State of Conservation (SOC)

Requests Approved: 0 (from1981-2002)
Total Amount Ap proved: 405,222USD

Agriculture Pressure; Logging; Mining; Oil Gas and Exploration; Poaching/Hunting; Lack of capacity in conservation techniques; Lack of management mechanism (including legislation); Lack of monitoring system; Lack of human or financial resources; Lack of institution coordination; Armed conflict; Civil unrest.

On the Guinean part of the property, the 9-year UNDP Global Environment Facility-supported programme: “Conservation of the biodiversity of the Nimba Mountains through integrated and participatory management" will be launched in 2004. This project will support and strengthen conservation efforts in the full Nimba Mountains Biosphere Reserve, including the Nimba Mountains World Heritage property. In support of the programme, an initiative to understand hunting patterns, and its dynamics and impacts on the World Heritage property was approved for funding by the Netherlands Committee for IUCN. Managed by two non-governmental organizations, Sylvatrop and Fauna & Flora International (FFI) and in close collaboration with Guinean governmental authorities, the project will allow local villages and hunters to recognize the problem of over-hunting where it exists and to develop appropriate solutions to manage wildlife in a sustainable way. In addition, primate research and environmental awareness campaigns continue, based out of the Environmental Research Institute of Bossou, with support from the Kyoto University Primate Research Institute, the University of Stirling and the US Fish & Wildlife Service. As part of this project, efforts to establish a forested corridor between the World Heritage property and the Bossou Hills, to permit movements of chimpanzees between the two sites, continue. As part of a new project to provide emergency assistance to natural World Heritage properties in need, which was approved by the UN Foundation in 2003 and which will be implemented through the Centre and FFI, some funding is also earmarked for the property.

With regard to the refugee issue, a report commissioned by FFI, published in July 2003, entitled "Assessment of Refugee Activities Impact on the Mount Nimba Biosphere Reserve", mentions that the Mount Nimba range played host to a large number of refugees and that the refugee populations significantly increased local community populations within the buffer and transition zones of the Mount Nimba Strict Nature Reserve. However, as a result of a swift relocation of refugees in camps set up away from the property, the negative impacts to Mount Nimba property have been minimized.

The Centre and IUCN were informed that, in late 2003, the EuroNimba consortium repossessed the main mining exploration station in the mining enclave within the World Heritage property in anticipation of restarting exploration studies, including collection of environmental baseline information.

In spite of the cessation of hostilities, security remains tenuous in the part of the property located in Côte d’Ivoire. The European Union is taking steps to restart its 'Programme transitoire', channelling support through Conservation International (CI) to the appropriate authorities in the Directorate of Nature Protection (DNP) in Côte d’Ivoire.

Due to insecurity, no further progress has been made on transboundary collaboration since the tri-national meeting between Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea and Liberia in N'Zérékoré in February 2002.  However, on 20 April, the Centre received a request for international assistance from the Government of Liberia, to assist them with the preparation of a tentative list.