Limbe (Fako) — Officials from the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife joined their technical counterparts from South Africa in Limbe, Fako Division on August 13, 2007, at the start of a week-long official working session on the repatriation of the 4 Cameroonian gorillas currently at the Pretoria National Zoological Garden in South Africa.

At the behest of the South African government, the government of Cameroon, acting through it's Ministry of forestry and Wildlife (MINFOF) has issued a permit of the convention on international trade in endangered species of flora and fauna (CITES) to facilitate the return of the gorillas to Cameroon which has been proved all reasonable doubts to be the country of origin of the animals.

Deliberations at the Limbe meeting include inspection of the facilities put in place at the Limbe Wildlife Centre to accommodate the 4 gorillas when they finally arrive in the country and high level talks to speed up formalities to ensure that the gorillas are returned to Cameroon as soon as possible.

The current inspector N° 2 in MINFOF and former director of Wildlife in the same ministry, Takang Ebai who was among the Cameroonian delegation to Pretoria on his return to Yaounde told pressmen that, "the South African government representatives at the meeting qualified themselves as custodians of Cameroon's gorillas and claimed they had no ownership over the animals."

In 2002, 4 gorillas were smuggled from South Western Cameroon, through Nigeria to Taiping Zoo in Malaysia and later transferred to the Pretoria Zoo in South Africa in contravention of regulation laid down by CITES. The present visit to Cameroon by South African authorities on the repatriation of the animals is the fruit of long diplomatic and administrative negotiations between the government of Cameroon and those of Malaysia and South Africa.