Author: Jessica Arriens

Laura Azandi, a PhD student at Cameroon’s University of Yaounde I, recently spent time at CBI’s Bouamir Research Station studying a particular species of orchid, Cyrtorchis letouzeyi. View on Youtube Africa is home to about 10,000 species of orchids. There’s pearl-white Ancistrorhynchus recurvus, with flowers small enough to fit on a thumbnail. The blooms of […]

CBI affiliate Luke L. Powell, director of the conservation NGO Biodiversity Initiative and a research fellow at Durham University in the United Kingdom, recently had his cacao research — which uses metabarcoding to understand food webs on cacao plantations — featured on the news site OZY. Check out the full article: How Tree Shade and Bat Poo […]

Taylor Guitars has launched a new multimedia storytelling website focused on ebony, Cameroon and CBI’s Sustainable Ebony Project. The website includes video interviews with CBI Co-Director Tom Smith, Center for Tropical Research (CTR) Africa Director Kevin Njabo and CTR Associate Director Virginia Zaunbrecher, as well as footage of CBI resesearchers and facilities in Cameroon. Check […]

Nancy J. Jacobs, a professor of History at Brown University, shares her experience visiting a CBI field station. Jacobs is a historian of South Africa, of colonial Africa, of the environment, of animals, and of knowledge about the environment and animals. Her research in Cameroon was funded by a Seed Grant from the Institute for […]

The World Bank recently published a feature story on CBI and Taylor Guitar’s Sustainable Ebony project. Read an excerpt below, or read the entire story on World Bank’s website. Or watch a Connect4Climate interview with Taylor Guitar’s Director of Natural Resource Sustainability and Cameroon’s REDD+ Technical Director.  The next time you hear your favorite song, […]

A Public-Private Partnership in Cameroon Previous issues of Wood&Steel have featured stories about our Crelicam ebony mill in Yaoundé, Cameroon, which is owned and operated in partnership with our friends at Madinter, an international tonewood supplier. You also may know about some of the work being done as part of what we’re calling the Ebony Project, […]

Giant pangolins are poorly understood creatures. The species (Smutsia gigantea) is largely nocturnal, and lives in underground burrows in the lowland forests and savanna of tropical Africa. Their life span, range and habitat use are basically a mystery, and yet the species is severely threatened. Pangolins are one of the world’s most trafficked animals, killed […]

From SciDev.net: Climate change is reducing plantain yields and school attendance rates in Cameroon from 1991 to 2011, says a study. According to researchers, the Central African region, where Cameroon is located, lacks studies on climate change social impacts. Therefore, researchers assessed temperature trends in Cameroon for the period 1950 to 2013. They also linked the […]

Cassava is one of the main crops produced by communities around national parks for food and income in southwest Cameroon. The crop is largely cultivated using traditional methods, often resulting in low yields and soil degradation. Slash-and-burn agriculture is also a concern; worldwide, slash-and-burn agriculture by subsistence farmers is a significant cause of deforestation. Over […]

New research from the Congo Basin Institute has revealed links between climate change, plantain productivity and education levels in rural households in central Africa. The study charts a decline in yields of plantain – an important crop throughout west and central Africa – and predicts those declines will worsen due to changes in climate, and that, in […]