Cameroon's Wildlife Victims of Bush Meat Trade
6/2/98
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Title: Cameroon's Wildlife Victims of Bush Meat Trade
Source: The Environment News Service
Status: Copyrighted, contact source to reprint
Date: 6/2/98
Byline: Tansa Musa
YAOUNDE, Cameroon, June 2, 1998 (ENS) - Restaurant owners and their agents stop
by the hundreds each morning at Yaounde's Elig-Edzoa market, not for the
vegetables, which were its only produce just five years ago, but for the game
meat that has made it famous here.
The visitor is stunned by the quantity and variety of "bush meat" on display,
whether whole or in pieces, smoked, semi-smoked or fresh. Monkey or buffalo,
hare, deer or antelope, porcupine or tortoise, viper or wildcat, just about any
type of wild animal that exists in Cameroon can be found there.
All the animals, according to Maman Jeannette - one of the popular retailers at
the Elig-Edzoa market - are captured in the forests of the Centre, South and
East provinces as well as from the savannas of the North that are very rich in
game.
A question comes to mind: how are the hunters able to kill game hundreds of
kilometres away and transport it to town in a country with a supposedly
rigorous anti-poaching law and with game guards posted in various areas?
"It is a complicated process," explains Manuel Yab, a former middleman who used
to liaise between hunters in the wild and wholesalers and retailers in town.
Yab, who has now switched to other business, invited this reporter one morning
to watch an operation that is part of the game-meat
trade chain.
It is about 6:30 am. The scene is a point three kilometres (1.8 miles) from the
Yaounde train station. The overnight train from the North approaches. It slows
down and, as it does so, tightly wrapped jute bags hurled through the windows
of the coaches land in the surrounding bushes.
Some of the bags - each of them contains game meat - are picked up by men who
run out of the bushes as soon as the train passes. In other cases, the owners
get off the train when it stops at the station and then rush back to collect
their booty.
In the past five years, illegal hunting has reached unprecedented proportions
in this Central African country. Figures are hard to come by but the evidence
is there in the abundance and variety of game meat at the Elig-Edzoa market,
and the many others like it in Cameroon.
What shocks environmentalists is the impunity enjoyed by all the actors in the
illegal trade, from the hunter in the bush through the middleman, to the vendor
in town.
The Forestry and Wildlife Law prescribes stiff penalties, including long prison
sentences, for the illegal killing of wild animals, but this has had little
effect, as the Director of Wildlife in the Ministry of Environment and Forests
(MINEF), Djoh a Ndiang, admits.
"Our government has a good wildlife conservation policy, but we lack the means
to implement this policy," says Djoh a Niang, who explains that the illegal
hunters are generally armed with sophisticated weapons and prepared to take
risks because of the profits they make from the trade.
On the other hand, forestry and game guards are posted without any firearms to
far-flung areas, where they lack means of transport and communication.
Moreover, they are poorly paid so they easily end up accepting bribes from
poachers.
The most difficult aspect of the illegal trade to deal with is trafficking in
ivory, crocodile, panther or leopard skins, ostrich feathers, and parrots and
other rare species. Within this high- profit range are to be found some highly
placed persons in the ruling class, commonly referred to here as 'the
untouchables.'
A well known story is that of a village chief in Mesok, a small village tucked
away in the equatorial forest of south-eastern Cameroon, who, thinking he was
protected by the law, organised his villagers and got them to seize game from
poachers. The booty was publicly auctioned and the proceeds paid into the
public treasury as prescribed by the law.
But one week later the chief received a summons to appear in court, where he
was fined 65,000 CFA francs ($US130). The poacher had simply reported the
seizure to his boss in Yaounde who wasted no time in taking legal action.
According to U.S. Ambassador to Cameroon Charles Twining, fighting illegal
hunting requires joint efforts worldwide between governments and non-
governmental organizations operating in the area of wildlife.
"Any country that has national parks has problems of poaching. And several
years ago we realized that this was a problem in Cameroon," he said here
while handing over anti-poaching material to the government for the Benue Park
in northern Cameroon.
"I have been there and know a lot of poaching goes on in the Benue National
Park just like elsewhere in the country," he added. "And we like to feel that
the protection of the fauna is not just something that affects Cameroon. It
affects the heritage of mankind, and therefore it is important that we all -
whether it is France, the U.S., W.W.F or W.C.A - try to contribute to eliminate
or at least get the problem under control."
A welcome gesture, environmentalists here said, referring to the US$50,000
donation, which included an all-road vehicle, five motorcycles, six rough-
terrain bicycles, 10 VHF portable radios, 10 binoculars and 10 back-country
tents.
They hoped, though, that the material would not end up in private hands as
other state property in Cameroon has.
{Published in cooperation with the Inter Press Service (IPS).
http://www.ips.org}