Rainforest Rivers of Central Africa: Biogeography and Sustainable Exploitation

Central Africa’s tropical rainforests and their associated biodiversity are being destroyed at a rate of 1 million ha/year by poorly regulated timber exploitation and slash & burn agriculture. An important component of the rainforest is the river that drains it. Although very little studied and poorly understood, these rivers drain millions of square kilometres and have been estimated to contain at leas t 500 fish species, of which a large percentage may be endemic. In the process of deforestation, these are being destroyed along with the trees and other wildlife. The rainforest rivers in what is known as the Lower Guinean Ichthyological Province of Southern Cameroon, Continental Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and the People’s Republic of the Congo posses different species from those of the Sudano-Nilotic province to the north and the Congo province to the East and South. The icthyofauna of these rivers is dominated by the Siluriformes (6 families, 23 genera, 102 species), the Characiformes (2 families, 20 genera, 62 species), the Cichlidae (17 genera, 54 species) the Cyprinidae (10 genera, 79 species) and the Mormyridae (14 genera, 49 species). Among these are a large number of ornamentals, many of which are rare and unusual, fetching high prices in Europe and North America. The 20 million people who live in the forests of Central Africa depend heavily upon the integrity of the river ecosystem for their livelihoods. Estimates from Cameroon put the productivity of capture fisheries in forest rivers basins at 1.1 tons/km/yr. At the basin level, this translates into a cash value of over $82.4 million per year, more than twice the value of all other non-timber forest products combined. Unfortunately, increasing population and poverty, coupled with false valuations of rainforest biodiversity, have led to unregulated logging, habitat destruction and over-exploitation. In addition, fishing rainforest rivers increasingly involves the use of poisons that are highly destructive of the entire foodweb. New and diverse natural resource management and exploitation strategies are needed to add value to rainforest river ecosystems to justify their preservation and improve the livelihoods of rainforest communities. DRAFT 22 October 2002