Afi mountain wildlife sanctuary

Tourism in Nigeria centres largely on events, due to the country's ample amount of ethnic groups, but also includes rain forests, savannah, waterfalls, and other natural attractions.

The Afi River Forest Reserve is in Cross River State, Nigeria, and covers 312 square kilometres (120 sq mi). It is one of the largest forest blocks remaining in the state other than the Cross River National Park.

The reserve lies between the Afi Mountain Wildlife Sanctuary and Mbe Mountains Community Forest, both of which are home to Cross River Gorillas, and forms a corridor between the two. A 2008 report noted that increasing levels of logging, farming and hunting were placing the gorillas under threat.

Afi Mountain Wildlife Sanctuary was created out of the Afi River Forest Reserve specifically for the purpose of Cross River gorilla conservation. The sanctuary is currently managed by the Cross River State Forestry Commission with support from a partnership of conservation NGOs including WCS, Fauna and Flora International (FFI), Nigerian Conservation Foundation (NCF), and Pandrillus.

On Afi Mountain wild drill still survive, with other endangered primates including the most endangered gorilla subspecies, the Cross River gorilla. The rugged massif (1400m) is a critical watershed for dozens of communities, it homes rare chimpanzees, gorillas and drill monkeys.

Afi Mountain is listed as an IBA (Important Bird Area) for Nigeria and hosts one of the largest migratory swallow roosts in Africa.

Afi contains one of the largest remaining forest blocks outside of the Cross River National Park. On the western flank of the mountain is a large grassland roost of European barn swallows reputed to be one of the largets in Africa, at times containing up to 20 million birds.

The forests on Afi are a barrier against the encroaching derived savannah from the west and north. In 1993, Pandrillus started community protection patrols using local hunters to discourage shooting and trapping, an education programme in the 17 villages surrounding the mountain, and brought the communities together as a common interest group for the first time.

The mountain was then part of the Afi River Forest Reserve (383 sq km), a production forest reserve for which logging concessions had been issued.

Pandrillus community protection programme prevailed and made great strides in controlling hunting, in particular developing popular support for protection of “The Big Three” – gorilla, drill and chimpanzee.