Ivory Coast national forest and wildlife inventory: the completion rate is close to 80%

Ivory Coast national forest and wildlife inventory: the completion rate is close to 80%

The National Forest and Wildlife Inventory (IFFN) project, which started in January 2019, saw its field operations begin in October 2019. The completion rate of the forest inventory and socio-economic survey was 77% at the end of 2020. The Inventory aims to collect forest data (type of vegetation formation, number of trees inventoried, height of the largest trees, average diameter, tree species, etc.). As regards the socio-economic survey, a verification of land use is being carried out (forest, agriculture, etc.) on all sampling units.

Wildlife data collection is also continuing and had reached a rate of 67% by the end of 2020. The aim is to count the animal species observed and identified, their tracks, etc.

The IFFN is continuing throughout the whole of Ivory Coast and data collection operations in the field should be completed by the end of March 2021. The data, once collected, will be sent at least once a week via the Internet to the server based at ONF Côte d’Ivoire’s premises in Abidjan. The processing and analysis of all these data – the server currently has over one million entries – will make it possible to interpret the results, which will serve as a basis for decisions by the Ivorian government with a view both to preserving and rehabilitating existing forest capital, and also to increasing it. The Ivorian forest is estimated to have decreased from 7.8 million hectares in 1990 to 3.4 million hectares in 2015.

At the end of June 2021, a final workshop of the IFFN project will present all the results: a detailed assessment of the forest, the fauna and the human-induced pressures on natural resources will be made public.

The press release:here (in French)

About IFFN:

In early January 2019, Ivory Coast officially launched its Forest and Wildlife Inventory Project (IFFN). IFFN is managed by the Ministry for Water and Forests (MINEF), which is the lead agency. It is MINEF that monitors the activities and evaluates the results.

IFFN is managed by a Technical Assistance (TA) unit and a consortium composed of the following entities: ONF International, ONF CI, IGN, IGN FI as international entities and SODEFOR, ANADER, OIPR as national operators.

Contacts: