A project to monitor the effective implementation of the Wildlife law for good governance was launched in Yaounde last Monday.

The more there is talk about intensifying forestry control to track down poachers and illegal trade in wildlife, the more cases of people tracked down in the process keeps swelling. This is the most disturbing observation made by actors in the sector. Just why this has been happening is the question. Either the law on wildlife is weak or it is poorly implemented. It is against this backdrop that the Centre for Communication in Rural Development (CCORUD), a platform for collaborating journalists, scientists, civil and environmental engineering consultants, researchers, wildlife experts, law enforcement officers and policy makers have submitted a pilot project for evaluating the performance of forestry control posts. The main objective here is to propose reforms that are adapted to the local realities.

This project was in the centre of a workshop on Monday at the Yaoundé Mvog Betsi zoo during which stakeholders discussed the role of certain NGOs in enforcing the law on wildlife within the framework of the project objective. Experts questioned why there is persistence in illegal trade, the consequences of poaching on wildlife loss and how best the situation can be reversed. Proposed for CARPE Small Grants 2008, the project sets out to achieve the following: evaluate the performance of FCPs in wildlife law implementation, measure corruption experiences, construct benchmarks to monitor activities of FCPs and use corruption index and good governance to assess the level of corruption at FCPs.

The major presentations made at the launching yesterday by Antoine Eyebe, Focal Point CARPE, Ofir Droir, Director of the Last Great Ape (LAGA), and Sunjo Emmanuel, coordinator of CCORUD, made very disturbing revelations. For instance, that 4,000 chimpanzees and 3,000 gorillas are killed every year; that 23,000 elephants were killed last year for illegal ivory and that at the present rate, they could be extinct by 2020.

The project which is earmarked to cover an eight-month period will have as major activities to carryout research surveys and acquire all laws related to wildlife; produce a research tool kit; collect data on the field through trained researchers; analyse the data and present a final report among others. Yesterday's workshop held under the patronage of the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife.