Beyond Belief: Linking Faiths and Protected areas to support Biodiversity Conservation

Abstract

Leonard Usongo knows he has sacred sites inside his protected area, but they are so sacred that he is not allowed to learn where they are. The Baka (pygmy) people, who live in the forests of Lobeké National Park in southeast Cameroon, follow a complex faith system that includes the adoption of a personal god in adolescence and the veneration of particular sites – groves and trees – within the forest that are believed to be of high spiritual value. Dr. Usongo, Chief Technical Advisor for WWF’s capacity-building programme in Lobeké, spends months of the year in a tented encampment in the park and has many friends among the Baka, working with them on a day to day basis, but it is against their beliefs to allow anyone else to enter a sacred area. Reliant on the Baka for guidance in the dense forests when he is carrying out biological surveys, Leonard has learned over time roughly where the sacred sites are because they are the places he never reaches, however often he asks to be led there…but he also knows that these places are safe for wildlife, being meticulously protected by the Baka1.