How did Mount Cameroon become deforested?

By Ndumbe Knollis Mokake, 2026 GLF Restoration Steward

I remember standing at the edge of Mount Fako one sunny evening when I was eight years old, gazing up at the mountain’s steep green slopes. The forest felt endless, with the calls of birds, the rustle of monkeys in the shade and the rich scent of wild herbs after rain. 

Freshwater ran generously from the mountain, sustaining our crops, and my grandfather, who was a traditional doctor, would take me and my friends to the forest to gather medicinal plants and fruits. He taught us that the forest was our provider, protector and sacred home. 

He taught us how trees provided us with shade during colonial wars. Caves, trees and fruits sustained their colonial masters. Many people thought those trees would be eternal.

My name is Knollis, and I grew up in Bonavada, a community at the base of Mount Cameroon. 

In my lifetime, I’ve already seen the forests change greatly. Patches of primary forest have given way to cocoa, yam and plantain plantations. Roads have been carved deeper into the mountain slopes, and there is more and more smoke from clearing and bush-burning fires. 

By my teenage years, what had once felt like boundless greenery had become patched with destroyed soils, drier streams and, as a result, less wildlife.

Mola Mbonde Mokonde, a herbalist from the royal family of the Bolulu community, once said: “Our ancestors spoke to the mountain, and it answered with abundance. Now, the trees are fewer, the rains come angry and unpredictable, and the land tires faster. We have taken too much without giving back. The god of the mountain is crying in heartbreak, and we must listen before it falls silent.”

Cameroon’s history of logging and hunting 

Our community has long relied on felling and selling timber, farming and hunting animals to feed ourselves and earn a living. 

For a long time, we didn’t realize how this caused the tragedies of deforestation and declining numbers of wildlife such as elephants, birds and monkeys. 

But even now, these economies are important for many, especially as middlemen capitalize on Cameroon’s ongoing civil unrest by attracting internally displaced people to come work in logging industries here. 

As our ecosystems become further depleted, they exacerbate food insecurity and poverty. 

While some people continue to log and hunt around Mount Cameroon, many are changing their ways. 

Pa Mbonde Mokonde, a retired chainsaw operator, reflects on a sad moment from his career: “When I cut down the big [tree], I didn’t know I was cutting the shadow my grandson would rest in. Now, I am no longer a logger.”

Mola Lyonga Francis, a primary school teacher and timber operator, recalls his experience in logging: “I cut down 1,000 trees to build a future for my sons, then I watched my sons choke on dust during the dry season. The river we drank from turned brown and dried up. 

“Now, I plant 50 trees for every tree I cut down. It’s less money, I won’t lie. But my sons are drinking clean water again. That’s a profit you can’t put in a bank account.”

Mola Comondo Mwanbot, another former logger, has now become a farmer and advocate for sustainable agriculture.

“I used to cut trees to make way for bigger farms and hunt at Mount Cameroon,” he recalls. “It was how we survived. The money came quickly, but the soil washed away, and the forest animals left.

“Now, with training in agroforestry and propagated plantains, I plant trees among my crops. My yields are greater, and I see birds returning. I teach my sons that protecting the forest means protecting our future. It’s harder work at first, but the land is healing, and so is my conscience.”

Why I didn’t join the military

In 2019, I was admitted into the prestigious geography department at the University of Buea. I planned to eventually join the military and rise through the ranks – fulfilling my father’s dream for me. 

But while studying environmental geography, I learned that cutting down trees for plantations meant destroying our future, identity and beliefs. 

So, instead of joining the military, I began to engage in conservation and forest restoration initiatives with local communities and partners at the foot of Mount Cameroon.

Soon after, I founded the Center for Agricultural Stewardship and Development (CASAD-Cameroon) in 2022. With CASAD, I work alongside Indigenous youth, students, smallholder farmers and internally displaced people who have experienced the negative impacts of the climate crisis and land degradation. 

At CASAD, we train youth and women in organic farming and help establish tree nurseries to promote sustainable practices. We train people in processing foods that are grown using little space and water, such as pasta and breads made from local starch vegetables including cassava, potatoes, cocoyams, jackfruits and plantains. 

These processed foods can be sold at higher prices than raw commodities, earning farmers greater profits without causing deforestation. 

This work has brought our community together in profound ways. What started as small tree planting groups and workshops on sustainable practices has evolved into village assemblies where farmers, women’s groups, young people and elders collaborate on restoration plans. 

We map degraded areas together, establish community farms for native species and control protected zones. 

These efforts have strengthened social bonds and reduced conflicts over land. Families that once competed for shrinking resources now partner on beekeeping, ecotourism and non-timber forest products that generate income and conserve our environment. 

But of course, it takes time to reap the benefits of switching to more regenerative practices, which therefore requires patience, trust and support.

“We didn’t anticipate how long it would take for the soil to gradually recover or how pests would adapt in the changing climate,” says a member of the Bova community who worked with CASAD. “Some resisted at first, fearing they would earn less immediate income.”

But many are hopping on board and holding onto hope for a greener Cameroon.

“The significant change is seeing children now afraid to cut down trees, watching them learn the names of trees their parents almost forgot, and seeing the joy on their faces when they’re told that freshwater will again flow generously through streams we protected,” says one young farmer from the community of Boteva.

The power of gathering and futurism

In May, I had the chance to travel to Nairobi, Kenya for this year’s GLF Africa Community and Action Assembly. 

This gathering among restoration practitioners, community leaders, researchers and young people from across 17 African countries equipped me with specific tools to enhance my work back home. 

I learned of the Iris Project youth funding toolkit for finding donors and monitoring impact and using storytelling as evidence. 

I also learned an approach from a Ugandan peer, where each student plants a single tree after carefully choosing a species that suits the local ecosystem (using tools like Landscape Alliance’s GlobNUT tool). 

Part of the assembly included a visit to the Oloolua Forest just outside Nairobi, where I got to explore a forest that communities have fought to protect and restore.

It reminded me of my local forest on Mount Cameroon and made my work feel less isolated. I felt a part of a restoration movement much larger than myself, or even my community. 

We also spent time imagining the African landscapes we want to see. 

I want Mount Cameroon’s forests to grow back. I want future young people to never know a degraded landscape because my generation repaired the damage. 

This exercise in future thinking reminded me that restoration is not just technical work. It’s imagination. You have to be able to see the future you’re working toward before you can build it.

My dream is simple yet ambitious. When I’m an elder, sitting under a tree the way my grandmother used to sit, I want the young people around me to never take the forest for granted again. 

I want them to know the names of trees, not from textbooks but because someone took them by the hand and walked with them in the forest. 

In Cameroon, my community and I are working urgently to sustain ourselves in a way that also sustains our landscape. We keep filling planting bags and training farmers. 

We also keep telling stories of what this landscape could become so that our communities can see themselves in that future and choose to build it.

I want future generations to live among thriving forests – forests we’ve almost lost but are now slowly being brought back.