lost 6% of its main forest cover lost in between 2002 and 2023.
- Cleaning in the park is being driven by farmers and ranchers who state there is insufficient farming land in their neighborhoods and no other income choices; unlawful cannabis growing is likewise a problem in the park.
- Conservationists, park authorities, worldwide firms and regional homeowners are collaborating to secure the park through efforts such as planting trees, training rangers, carrying out curricula in schools and promoting alternative incomes for surrounding neighborhoods.
FREETOWN, Sierra Leone– Standing at an elevation of 1,945 meters (6,381 feet), Mount Bintumani is the greatest peak of the Loma Mountains, which is the greatest range of mountains in Sierra Leone, and the highest peak in West Africa. The location around Mount Bintumani was designated a non-hunting forest reserve in 1952 and ended up being Loma Mountains National Park (LMNP) in 2012.
LMNP covers a location of 33,201 hectares and a collection of communities, from montane tropical forests and meadows to sub-montane jungles, shrub savanna and dry forests. These communities support a large variety of wildlife, consisting of around a lots types of primates such as red colobus (Piliocolobus badiusblack and white colobus (Colobus polykomosand sooty mangabeys (Cercocebus atyys. Other threatened animals discovered in the park consist of Jentink’s duikers (Cephalophus jentinkileopards (Panthera padusand– at lower elevations– forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotisand pygmy hippopotamuses (Choeropsis liberiensis. Due to the fact that of their elevation, the Loma Mountains likewise host an abundant bird variety consisting of numerous types that do not happen somewhere else in the nation– and 5 that are worldwide threatened.
Maybe the park’s most popular citizen is the chimpanzee. LMNP is home to around 1,390 seriously threatened western chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verusaccording to a study in 2019 carried out by Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary, a research study and preservation company that started as a rehab center for orphaned chimpanzees.
This special and endangered chimp subspecies, along with a host of other wildlife, are dealing with environment loss due to attacks into the park and substantial logging.
Vanishing environment, couple of options
“Sierra Leone hosts the 3rd biggest chimpanzee population in West Africa, with majority of these chimpanzees residing in non-protected, human-degraded locations,” stated Rosa Garriga, research study supervisor and outreach expert at Tacugama, who has actually studied Sierra Leone’s chimps for years. “The most typical plants key in Sierra Leone is significantly ending up being ‘farm-bush,’ the abject secondary forest that emerges after slash-and-burn farming.”
According to satellite information from forest tracking platform Global Forest Watch (GFW),
