The Value of Fragments: Making a Hotspot in Mount Nimba, Liberia

Abstract

An open-pit mine became a nature reserve within Mount Nimba, a mountain range in West Africa that occupies the triborder region of Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire, and Guinea. Mount Nimba has attracted scientific, economic, and institutional actors to remake value in an area recognized as a hotspot of biodiversity and, potentially, infectious diseases. A park ranger and a genealogy of the hotspot guide our inquiry into the making of Mount Nimba as a hotspot and highlight how this designation has altered relations among the living and nonliving occupants in a fragment of the Upper Guinean Forests of West Africa.