Floodplain rehabilitation and the future of conservation & development : adaptive management of success in Waza- Logone, Cameroon Scholte, P.T. Citation Scholte, P. T. (2005, November 23). Floodplain rehabilitation and the future of conservation & development : adaptive management of success in Waza- Logone, Cameroon. Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML), Leiden. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/1887/4290 Version: Not Applicable (or Unknown) Licence agreement concerning inclusion of doctoral License: thesis in the Institutional Repository of the University of Leiden Downloaded from: https://hdl.handle.net/1887/4290 Note: To cite this publication please use the final published version (if applicable). FLOODPLAIN REHABILITATION AND THE FUTURE OF CONSERVATION & DEVELOPMENT 2005 Tropical Resource Management Papers, No. 67 (2005); ISBN 90-6754-953-3 Also published as thesis (2005), Leiden University ISBN-10: 90-9019780-X ISBN-13: 978-90-9019780-7 Floodplain Rehabilitation and the Future of Conservation & Development Adaptive management of succes in Waza-Logone, Cameroon Paul Scholte Preface I first learnt of the Waza-Logone floodplain rehabilitation plans in 1992 and was immediately thrilled by its perspectives. I expected that reflooding could trigger a cascade of developments and provide a new élan in a rather paralysed environment. At that time I was working in nearby Chad in a Sahelian environment where im- proved management without substantial inputs was out of scope under the reign- ing economic conditions. In Waza-Logone, an area still endowed with spectacular wildlife, we could start this unique experiment, improving the livelihoods of fish- ermen and pastoralists, rehabilitating wildlife habitat and, ‘on top’, triggering an improved management system. This study follows the quest of preparing, imple- menting, observing, discussing and analysing floodplain rehabilitation and, as proved necessary, developing the human capacity to assure that both wildlife and humans would benefit from the rehabilitation interventions. This study reflects the development of my activities in the Lake Chad Basin in the 1990s. My assignment from 1990 till 1993 at the Programme Ecologie Pastorale at the Laboratoire de Farcha (Chad) was an excellent preparation for the research I carried out in neighbouring Cameroon at the Waza-Logone Projet (Maroua, 1993- 1997) and at the Ecole pour la Formation des Spécialistes de la Faune (Garoua, 1998-2000). Temporarily back in the Netherlands, various organisations request- ed my presence in the region, through short-term assignments, in 2000-2003, allowing me to keep track of some of the latest developments. The following chapters also reflect my personal development. I started in the Lake Chad basin as an ecologist with an interest for social and development activities, developing into an ‘environmental scientist’ in the CML-Leiden tradition. Yet, I did not neglect my field biological roots and was stimulated by the request to contribute to the ‘Important Bird Areas of Africa’ and ‘Mammals of Africa’. I discovered anoth- er challenge when teaching an MSc course on rangeland management at the Uni- versity of Ndjamena. I was captured by the exchange of experiences in professional education. In 1998 I was asked to initiate Garoua’s community conservation cur- riculum. Supervising students during their field research has been amongst my most rewarding experiences. Presenting our Waza-Logone reflooding studies at congresses and in scientific jour- nals, I realised how special our experiences actually were. The size and the impact of reflooding were at a different scale than floodplain rehabilitation studies in Europe or the USA. Reflooding was an excellent tool to test concepts of ecological change that have seldom been assessed at such a scale in practice. The landscape scale also widened the scope of this study from the ecological impact of floodplain rehabilita- tion to encompass also management issues such as planning and capacity building. The process of writing the papers and this thesis In the mid-1990s, I started reporting preliminary results of our work, discussing the set-up of our monitoring and presenting a series of base-line studies and inventories, which laid a foundation for the later reported studies. This thesis has slowly grown through the elaboration of individual papers that, although based on the Waza- Logone and Garoua work, became small projects with their own objectives and con- clusions. This allowed me to take some distance from the project and concentrate on linkages with upcoming scientific discussions. In this process, a number of papers were ultimately discarded from this thesis, especially the older ones that were large- ly descriptive and the ones that did not sufficiently contribute to the connecting (sci- entific) thread of this study, see annexed list of background publications. The first half of this study ‘Impact of reflooding’ is predominantly based on eco- logical science. Chapters vary in scope, set-up and pretensions. Presented work on vegetation (Chapters 3,4) and pastoralist responses (Chapter 7) was developed and carried out as part of systematic research. Chapters on waterbirds- and antelope dynamics (5,6) on the other hand, compile a large number of surveys, carried out at various times for various purposes. The variety of survey methods and person- nel as well as their large temporal and spatial scale, prevent a strong analysis on causal relations. These latter chapters aim, based on best available science, to draw broad conclusions on developments in bird and antelope populations, the area’s ‘conservation assets’. Moreover, they are of value for the total picture to be drawn in Chapters 8 and 12. The second half of this study, ‘Enhancing Conservation – Development Integra- tion’, is only occasionally linked with theory. This second half is needed however to lay the foundation for my aim to address the issue of adaptive management that is required to understand the role of floodplain rehabilitation and how it may enhance conservation-development integration. This study obliged the use of dif- ferent research styles: ecological science, qualitative participatory methods and oc- casional steps into social and education science. I do not pretend to master these latter, and limited myself to a straightforward methodology based on case-based reasoning, greatly assisted by exchanges with subject specialists and reviewers. Hydrology and fisheries’ ecology also called for attention in this floodplain environ- ment. At the Waza-Logone project, hydrologists and fishery researchers with whom I closely co-operated, have reported their findings in a series of field reports. A sci- entific synthesis would require more time and a different expertise than I possess. The title I initially had chosen for this study was ‘Rehabilitating the floods, for peo- ple or wildlife?’ as this issue had remained at the forefront of my field research. This question was already answered in the late 1990s when finalising a first ver- sion of Chapter 8 (‘time-bomb’). At that time, my work was already aimed at the development of ways to redirect the conservation-development balance. The pres- ent title reflects this ongoing quest. Remarks on terminology The studies presented are the result of the work of a large number of people with whom I worked in the field, as authors or as reviewers. Throughout this book I use ‘we’ to stress common work and ideas of my colleagues and I, and ‘I’ when I refer to my own specific opinion. Throughout this book, indicated years of ecological monitoring refer to the rainy and flood- ing season and not necessarily the calendar year when the consequences of the reflooding were monitored. Vegetation composition monitored in May 1994 for example, was referred to as 1993 vegetation because 1993 was the year of the relevant growing (= rainy + flood- ing) season. To allow comparison of flooding differences, also bird and antelope counts have been referred to the relevant rainy and flooding season. The January 1995 waterbird counts and late April 1995 wildlife counts were thus indicated as 1994 counts. In descrip- tions not specifically related to ecological monitoring (Chapters 2, 8-11), years are indicat- ed as calendar years. Nomenclature of woody plants follows Geerling (1982), grasses van der Zon (1992), and other plant species the second edition of the Flora of West Tropical Africa (Hepper, F.N. 1954-1972). Names of birds follow the checklist of the area (Scholte et al. 1999), names of mammals follow Kingdon (1997). Despite the multitude of more or less similar expressions for Community Conservation, I have used the term (Integrated) Conservation-Development (Project) as most relevant term for the activities conducted by the Waza-Logone Project. Table of Contents PART I – Introduction 1 General Introduction and Study Outline 13 2 The Ecological History of Waza-Logone: Constructing a reference image for floodplain rehabilitation 65 PART II – The Impact of Reflooding in Waza-Logone Impact on Vegetation 3 Floodplain Rehabilitation in North Cameroon: Impact on vegetation dynamics 89 4 Maximum Flood Depth Determines Above-ground Biomass in African Seasonally Shallowly Flooded Grasslands 107 Impact on Wildlife 5 Waterbird Recovery in Waza-Logone (Cameroon), resulting from increased rainfall, floodplain rehabilitation and colony protection 129 6 Antelope Populations in Waza National Park (Cameroon) from 1960 till 2001: Impact of changes in rainfall, hydrology