The Historiography of Forests use Types and Implication for Forest Conservation in the Montane Forests of Ngongbaa, Kilum, Kovifem and Kovkinkar

This study explores the timeline history of forest use types and beneficial relationship of forest, forest communities and conservation in the montane forests of Ngongbaa, Kilum, Kovifem and Kovkinkar from the mid-1970s to 2015. Data and/or information collected for this study comprise literary, questionnaire, interview, focused group discussions and observations. Data for the study was secured from person directly resident adjacent forest in 29 villages. The study shows that apart from being asource of food and medicine, forest first served as settlement and refuge sites for the Nso, Mbiame and Oku people. Today, forest serves as cemetery for the fons (kings), and host shrines which have become conservation hot spots and nurseries for engendered plants and animal species, where the Nso, Mbiame and Oku also performed sacrifices. These conservation hot spots help to sustain the forest in montane ecosystems where pressure on land and forest is high and on the rise. Due to population pressure and limited grazing the grassland compartments in the above forests have been transformed into grazing ground. The long period of intercourse between the Nso, Mbiame, Oku people and their forest enabled them to accumulate rich and useful knowledge of the forest and established customary (non- statutory or quasi-statutory) regulatory frameworks for effective management of forest resources to improve their livelihood and culture. Due to the depletion of forest and the adoption of stricter conservation policies, some forest activities particularly carving and hunting have decreased in intensity while some like Ngwa’a (royal hunt) has simply phased out due to the extinction of animal species which were hunted. The paper recommends that traditional systems of managing forest be reinforced to enhance the conservation of resources in sacred groves that are nurseries for threatened and extinct species in degraded ecosystems. The state should recognise and integrate non-statutory forestry policy frameworks established in the Nso, Mbiame and Oku into the national forestry policy as village-based institutions for the management of land and forest in forest communities. The government should also empower traditional authorities (Fon,Nwerong and Lanlords (ataangven) and support reforestation and forest restoration programmes formulated by them. This is because laws put in place by these institutions are respected in the most part by their subjects without being forced to do so, unlike in the Ngongbaa and Kilum forests managed by the state, where forestry laws are permanently violated by local people who consider forestry authorities as state agents who are depriving them of their right of tenure and usufruct. This would likely help to maintain biodiversity and knowledge attached to it, which is gradually disappearing due to forest depletion.