From Plant Press, Vol. 24, No. 4, October 2021.
David Kenfack has been involved with the Forest Global Earth Observatory (ForestGEO) network since 1996 when he began as Field Manager for the Korup, Cameroon Forest Dynamics Plot (FDP). Since 2010 he has been coordinating the ForestGEO Africa Program, and he is currently a co-Principal Investigator of the Korup (Cameroon), Mpala (Kenya), and Ngel Nyaki (Nigeria) FDPs. In 2020 he was elected as a Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences. Kenfack’s office is located in the Department of Botany of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC. When he’s not discovering and describing new species, he enjoys playing drums and guitar, as well as promoting his traditional culture through Lemou Bafou USA.
David Kenfack studying Grewia flowers at Mpala Forest Dynamics Plot
When did you realize you wanted to be a scientist/work in forest ecology? How did you decide to go down this career path?
I grew up in Bafou, one of the most prosperous villages located in the highlands of the western region of Cameroon. As the son of hardworking farmers, I spent most of my childhood practicing mixed farming in coffee plantations, pruning trees that made live hedges on our properties, and extracting raffia palm wine from the stems of the swampy valley’s monodominant Raphia hookeri. I was therefore very close to nature early in my life, and by the time that I completed high school and moved to the University of Yaoundé, I could easily name most of what remained of the plant and animal diversity in my village. With this background, I didn’t hesitate to choose biology over other disciplines at the university. After my BSc in botany, I carried out a botanical inventory of a small hill in the vicinity of Yaoundé for my “Maitrise Ès Science” and later worked on the revision of the genus Striga for my “Doctorat 3ème Cycle.” Pursuing a career in forest ecology and botany, therefore, became obvious for me, not only because it involved being close to nature, but also lots of travel, another one of my passions.
What led you down the path to your current job? What has been your biggest challenge in getting to this point in your career?
The short answer will be “luck”. A few months after graduation from the University of Yaoundé, I got a position with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in Yaoundé to carry out botanical inventories in southeast Cameroon. Unfortunately, only two months later, the entire program closed because of a disagreement with the government of Cameroon, and I was jobless.
In the process of closing the program, my boss advised me to accompany a consultant named Duncan W. Thomas (currently one of the PI’s of the Korup plot) to carry out a biodiversity assessment of the Tchabal Mbabo in northern Cameroon. I accepted the offer and spent three weeks collecting and documenting the flora of this beautiful mountain. What I didn’t know was that this was in fact an interview. Prior to our departure from Yaoundé, the consultant informed my (WCS) boss that he was looking into recruiting a young biologist for a long-term monitoring program in Korup National Park. When we returned to Yaoundé, Dr. Thomas told me about the 50-ha plot program, and a few months later, in August 1996, I was recruited as Field Manager of the Korup Forest Dynamics Plot.
After completion of the first census of the plot, I took on the positions of Herbarium Curator at the Limbe Botanical Garden, and then, later, Botanist at WWF-Cameroon, while still managing the KFDP field program and attending CTFS [Center for Tropical for Forest Science, now ForestGEO] workshops.
In 2002, I obtained a scholarship for my PhD at the University of Missouri – St. Louis, and later a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Michigan. Throughout this time I continued to be involved with CTFS and the KFDP. In 2010, I officially joined the network as postdoctoral fellow and CTFS Africa Program Coordinator, based at the Harvard University. In 2012 I became a STRI Staff Scientist.