SubThread: Picks from the Elephant News Service

Wildlife Law Enforcement Gaining Grounds In Central Africa
Daniel Gwarbarah, The Post
November 2, 2009

Wildlife law is fast making in-roots in countries of the Central African sub region with Cameroon being acclaimed for taking the lead.

The fight against wildlife law offenders, which took off in 2003 in Cameroon with a national pilot programme, has been receiving technical assistance from the Last Great Ape Organisation, LAGA.

“So far, the programmer has raised Cameroon from zoo prosecution of wildlife criminals to at least one major wildlife criminal behind bars per week”, an assessment document from LAGA states. LAGA notes that the programme is now spreading in other countries of the sub region notably Congo-Brazzaville, Central African Republic of Congo, DRC.

The replication of the programme in Congo-Brazzaville recently resulted in a major operation leading to the arrest of three wildlife traffickers who were caught in possession of some 40kg of elephant tusks. The traffickers were nabbed immediately as they reportedly crossed the river from DRC with the ivories. It is also reported that prior to that operation, hardened ivory traffickers were tracked, arrested and detained in Bangui, Central African Republic.

Considering the success of the pilot programme in Cameroon, the assessment report notes, the government of Cameroon is increasingly being hailed at international environmental conferences as a world leader in wildlife law enforcement especially those organized by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, CITES. The recent arrest of traffickers in Douala with tusks of about one tone ripped off from around 100 elephants has added another red feather to the country’s wildlife law enforcement cap.

The Post gathered that the ivory confiscated from the traffickers in the sub region are currently being collected for a DNA test in order to determine their real origin especially as it is suspected that the stock was on transit from neighbouring countries to the international black market.

The Director of LAGA, Ofir Drori, expresses his conviction that “the illegal ivory trade, a well organised crime of international dimension, is being fuelled by corruption. Fighting corruption is the key for arresting and prosecuting the heads of the criminal ivory trafficking cartels” he declared to the press recently. This assertion corroborates declarations by bush meat traffickers and poachers of the Nkolndongo Market that they are usually tipped by some forest guards each time Forestry and Wildlife officials come for control.

The wildlife law enforcement organ holds that like gold in the 19th century America the quest for wildlife resources in Central Africa is fraught with problems of lawlessness. “But the government of Cameroon through MI|NFOF is now in a renewed alert mode to track down and sanction those involved in ivory trade in particular and other protected wildlife species in general. The government is giving no room for traffickers to deplete her wildlife heritage”, a LAGA information sheet observes.
“Our country has in place strict laws on wildlife. Cameroon is seen more and more by the international community as a land of wildlife conservation and a land where wildlife law…is well managed”, Forestry and Wildlife Minister, Prof. Elvis Ngolle Ngolle is quoted as saying.

Article at the following link:
http://www.thepostwebedition.com/Content.aspx?ModuleID=14

Vincent Gudmia Mfonfu, Standard Tribune
October 19, 2009

The replication of Cameroon's pilot programme on effective wildlife law enforcement in the Central African REpublic (CAR) at the request of the government of that country recently resulted in the first crackdown on international ivory criminal syndicate in Bangui. 

During the crackdown operation a dealer was arrested in Azimut Hotel in Bangui trying to sell 14 ivory pieces, hippo teeth, and a leopard skin -- all parts of wildlife species threatened of extinction and totally protected by existing laws in the Central African sub-region. The second was a lady of French and Central AFrican nationality arrested for being in illegal possession of 157 pieces of ivory weighing more than 200 kgs in her home in Bangui.

The crackdown operation in Bangui was carried out by a team of government agents from the Ministry of Forest, Wildlife Hunting and Fisheries (MEFCP) and the Police Research Office of the Central African Republic in collaboration with The Last Great Ape Organisation (LAGA) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in CAR. 

"Hopefully, we will be able to give an answer to government's needs in the application of the wildlife law and set up a project quite soon to assist the needs of relevant authorities in fighting wildlife crime in a sustainable way. These last actions showed that there is much work to be done," said Jean Bernard Yarissem, Director of WWF, CAR. 

The Director of LAGA said he was highly impressed with the political will of the government of CAR. "The crackdown could not have happened without the direct supervision and personal engagement of three government Ministers - Justice, National Security and the Ministry in charge of Wildlife - in CAR" says Ofir Drori. 

CAMEROON: 'Our Lives Are Defined By This Forest'
By Ngala Kilian Chimtom, Inter Press Service
October 4, 2009

YAOUNDE, Oct 4 (IPS) - Pauline Siembe, a Baka pygmy in South East Cameroon, comes out of her smoky hut licking her fingers after a meal of pounded yam and bush meat soup.

A bright smile lights her face, revealing an array of sharp-pointed teeth, intentionally sharpened to eat bush meat.

"It always feels good eating a meal like this," she remarks as she straps a basket on her shoulder and heads for the forest.

Her husband, Daniel Njanga, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, the same exhilaration visible as he emerges from the dwelling.

Still savouring the meal, Njanga says as I stretch out my hand to greet him: "This is what the government wants to deprive us of."

Taking on a more serious look, Njanga spits disdain for the government's methods of conserving the vast forest reserves of South East Cameroon, that straddle two of the country's "divisions", the Boumba and Ngoko and the Upper Nyong divisions, all in Cameroon's East Region, being part of the Congo Basin rain forest.

"This is our home and there is no point telling us that we should not access it," he tells IPS.

"If we are talking about conservation, then the Bakas are the best conservationists. We have been living here since time immemorial, and the forest has not disappeared. Those who now claim they are conserving the forest are the same people pillaging our forests. We see sawmills felling large portions of our forest every day. Is it not this same government that authorises the felling?" he asks.

Njanga is obviously angry that the forest has been gazetted into three national parks and 23 logging concessions, totalling some 760,000 hectares.

While logging concessions are designed to foster sustainable timber exploitation - in fact, operators are supposed to plant 10 trees for every one felled, although the provision is frequently violated - national parks create even stricter restrictions, as access is forbidden. These restrictions pose a threat to the Bakas, who now have to grapple with new challenges.

By the forestry laws of 1994, National Parks fall under the sphere of permanent forest domain. The law explicitly states: "Public access to state forests may be regulated or forbidden."

The more than 30,000 Baka pygmies who live in the region see these restrictions as an affront to their right of access to the forest they consider their natural home.


"Our lives are defined by this forest. We harvest fruits, wild tubers, honey and medicine from the forest. And we kill animals for our basic food needs. We destroy nothing. We get only what we need from the forest," Siembe told IPS.

Gilbert Ngwampiel, a Baka man in Ngoyla, near the Nki National Park, says: "If government says we should not hunt animals, it is a way of exterminating the Bakas. Eating bush meat makes Baka men fertile. Failing to eat meat means that the Baka man will not be able to impregnate his wife, and this is dangerous.

"Of course we want these animals to continue living here," Ngwampiel says when asked whether the Baka hunting techniques would not perhaps lead to the extinction of some species.

"We kill only enough animals to eat, and we don't kill all animals. We hunt only male animals, the females and the babes are left for posterity. Those who kill animals indiscriminately are those who want to go and sell, and they are not the Bakas - they are the Bantu," he told IPS.

He points out that the Bakas have their shrines and places of worship in the forest, and denying access to the forest is a clear violation of their right to freedom of worship.

"We can never stop worshipping the Jengi (the Baka spirit of the forest).The Jengi is the originator of all life. For life to continue, we must offer a yearly sacrifice of an elephant to Him. So, I can't understand how government tells us not to kill an elephant. How do we then survive?" he muses.

What the Bakas don't say is that they have to cut down trees to harvest honey, no matter the value and species of the tree, and their Jengi sacrifice is a threat to the dwindling numbers of elephants in the region.

Besides, the Bantu, according to Boumba and Ngoko divisional delegate for Forestry and Wildlife Pandong Eithel, supply the Bakas with guns and ammunition to hunt animals on a large scale, and later collect what has been brought in. "The rewards given to the Bakas are generally exploitative," he says.

Still, the concerns have pricked the conscience of the Cameroon government and its conservation partners, notably the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). The two entities have already completed a study that recommends a shift in conservation paradigms.

"The intention is to put people at the centre of the conservation agenda. To find solutions that work for people," says Leonard Usongo, former WWF coordinator for the WWF-Jengi Conservation Project of South East Cameroon, and who supervised the study.

"We had to identify our conservation project with the culture of the Bakas. That is why we named the conservation project in SE Cameroon the Jengi Project, Jengi being the Baka word for spirit of the forest. We needed to strike a balance between conservation and local needs."

Olivier Tegomo, junior research assistant for WWF who was at the forefront of the study, said he worked closely with the Bakas to find out what the forest really represented for them.

"All this has to do with the notion of participatory forest management. We had to find out the types of products they get from the forest, where these products are concentrated, and how they could exploit those products without threatening the forest ecosystem. Along with the Bakas, we have come up with a participatory map that localises all their interests in the forest."

Conservators did sometimes poorly apply the 1994 forestry and wildlife laws, which "stipulate scrupulous respect for the rights of indigenous people to forest resources,", Eithel conceded to IPS.

"This participatory management approach will no doubt lead to a better application of that law, and help ensure respect for the Baka way of life, and their belief systems," he said.

Usongo says any conservation paradigm that does not take into consideration the socio-cultural needs of the people is built on the wrong premise.

"The solution that works is that which still allows the indigenous people access to forest products, although we have to encourage them to do so sustainably."

He says the WWF cannot stop the Bakas from sacrificing to Jengi, but adds "We are encouraging them to use less threatened species, instead of killing an elephant every year. He also says along with the administration, the WWF is encouraging the setting up of community farms for the Bakas to lure them away from resorting to the forest for all their food needs.

"We are also working to introduce them to pisciculture as a way of slowing down their continual dependence on bush meat for protein," he told IPS.

"It means restoring the Jengi - the spirit of the forest. It means balancing today's needs with tomorrow's demands," Usongo concludes.

But the government will still need to grapple with non-Baka people who border Cameroon's forest expanse, and who use most unorthodox and destructive methods of farming. Many use bush fires to clear the forest for farmland.

Statistics show that Cameroon loses 220,000 hectares of forest every year, farming constituting the highest element of deforestation.

Article at the following link:
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48717

African Elephants in Serious Crisis (Cameroon)

Vincent Gudmia Mfonfu, Cameroon Tribune

25 September 2009

Somalomo (Upper Nyong) A wildlife trafficker with a long history of illegal killing of elephants around the Dja Reserve was arrested in Somalomo in the Upper-Nyong Division of the East Region in possession of the trunk of a young elephant. He claimed that the gun he used to gun down these elephants was given to him by a Gendarme. The National Gendarmerie authorities are investigating the matter. In May of this year and still in the East Region an elephant trafficker were arrested in Abong-Mbang, Upper-Nyong Division trying to sell an elephant tusks. In March of this same year, two other traffickers were apprehended while also trying to sell elephant parts. One had a set of elephant teeth which he was of fering for sale and the other had an elephant foot for sale. On August 5, 2009, the Bonanjo Court of First Instance in Douala in the Littoral Region, sentenced to one year imprisonment term, three dealers who were arrested in Douala trading in sculpted ivory. They were furthered ordered to pay as fines about 300 thousands francs each and to collectively pay the sum of over 2.7 million francs as damages.

The operations that led to the arrest and prosecution of all these elephant traffickers is part of the implementation of the national programme on effective enforcement of the 1994 wildlife law launched by the government of Cameroon in 2003 with the technical assistance of The Last Great Ape Organisation (LAGA). The programme aims at bringing traffickers in protected wildlife species such as elephants to justice in a bid to save them from going instinct. Illegal cross-border trade in trophies derived from elephants (ivory, tails, tooth, trunk, meat, etc) is said to be the main factor driving African elephants to extinction. The Science reporter of BBC news, Andrew Luck-Baker has stated that within the period of 1970s and 1980s referred to as the "Ivory holocaust", Africa's elephant population plunged from an estimated 1.3 million animals to 500. 000. Quoting a wildlife specialist, Luck-Baker, reveals that 38.000 elephants in Africa are killed annually to feed the growing demand for carved ivory in Eastern Asia. He warns that at this rate, "the elephant would become extinct across most of sub-Saha-ran Africa in fifteen years". Experts at the World Resources Institute in Washing ton DC attribute the extinction of natural resources such wildlife and specifically the extinction of elephant to corruption.

Steve Libam, Cameroon Tribune September 29, 2009
Called out traffickers of ivory They smuggled near a tonne of tusks of elephants. Yesterday on Monday, in the courtyard of the regional deputation of the ministry of Forests and the Fauna of the Coastal region in Douala, some forested guards are still very busy to list seized tusks of elephants. These last, taken out from several bags, occupy a big part of the courtyard. In total, they enumerate 283 pieces of tops of ivory. " For the time being, we cannot determine the number of slaughtered animals with accuracy, because certain tusks are broken in two. However at first glance, they can estimate it at more than a hundred of elephants ", entrusts François Issola Dipanda, the regional delegate of the ministry of Forests and fauna for the Coastal region. A glance on the booty of the poachers allows to see that very young elephants could appear among the victims. According to the regional delegate, the weighing performed by the police assesses the weight of the tops of ivory at 996,55 kg.

Conservationists Want Greater Protection for Central African Elephants
By Scott Stearns, Voice of America
19 May 2009

The World Wide Fund for Nature say there will be no elephants left in Central Africa's Congo Basin within the next decade if more is not done to stop poaching.

Cameroon's Chamber of Commerce says logging companies have already lost more than $300 million in the global economic crisis.

That has led to more than 1,000 people losing their jobs. And bigger dangers for elephants.

In Southeast Cameroon, The World Wide Fund for Nature says workers laid off from timber firms are increasingly poaching elephants, with at least ten killed each month.

Cameroon was previously considered a relatively safe place for elephants in the Congo Basin where their population is thought to be around 13,000. But conservationists say those herds could be gone within a decade if more is not done to stop poaching.

Martin Tchamba heads the World Wide Fund for Nature's elephant conservation program in Cameroon. He says the dual threats of increasing deforestation and poaching for meat and ivory have led to disturbing declines in elephant populations.

He says the ivory trade they have uncovered stretches from West Africa to Asia.

Tchamba wants greater cooperation between governments in the Congo Basin to reinforce and better arm park rangers who are often outgunned and overwhelmed by increasingly sophisticated poachers.

Cameroon's 1994 wildlife protection law calls for prison terms of one- to three-years and fines of between $6,000 and $20,000 for anyone found in possession of protected species including elephants, lions, leopards, African grey parrots, chimpanzees, and gorillas.

Cameroon's minister of forestry and wildlife, Elvis Ngolle Ngolle, said, "We have been able to identify and to take to court and to seize various wildlife species from the hands of forestry operators who have been found with some wildlife species which are not supposed to be in their possession," he said.

Conservationists say poaching and deforestation have cut the world's elephant population by half over the last 30 years, with fewer than 140,000 elephants left worldwide.

Article at the following link:
http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-05-19-voa45.cfm