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Cameroon: 11 More Elephants Slaughtered in Southeast
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The Post (Buea)
25 July 2008
Posted to the web 25 July 2008
Pegue Manga
Game rangers in Southeast Cameroon, July 14, 2008, confiscated 22 ivory tusks and 11 elephant tails.
The owner of the tusks, a businessman, had cut each tusk into two halves, packed them in two plastic bags and hidden them in the driver compartment of a fuel tanker en route to Cameroon's economic capital city Douala.
The tanker driver escaped abandoning his truck while the poacher has been arrested and detained, pending trial. Wildlife authorities, supported by forces of law and order, are searching for other suspects in connection with the act.
The elephant tusks were seized in Mikel, a village in Boumba et Ngoko Division, located 740km east of Cameroon's capital city, Yaounde. Thanks to information given by local population, game rangers swooped on the fuel tanker during a nocturnal mobile patrol.
The suspect told conservation authorities that he bought the tusks from poachers in Libongo, a logging town situated 880km from Yaounde, on the extreme southeast of Cameroon's borders with Central African Republic. The elephants, that included three calves, going by the sizes of the ivory tusks, are suspected to have been killed in and around Lobeke (Cameroon) and Dzanga-Ndoki (Central African Republic) national parks. Both parks are sandwiched by Libongo town.
The suspect said it was the fourth time he had been to Libongo to buy ivory tusks from Cameroonian and Central African poachers. He had spent more than two months in Libongo this time. "I come to Libongo regularly. The first time I succeeded in buying four tusks. I bought two the second time, four the third time and 22 this time," he confessed. A kilogram of tusk is sold at FCFA 15,000 (US$30).
According to the suspect, he supplies tusks to dealers in big cities of Cameroon like Douala. The tusks are then smuggled across the borders to some West African countries.
Truck Drivers Implicated
Records show that timber and fuel tanker truck drivers are most implicated in the transportation of elephant tusks from the Southeast of Cameroon. This is the sixth time truck drivers have been caught either transporting illegal ivory or sacks of bush meat from Southeast Cameroon this year.
According to the Chief of Sector in Charge of Wildlife for Boumba et Ngoko Division, East Cameroon, poachers and truck drivers work in complicity making it difficult to detect their activities. They, therefore, succeed in meandering through the numerous checkpoints mounted the roads. "Our wish is to create a mobile brigade that will patrol major roads in the region and systematically search all vehicles," declared Balla Ottou.
Lobeke National Park has one of the highest densities of forest elephants in the Congo Basin but the park is under pressure from poachers from all sides. Poaching, according to WWF Jengi Scientific Advisor, Dr. Zacharie Nzooh, has resulted in the fragmentation of elephant population in the park and surrounding zones. "Most corridors that were frequently used by elephants are now irregularly used due to poaching," Dr. Nzooh revealed.
WWF alongside other conservation organisations have been supporting Cameroon's Forest and Wildlife Ministry in its effort to bolster security around the park. Control posts have been built in and around the park, a VHF radio system has been installed to facilitate communication and 29 game rangers have been deployed to keep poachers at bay.
Cameroon's Wildlife Ministry and WWF have set up a network of informants to combat "white-collared" poachers. According to WWF, elephant poaching has been on the increase due to the involvement of some influential people in this activity.
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This latest incident lends credence to a 2007 report by the Wildlife trade monitoring network, TRAFFIC, which cited Cameroon amongst three countries in the Central African sub-region heavily implicated in the traffic of illicit ivory tusks to international markets.
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