In the north of Cameroon, the Faro landscape faces a number of threats:
- Expansion of the agricultural front, particularly cotton, with increased land pressure leading to conflicts over use between different stakeholders;
- Poorly supervised transhumance, with practices that can harm biodiversity;
- Endemic poverty, exacerbated by population growth, which puts pressure on natural resources (village expansion);
- The isolation of certain species (such as the lion, the giraffe and the Derby eland) prevents good genetic mixing and encourages congenital diseases;
- Artisanal gold mining, which has a negative impact on ecosystem services by encouraging soil erosion and sedimentation;
- Commercial bushmeat poaching and the arson fires often set by poachers.
Agro-pastoral communities living in the landscape are entirely dependent on the natural resources that form the basis of their livelihoods. Faced with food insecurity, particularly during the dry seasons when water and pasture are scarce, they often resort to unsustainable activities.
The result is a significant loss of biodiversity, particularly wildlife, which is threatened by the transmission of zoonotic diseases by livestock, the loss and fragmentation of their habitat and reprisals by farmers (particularly lions). In addition, ecosystems (grasslands and wooded savannahs) are being degraded by overgrazing, overcrowding and the illegal cutting of certain species for cattle fodder.
These threats are now being exacerbated by climate change (drought, torrential rain), which is reducing the capacity of ecosystems and the communities that depend on them to adapt.
