Forests of Gabon

ProForest's Christopher Stewart and Tim Rayden were recently in Gabon to facilitate a discussion group on High Conservation Value Forests.

The workshop was organised by WWF GFTN and Rougier Gabon (a logging company currently pursuing FSC certification), and was aimed at producing a guidance document or ‘National Interpretation’ of the six High Conservation Values listed in the ProForest HCVF Toolkit.

The Libreville workshop was attended by representatives from the FSC National Initiative, WWF Congo, WCS Gabon, PAFC, local forest conservation NGO Brainforest, Companie Equatoriale de Bois, Rougier Gabon, Congolese Industrielle du Bois, and consulting firm Terea, as well as representatives from the Ministry of Water and Forests. The draft output from the workshop will be going out to consultation later this month, and will be available from both the GFTN and HCV Resource Network websites.   

The discussion at the workshop found that implementation of HCVF in Gabon presents two interesting problems:

• At a global scale, all the forests of the Congo basin could be considered to have a high value for conservation. Arguably all these forests are consistent with at least one of the six High Conservation Values
• Within Gabon, and with the exception of a few outstanding geological features, there appear to be few ecological justifications for attaching higher conservation value to one area of forest over another.

Nevertheless, to meet the requirements, certain measures will need to be taken to safeguard forest ecological processes and provide protection for the country’s national parks.

In addition it was suggested that forest concessionaires should identify and protect patches of very rich old growth forest dominated by slow dispersing cesalpinoid trees. However, it is also important that use of HCVF in Gabon recognises the particular importance of conserving the regions threatened primates, through measures to combat illegal commercial hunting and the bushmeat trade.

Whether or not these areas are considered High Conservation Value Forest sensu stricto, it was agreed that good management practices should apply as a basic requirement for meeting FSC requirements: namely reduced impact logging following best practice for the region, and robust, long term control of hunting and poaching.  

More information on HCVF in Gabon and Africa can be found on the HCV Resource Network website.