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West Africa > Nigeria > Ala Forest Reserve

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Summary

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• Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes ellioti) have been present in Ala Forest Reserve.
• Chimpanzees are extinct or nearly extinct at the site.
• The chimpanzee population trend is unknown.
• The site has a total size of 199 km².
• Key threats to chimpanzees are hunting and logging for oil palm, cocoa, and teak plantations.
• Conservation activities not documented.

Site characteristics

Table 1. Basic site information for Ala Forest Reserve

Species
Area	199 km²
Coordinates	7.051510, 5.436220
Type of site	Forest Reserve
Habitat types	Arable land, plantations, subtropical/tropical heavily degraded forest, subtropical/tropical moist lowland forest
Type of governance

IUCN habitat categories Site designations

Ape status

Chimpanzees are extinct or nearly extinct in Ala Forest Reserve. During a 2006 survey, no chimpanzees, nor signs of chimpanzees, were encountered (Greengrass 2006).

Threats

The northern half of the reserve is dominated by teak, oil palm, and cocoa plantations (Greengrass 2006). In the southern half of the reserve, even though the forest seems to be in a better condition, logging pressure is very high and large mammals are very scarce (Greengrass 2006).

Table 3. Threats to apes in Ala Forest Reserve

Category	Specific threats	Threat level	Description	Year of threat
1 Residential & commercial development		Unknown
2 Agriculture & aquaculture	2.1 Annual & perennial non-timber crops	High	Oil palm and cocoa plantations in the northern half of the reserve (Greengrass 2006)	Ongoing (2006)
	2.2 Wood & pulp plantations	High	Land cleared for teak plantations (Greengrass 2006)	Ongoing (2006)
3 Energy production & mining		Unknown
4 Transportation & service corridors	4.1 Roads & railroads	High	A road crosses the reserve from north to south (Greengrass 2006)	Ongoing (2006)
5 Biological resource use	5.1 Hunting & collecting terrestrial animals	High	Hunter trails and a large number of discarded cartridges were found in the southern part of the reserve, where chimpanzees were last seen (Greengrass 2006)	Ongoing (2006)
	5.3 Logging & wood harvesting	High	Logging pressure is high in the area were chimpanzees were last seen (Greengrass 2006)	Ongoing (2006)
6 Human intrusions & disturbance		Unknown
7 Natural system modifications		Unknown
8 Invasive & other problematic species, genes & diseases		Unknown
9 Pollution		Unknown
10 Geological events		Absent
11 Climate change & severe weather		Unknown
12 Other threat		Unknown

IUCN Threats list

Conservation activities

Table 4. Conservation activities in Ala Forest Reserve

Category	Specific activity	Description	Implementing organization(s)	Year of activity
1 Development impact mitigation	1.3 Prohibit (livestock) farmers from entering protected areas	Farmers and all unauthorised people are not allowed to enter into the reserve by intensive patrols within the area (Ofori-Amanfo pers. obs. 2023).		Ongoing (2023)
1 Development impact mitigation	1.4 Farm more intensively and effectively in selected areas and spare more natural land	Old cocoa and rubber farms are being cleared (since 2016) to plant new hybrid to yield more products to increase farmers income rather than clearing more land for cultivation (Ofori-Amanfo pers. obs. 2023).		Ongoing (2023)
2 Counter-wildlife crime	2.3 Conduct regular anti-poaching patrols	Field staff undertake day patrols, over night patrols and long/sleeping patrols in the Park to control poaching and for field data collection (Ofori-Amanfo pers. obs. 2023).		Ongoing (2023)
2 Counter-wildlife crime	2.8 Provide training to anti-poaching ranger patrols	Staff are trained in, how take field data on animals and how to manage the animal species causing human animals conflict and others (Ofori-Amanfo pers. obs. 2023).		Ongoing (2023)
4 Education & awareness	4.1 Educate local communities about apes and sustainable use	Local communities are educated on the need to conserve the resources in the Park since the 1990s (Ofori-Amanfo pers. obs. 2023).		Ongoing (2023)
5 Protection & restoration	5.2 Legally protect ape habitat			Ongoing

Conservation activities list (Junker et al. 2017)

Challenge

Table 5. Challenge reported for Ala Forest Reserve

Challenges	Specific challenges	Year(s)	Source
	Corruption		Greengrass 2006
	Lack of financial means		Greengrass 2006
	Lack of law enforcement		Greengrass 2006

Research activities

No information on research activities has been documented.

Exposure to climate change impacts

As part of a study on the exposure of African great ape sites to climate change impacts, Kiribou et al. (2024) extracted climate data and data on projected extreme climate impact events for the site. Climatological characteristics were derived from observation-based climate data provided by the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP, www.isimip.org). Parameters were calculated as the average across each 30-year period. For 1981-2010, the EWEMBI dataset from ISIMIP2a was used. For the two future periods (2021-2050 and 2071-2099) ISIMIP2b climate data based on four CMIP5 global climate models were used. For future projections, two Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) were used. RCP 2.6 is a scenario with strong mitigation measures in which global temperatures would likely rise below 2°C. RCP 6.0 is a scenario with medium emissions in which global temperatures would likely rise up to 3°C by 2100. For the number of days with heavy precipitation events, the 98th percentile of all precipitation days (>1mm/d) was calculated for the 1979-2013 reference period as a threshold for a heavy precipitation event. Then, for each year, the number of days above that threshold was derived. The figures on temperature and precipitation anomaly show the deviation from the mean temperature and mean precipitation for the 1979-2013 reference period.

The estimated exposure to future extreme climate impact events (crop failure, drought, river flood, wildfire, tropical cyclone, and heatwave) is based on a published dataset by Lange et al. 2020 derived from ISIMIP2b data. The same global climate models and RCPs as described above were used. Within each 30-year period, the number of years with an extreme event and the average proportion of the site affected were calculated (Kiribou et al. 2024).

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  Precipitation anomaly in Ala Forest Reserve
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  Temperature anomaly in Ala Forest Reserve

References

Greengrass, E.J. (2006). A survey of chimpanzees in south-west Nigeria. Report to the NCF-WCS Biodiversity Research Programme.

Kiribou, R., Tehoda, P., Chukwu, O., Bempah, G., Kühl, H. S., Ferreira, J., ... & Heinicke, S. (2024). Exposure of African ape sites to climate change impacts. PLOS Climate, 3(2), e0000345.

Page completed by: A.P.E.S. Wiki Team Date: 19/11/2020