May 13, 2012
- By Fidelis Pegue Manga
When Mary Ashu, 29, was posted to serve as forest ranger on the east flank of the Dja Biosphere Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that straddles the East and South Regions of Cameroon in 2007, she beamed with enthusiasm.
Not long after taking up service, he presence began being felt at a control post near the reserve. Mary would thoroughly search every single vehicle and confiscated bushmeat, panther skins and elephant...
April 18, 2012
- An appeals court in the East Region of Cameroon has sentenced a group caught trafficking 44 ivory tusks to one year jail terms and damages of FCFA 100 million (US$ 200,000) to be paid to Cameroon’s Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife (MINFOF).
The judgment comes three months after a lower court sentenced the same suspects to...
April 10, 2012
- A court in the East Region of Cameroon has handed out high fines and lengthy prison terms to a group of wildlife poachers and traffickers a month after meting out mild penalties that caused outrage in the conservation community.
The ruling is unprecedented in the history of wildlife...
March 29, 2012
- By Fidelis Pegue Manga
Ask Abagui Iya Lucien, a game ranger who has been working for Lobéké National Park since 1998, what it feels like working as a ranger today and he tells you, “We have attained the nadir.” Never have rangers working in the southeast of Cameroon been so demoralized.
With reason: they have been going after dangerously armed poachers wholly unarmed. They have been begging and yearning for arms to better defend themselves in the face of...
March 28, 2012
- Twelve suspected poachers have been arrested and 14 elephant tusks confiscated outside protected areas in southeast Cameroon this week. Forest rangers carried out the arrests and seizures near Boumba-Bek and Nki National Parks after receiving intelligence information from village monitoring groups formed by WWF.
The anti-poaching operation comes just weeks after...
March 15, 2012
- It has been two weeks since the Cameroon government authorized a military intervention at the site of the slaughter of hundreds of elephants. WWF is disturbed by reports that the poaching continues unabated in Bouba N’Djida National Park and that a soldier’s life has been lost. The forces arrived too late to save most of the park’s elephants, and were too few to deter the poachers.
It is likely that at least half the population of Bouba N’Djida's elephants has been killed....