Simandou


Simandou is a range of hills located in the Nzérékoré and Kankan regions of southeastern Guinea, in the country's mountainous, forested Guinée Forestière region. At the southern end of the range the site of a large iron ore deposit is currently being developed.

Geography

The Simandou Range extends north and south, it is located east of Banankoro and Kérouané, from southern Kankan Region into northern Nzérékoré Region. The highest point is Pic de Fon, elevation, in the southern portion of the range. Other peaks include Pic de Tibé, elevation, is located at the center of the range, and Pic de Going,, to the north.

Geology

The Simandou Range consists of a sequence of deformed itabirites, phyllites, and quartzites within Proterozoic basement rocks.

Ecology and natural history

The Simandou Range is an important area of conservation for the Guinean forest ecosystem of West Africa, one of the world's biologically richest and most endangered terrestrial ecosystems. The Upper Guinean forests ecosystem, of which the Simandou Range forms part of, extends across southern Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, southern Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and western Togo. It is believed to have once covered as much as, but over centuries of human activity, nearly 70 percent of the original forest cover has disappeared, leaving isolated patches of different forest types that host ecological communities of exceptional diversity and numerous endemic species.
The variety of habitats found in the Simandou Range include humid Guinean savanna, Western Guinean lowland forest, montane and gallery forests, and the rare and endangered West African montane grassland habitat. The Pic de Fon forest at the southern end of the range is a relatively intact area of approximately 25,600 ha that contains many typical flora and fauna of the Guinean montane forests ecosystem, including endangered species such as the Nimba otter shrew, the West African chimpanzee, the Diana monkey and the Sierra Leone prinia, a bird of the West African highlands known from only three other sites in the world. Frog Hylarana fonensis is known from nowhere else.
The area has so far been protected by relative isolation but its biodiversity is now threatened by the encroachment of agriculture, illegal and unregulated bush meat hunting, logging, uncontrolled bush fires, road development, potentially destructive mining operations and human population growth. Government agencies' lack of capacity to enforce environmental legislation increases the threat. Land tenure conflicts and ecologically destructive subsistence farming practices, exacerbated by poverty, also pose problems for the environment.
The range has two classified forests: Pic de Fon, designated in 1953, with an area of 256 km2, and Pic de Tibé, designated in 1945, with an area of 60.75 km2.

Mining

Simandou is planned to become the site of the largest integrated iron-ore mine and infrastructure project ever developed in Africa.

Namesake

There is a town of the same name in nearby Côte d’Ivoire.
This town is not to be confused with Siamandou further to the west.