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Rapport provisoire de délimitation des forêts sacrées au Bénin.pdfFile Type
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2022 Sep 13Updated Date
2022 Sep 14Published on
2013 Jun 03INTERIM REPORT ON THE DELIMITATION OF SACRED FORESTS
Started on June 16, 2011, the Project to Integrate Sacred Forests into the System of Protected Areas of Benin (PIFSAP) aims at the conservation of Beninese biodiversity through the protection and sustainable management of forest resources in sacred forests. Indeed, for decades or even centuries, Benin has remained an important shelter for an impressive number of sacred forests, important instruments for the sustainable management of biodiversity. In addition, they constitute a kind of nurseries for a great diversity of in-situ species and genetic reservoirs. Despite the lack of knowledge of their biological resources, it is often accepted that sacred forests concentrate a very high number of plant and animal species with social, economic, emblematic, useful, rare and endangered values, etc. per unit area. There are also numerous medicinal plants, large trees of cultural value (often called sacred), several fruit trees that attract avifauna and other wild animals. The fear of the deities they shelter, the rituals associated with them and their multiple cultural and cultic uses were the main factors that allowed the effective protection of sacred forests against any form of destruction. Unfortunately, the degradation of traditional religious beliefs, population growth, land clearings and bushfires, the uncontrolled expansion of settlements, the exploitation of these forests by corrupt foresters, the weakening of the power of traditional chiefdoms and priests of Vodun, have in recent years been the main elements that subject sacred forests to significant land pressure. It has therefore become imperative to develop other means of protecting these forests in order to safeguard and restore their biodiversity potential. For this reason, the PIFSAP Project intends to integrate several sacred forests into the system of protected areas in Benin for the year 2013. 6 The general objective of the work is to produce maps at a scale between 1/1000 and 1/20000 that will make it possible to know the boundaries, buffer zones, connection corridors, areas and vegetation groups of sacred forests. At the end of the mission to delimit all the sacred forests identified and selected by the various Municipalities concerned, this report is prepared to present the results of the cartographic work carried out. It is composed of two parts: the first which recalls the methodological approach implemented and the second which presents by Commune the results obtained by mapped sacred forest.