Ganga Research Station is located in Mbam et Djerem National Park (MDNP) in Cameroon. The station was established in January 2016 by Dr. Ekwoge Abwe as part of a PhD dissertation project at Drexel University under the supervision of Dr. Katy Gonder. The station was founded with the goal of quantifying intra- and inter-site environmental and ecological variability and how these factors affect chimpanzee feeding and nesting behavior between chimpanzees found in ecotones (MDNP) versus primary rainforest (Ebo Forest), as these factors appear to correspond with promoting genetic diversity within P. t. ellioti.
At present, the station is permanently manned by rotating teams of local biomonitors, ecoguards, and senior biologists. Biomonitoring involves a variety of activities, including monthly monitoring of several transects, regular monitoring of high-activities areas (e.g., termite mounds, favored feeding sites) and reconnaissance surveys.
MDNP (shorten and include)
MDNP was created in January 2000 as an environmental offset for the Chad-Cameroon Pipeline Project (Moynihan et al. 2004). MDNP harbors the greatest habitat diversity of any protected area in Cameroon (Maisels, 2009). It extends over 4,165 km2 (almost the size of the Grand Canyon), grading from closed-canopy lowland rainforest to the southeast, through a savanna-gallery forest mosaic in the center to open bush savannas in the north and northwest. The Djerem River is a major tributary of the Sanaga, and runs north to south through the park, lined by a broad band of riparian forest (Maisels 2005). This rich quilt of savanna, woodland and forest habitats are home to some of the planet’s most iconic wildlife: elephants, buffalo, warthog, red river hog, kob, bongos, hippopotamus, and 13 species of primates (Maisels 2000; Maisels et al. 2007; Nchanji and Fotso 2006).
The Park is home to 500-1,000 chimpanzees (Kamgang et al. 2018; Morgan et al. 2011), although they are not evenly distributed across the park. Chimpanzee sightings and observations of nests are common near the Djerem at the Ganga Research Station for most of the year. Over the last decade, MDNP has transformed from a place where hunting signs, including gun shots, cartridges and snares were once commonly observed and into a place where chimpanzees and other rare wildlife are commonly heard and seen–and in the interior, especially at Ganga–chimpanzees show little fear of humans (Abwe, Kamgang and Gonder, pers. obs.) –a testament to the impact of effective conservation measures over the years
Increased attention to NC chimpanzees is vitally important for conserving the standing genetic, behavioral and cultural diversity of the species. Cameroon harbors two of the four chimpanzee subspecies, and it is where the two main branches of the chimpanzee evolutionary tree meet (Prado Martinez, Sudmant et al. 2013). P. t. troglodytes occurs south of the Sanaga River, while P. t. ellioti occurs north of the Sanaga in central Cameroon. MDNP is the only location where migrants are occasionally exchanged between the two branches of the tree. P. t. ellioti is further subdivided into two genetically- and behaviorally- distinctive populations (Abwe et al. 2019, 2020; Sesink Clee et al. 2015). One population is localized to mountainous forested areas of western Cameroon. The second population is found only in the ecotone region of central Cameroon — and it persists in the largest numbers at MDNP. Relatively little is known about the status of NC chimpanzees overall, which impairs effective conservation planning, especially in this ecotone region. These factors make MDNP an exceptionally important location for intensified conservation measures.