Cross River, Nigeria-Cameroon
- Cross River Gorilla Video
- Fewer than 300 Cross River gorillas survive across their remaining range in Cameroon and Nigeria.
- ©NDR Naturfilm
- Cross River, Nigeria-Cameroon Photo
- ©Aaron Nicholas
The Cross River landscape spans the border between southeastern Nigeria and southwestern Cameroon. One of the richest tropical rainforest areas in West Africa, it encompasses Nigeria’s Cross River National Park and Cameroon’s Takamanda National Park. This important trans-boundary protected area was created with the help of WCS, primarily to safeguard the Cross River gorilla. With only about 300 individuals remaining, it is the world’s rarest great ape. In addition to gorillas, the region harbors other primates such as drills, chimpanzees, and guenons, forest elephants, and more than 500 species of birds. The area is also a critical watershed for surrounding communities and wildlife.
Fast Facts
- More than 355 bird species have been recorded in this hotspot; 50 of them are endemic to the Afromontane highlands—or the mountains of Africa and the southern Arabian Peninsula—and 15 are globally threatened.
- The Cross River gorilla has been designated one of the world’s 25 most endangered primate species at risk of global extinction.
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Challenges
Over the past 200 years, bushmeat hunters have severely reduced gorilla numbers. Fragmentation of the forests by farming, road building by logging companies, and burning by pastoralists also threatens the species’ survival and the integrity of the landscape.
WCS Responds
Since 1996, WCS has supported
Cross River gorilla research and conservation efforts across the subspecies' range, helping to manage protected areas that provide refuge to these critically endangered apes. In 2008, together with the government of Cameroon and other partners, WCS helped create
Takamanda National Park, which safeguards a third of the Cross River gorilla population. Long-term research studies at sites such as Afi Mountain Wildlife Sanctuary in Nigeria and the
Kagwene Gorilla Sanctuary in Cameroon are giving us a better understanding of Cross River gorilla ecology. By studying how these gorilla populations use their limited habitat, WCS will be able to recommend protective measures for habitat corridors that link the disparate groups.
WCS is also working to improve livelihoods and encourages hunters to transfer their skills to further gorilla research and conservation. To ensure long term sustainable conservation of this rainforest and the critically endangered Cross River gorilla, the landscape is earmarked to become a key site in WCS’s Carbon for Conservation Program.
From the Newsroom
A high-tech study of Cross River gorilla habitat finds that the critically endangered ape’s range is more than 50 percent bigger than previously documented. By protecting habitat corridors between the gorilla’s populations, conservationists may be able to help their numbers grow.
In the rainforests of Central Africa, hunters are finding their way into once inaccessible terrain, spelling disaster for forest elephants.
WCS conservationists and their partners announce a plan to protect the Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee. Restricted to pockets of forest within the two countries, the subspecies is the world’s rarest chimp.
Ymke Warren, gorilla conservationist and friend, will be missed by her colleagues.
WCS and IUCN launch an international, decade-long action plan to protect eastern chimpanzees by safeguarding 16 crucial areas where their populations number around 48,000 individuals.
The International Primatological Society grants their 2010 Charles Southwick Award to WCS's Joseph Mulema for his work to protect Cross River gorillas in Cameroon.
African giant snails are giving local villagers big options when it comes to food and livelihoods, and gorilla poaching is not one of them.
WCS releases the first high-quality footage of Cross River gorillas in the wild, produced by Germany’s NDR Naturfilm after weeks spent in Cameroon’s Kagwene Gorilla Sanctuary.
Gorilla population surveys, conducted by WCS, have helped the government of Cameroon create a new national park, which will protect more than 600 gorillas and other threatened species, such as chimpanzees, forest elephants, buffalos, and bongo.
With support from WCS, the government of Cameroon creates the world’s first sanctuary exclusively for the Cross River gorilla, the rarest of the four gorilla subspecies.