Robert Tumasang
8 January 2009
Government and some NGOs working for wildlife protection have expressed outrage at the horrible spectre of poaching and wildlife trafficking in the East Region.
Meeting on December 17-18, 2008, in Abong-Mbang, some 300 km from the Cameroon capital Yaounde, members of the East Regional Committee for the Fight Against Poaching, including CAMEROON wildlife officials, NGOS like the WWFand GTZ, traders in wildlife, the forces of law and order etc, all expressed concern that such iconic species like chimpanzees, gorillas, sitatungas and elephants were being killed by the day by poachers.
The statistics are staggering. In 2008, 60 elephant tusks and 11 elephant tails were confiscated from poachers in the Boumba et Ngoko Division of Cameroon's East Region alone.
Axiomatically, at least 30 elephants were killed, going by the 60 tusks. A parrot poacher was arrested with 350 parrot heads, while 12 panther heads and a Sitatunga skin were confiscated from poachers in the Region.Cross-border arms trafficking and the proliferation of arms have been largely blamed for the rise in poaching and wildlife trafficking in the Region.
Last year, game rangers seized 380 munitions, 46 arms and over 20,000 wire snares from poachers. Pandong Eidel, Forestry and Wildlife Delegate for the Boumba et Ngoko Division, told those who attended the Abong-Mbang meeting that, "Arms generally come from the Congo through border towns like Moloundou and Lamidom as well as from the Central African Republic.
"These are countries that are frequently embroiled in internal strife and the consequences have been that arms are trafficked across the borders into the forests of South East Cameroon where three National Parks, the Nki, the Boumba-Bek and the Lobeke, covering some 760,000 hectares have been created."
The arms, most of them war weapons such as the Kalashnikov AK 47 generally fall into the hands of poachers who wreck havoc on wildlife in the Region.The Delegate regretted that the game rangers, numbering only about 29 in the Region, "are not only poorly equipped, they are also numerically inferior to the poachers, and this makes any effective fight against poaching difficult."
Besides, the global credit crunch has had a tremendous effect on wildlife survival in South
East Cameroon."Poaching is intensifying in the East Region especially as the global financial crisis has affected logging companies, which are now retrenching most of their workers.
The spiral of unemployment so created has led the jobless to turn to poaching as an alternative," Bruno Mfou'ou, the East Regional Delegate for Forestry and Wildlife told said.
The Conservator of the Lobeke National Park, Albert Mounga Abanda, complained that the
implantation of logging companies and mining enterprises in the region has had the effect of encouraging poaching by opening up roads that poachers use to easily skirt control from game rangers.
These roads also facilitate trafficking in wildlife, as "bush meat" sellers find easy access to the markets.Participants also complained about administrative bottlenecks, as people of high standing in society have frequently been involved in what has become known as "white collar poaching."
According to Leon Nkantio, the Conservator of the Boumba-Bek National Park, some 600 km from Yaoundé, some government functionaries now use loopholes in the laws on wildlife to foster poaching in the region. "The laws on wildlife conservation give local communities the right to carry out subsistence hunting in community hunting zones. But, unfortunately, some highly placed people now hide behind this law and supply local populations, especially the indigenous Baka pygmies with guns to hunt for them," he said.
To curb the phenomenon, participants, amongst other things, proposed the intensification of joint patrols that would bring together game rangers from the Central Africa Republic,
Cameroon and the Congo, in accordance with the Sangha Tri-National Framework.
The need to limit the proliferation of fire arms was also stressed while they agreed on the necessity to discourage the sale of bush meat in township markets since poachers operate because there is a consumer market.
They also said there is need to work in synergy with all stakeholders: consumers, hunters, conservators, NGOS, the civil society and the forces of law and order.
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