Africa: Rumbles in the Jungle

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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises

http://forests.org/ -- Forest Conservation Archives

http://forests.org/web/ -- Discuss Forest Conservation

7/30/99

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by EE

Following is an excellent depiction of rising conservation conflict in

Africa. The point is well made that despite increased environmental

advocacy by Western groups, that not enough has been done to promote

an environmental and land ethic in people directly confronted with

pressing needs for economic development.

g.b.

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Title: Rumbles in the Jungle

Source: Mail and Guardian. Distributed via Africa News Online.

Date: July 30, 1999

Johannesburg (Mail and Guardian, July 30, 1999) - The conservationists

are fighting to stop logging and hunting in the last rainforest in

Central Africa. Trouble is, the residents don't agree. Tim Judah

reports

This is the story of a new scramble for Africa; of pygmies, presidents

and poachers locked in combat. Africans, Europeans, loggers, bankers

and eco- warriors are all fighting for the soul of Central Africa. The

struggle is for the continent's last great virgin forests, for money,

for meat and mahogany. And the Mambele crossroads, deep in the

rainforest of Cameroon, is on the front line.

Hundreds of kilometres from the sea, the crossroads is a cluster of

houses, an inn, a bar and little else. It's hot here, and the rich red

soil stains houses, clothes and almost everything else. Sunk in

daytime torpor, you would be hard-pressed to guess that this

settlement lies in the eye of the storm. Yet late into the night, the

men and women of the local Bangando tribe sweat and stamp and sing:

"Those foreigners... are coming to the forest ... to steal our

parrots."

In the bar, two neatly dressed young Germans, guides for high-paying,

would- be great white hunters, sip their beer. But Mambele is not

known for its hunting. It's really just a truck stop. This is where

drivers hauling precious cargos of wood stop to dine on rich monkey

stews and to sleep the night. Some of the biggest and most valuable

trees now on their way to the ports of the coast were seedlings at the

time of the French Revolution. This is the wealth of the forest that

the loggers have to come to harvest -or to pillage. But at Mambele,

situated in a part of the forest designated as a future reserve, the

locals can only look on in impotent rage. Not because their trees are

being cut, but because they are not.

In Mambele, they are angry because the loggers who used to work here

have gone. They have left, in part, because foreign conservationists

have put pressure on the government to apply its own laws on forest

conservation. But clearly, the message the conservationists would like

to get through - that saving the rainforests will, indeed must,

benefit the locals as well as future generations of humanity in

general - is failing.

Hanging around the Good Samaritan Inn, Valentin Mikody, in his 30s, is

watching a group of foreigners unload their car. Escaping the

deafening Congolese and Cameroonian rhythms blaring from the bar, he

clutches his beer bottle and, as a small crowd gathers around, he

explains that he trained as an agricultural technician, but is now

unemployed. "Because the logging companies left, there is no work

here," he says, jabbing the air angrily.

In the minds of the Bangando, foreign do- gooders are the enemy. That

may be, but unless logging is brought under control in Central Africa,

this expanse of forest - 15 000 years in the making and second in size

only to the Amazon - will be devastated, and gone by 2020. The

statistics are terrifying. Across the world, the equivalent of 37

football pitches of tropical, primary forest is being felled every

minute. In 1990, the volume of timber exported from the countries of

the Congo Basin was 200 000m3. In 1997, it was two million cubic

metres. Four million hectares of African tropical forest are destroyed

every year.

At first sight, the destruction is far from evident. To get to the

heart of the forest, you can either drive for days on dirt roads - or

fly with Christ. To subsidise their work, a group of American

missionaries will fly you across in their tiny plane. Pilot David

Carman says, "We have the custom of beginning our flights with a

prayer: Oh Lord, we thank you for the good weather you have blessed us

with today. Tango Mike 123, over."

From a height of 1 100m, all you can see is trees. Nothing but trees.

For hour after hour, you can fly across this extraordinary, monotonous

landscape and kid yourself that no one could possibly be down there.

But take a closer look, and sure enough, logging tracks spread like

spindly tentacles across the forest. And where the loggers have worked

and gone, the forest has returned. The tracks become scars of green as

less valuable vegetation and trees grow back where the virgin forest

has been felled.

In fact, say the experts, careful, selective logging - the chopping of

one or two trees per hectare - is generally sustainable. But

corruption means that the rules are rarely enforced, and too much wood

is being taken out. At the same time, the uncontrolled opening of

logging tracks has meant that the forest's wildlife is also being

annihilated - literally eaten to extinction.

Even as heads of state sign up to conventions to save the forests and

designate more land for reserves, the logging roads have already

precipitated an ecological catastrophe for the region's wildlife. The

people who live in the forest have always hunted. But with the forests

more or less inaccessible, there was little possibility of commercial

exploitation of the forest animals for what is called "bushmeat". All

that has changed in the past five to 10 years.

Because of the logging trails, locals and hunters from the cities and

logging camps are decimating the forests. All manner of deer, monkeys,

anteaters, chimpanzees and gorillas are being slaughtered. Elephants,

too, are being killed. Most of this is for meat, but some is for

traditional medicines and practices. For example, some people sprinkle

powder made from dried gorilla hands into their baby's bath. They

believe it will make them strong. Consequently, gorillas here are now

teetering on the verge of extinction.

The bushmeat question is becoming more sensitive. African leaders are

acutely aware of the negative publicity it is bringing. The problem,

as with logging, is not that it exists, but that it is out of control.

At a summit this March, the presidents and governments of seven

Central African countries committed themselves to conserving the

forest and its animals. In a vain attempt to hide the bushmeat problem

from the visitors, Cameroonian police swept the markets of the

capital, Yaound . You only had to drive out of town, though, to nearby

Mbalmayo, to see the full extent of the trade. Here, monkeys were

being cooked in restaurants, along with anteaters, porcupines, snakes

and other creatures.

"Traditionally, the forest belongs to the people," says Thomas Bitye

Mvondo, the government official in charge of enforcing hunting

regulations. When he tries to make them pay for hunting permits and

explain that some animals cannot be hunted, "they don't understand".

Even if trying to tell people why there should be rules is difficult

enough, Mvondo and his colleagues have no cars to go to the villages

in anyway.

Across the region, there is confusion about what is permissible, and

about the limits of enforcement. And, frankly, say many ecologists,

local officials charged with enforcing the rules are far from keen to

carry out their work. Economic decline has meant a fall in civil

service salaries of up to 70% in real terms over the past 15 years.

This means that many officials, far from playing gamekeeper, are the

poachers themselves.

To counter this, some Western groups have begun to hire so-called

ecoguards, who - officially, at least - work for their respective

governments. There are 20 of them in Mambele, and the locals are far

from pleased. "We get nothing from this reserve project," shouts the

unemployed Valentin Mikody. "If the guards catch you with any meat,

whatever it is, they confiscate it."

Just down the road, in a pygmy settlement, Eduard Ndzinge says that

however his people may have lived for the past few thousand years,

things are different now. "If we don't hunt, there's no money for

clothes, there's no money to send the children to school or to send

anyone to hospital."

Francois Bikoro, deputy editor of the Cameroonian magazine Africa

Express, says that Africans are not interested in exchanging money and

food today for the vague hope of something better tomorrow. Because of

the logging roads, a man can sell prized gorilla meat to a passing

truck driver. "If you say to a man you can't kill a gorilla, then

replace it. Bring a school to him, a dispensary, give him some other

activity."

Claude Martin, director general of the World Wide Fund for Nature

International (WWF), is clear that a balance must be struck between

development and conservation. It was his organisation that hosted the

March summit in Yaound which was chaired by the WWF's president

emeritus, Prince Philip. "In West Africa, 90% of the rainforest is

totally gone," says Martin. "It all happened in the past few decades.

Opening up the untouched forest areas to road transport led to slash-

and-burn farming, which has been to the detriment of the forest

population."

Martin says it is essential to make people understand that the short-

term gain of uncontrolled logging will inevitably lead to long-term

loss. It's not an argument that has even begun to penetrate the

consciousness of most people here. Francois Bikoro echoes the beliefs

of many Central Africans when he says that not only is there more than

enough timber, but that people like Martin are hypocritical and self-

serving. "You destroyed your environment and got developed, now you

want us to stop doing it! What do we get out of it? You have your TVs

and your cars, but no trees. People want to know what they gain by

conserving the forest."

For Martin, the answer is simple. "Why are these logging companies

moving into Central Africa? Because there is nothing left in West

Africa. There, the natural and economic capital of those countries is

degraded. Nigeria is now a net importer of timber. The Ivory Coast

once supported a major income from timber exports, as did Ghana. Most

of that former forestland is not converted into agricultural use now,

but is abandoned. There is poverty in former timber areas."

Logging has brought millions of dollars into Central Africa over the

past few years. But, except for those who depend on the logging

companies, few ordinary people see the benefits of all this money. In

some circles, it is regarded as politically incorrect to refer to the

real reason for this, or to even actually utter the "c" word:

corruption.

In this part of the world, the president, rather than the government,

has the final word. And that includes handing out concessions to

foreign companies. This is often sought in partnership with the

president's relations, allies and cronies. As they say in Cameroon:

"Unless you have a brother at the top of the tree, you won't eat black

plums."

And if you don't have a brother at the top of the plum tree but you

want to do business here, you had better buy one. Last year, a study

of 85 countries by Transparency International, a German organisation,

concluded that Cameroon was the most corrupt country on earth. That

makes it hard to work here, but the WWF has opted for an unusual way

of tackling the powers that be. It has formed an alliance with the

World Bank, which means that Central African countries must live up to

their commitments to conserve and manage the forests responsibly - or

their relationships with international financial institutions will be

affected.

Whether it works or not remains to be seen. After chairing the WWF

conference in Yaound , Prince Philip toured the region with the

organisation. Weeks later, an e-mail filtered out of the forest from a

source that must remain nameless. It read: "A minister from here lied.

He said that the WWF had a good chance of controlling the logging,

when, in fact, he had already given a new logging concession to his

French cronies. He also told the local population that he is intent on

closing the WWF project, but he played right up to royalty and Claude

Martin."

But if it remains to be seen whether the arm- twisting actually works,

the conservationists are also applying discreet pressure on the

loggers. They are telling people like Ennio Dajelli, whose company

Groupe Sefac operates from Libongo, in eastern Cameroon, that co-

operation, rather than confrontation, is the way forward. Odd

behaviour for environmentalists? Not out here. This is hardwood

realpolitik. If the word gets out that, for example, Italian companies

are "raping" the forests, the damage to their sales would be enormous.

In fact, Dajelli's company has a good reputation. He has imported

sophisticated computerised equipment, which means they can process the

wood on the spot, to a very high quality. Not only does this provide

jobs, but it increases the value of the product. Dajelli employs 1 000

people, but adds that this really means he is "feeding 10 000".

When he arrived in Libongo by boat 25 years ago, there was nothing but

forest. Now there is a town, work, a doctor and a school. Still,

everyone is far from happy. Even in the company-subsidised school,

there are just two teachers for 190 six- to seven-year-olds.

"Impossible!" says one mother, hanging back while the rest of the

population of Libongo, ordered out by the police to the airstrip to

greet Prince Philip's plane, danced in the sweltering tropical heat.

Later, workers watch as their boss entertains the prince. They

complain about their salary and conditions. By Central African

standards, their pay is good. Still, an employee tells me, "The union

doesn't do anything. If you try and do something, it's out the door,

so you just keep your mouth shut."

Dajelli is angered when I ask him about this. He points out that his

problem is that, unlike in Europe, his workers and their families are

"supported, assisted and educated by us. Our resources are engaged in

supporting them."

If Libongo is Central Africa's answer to Port Sunlight, the 19th-

century model village built by Lord Leverhulme for the workers from

his soap factory on the Wirral peninsula, then Kika is its Klondike.

Eighty kilometres from Libongo, the town is literally dying. Here,

hemmed in by reserves, and the border of Congo (Brazzaville), a French

logging concession is winding down its operations and laying off

workers. In the past nine months, almost half of its 4 000-strong

population has gone.

It is not just in Cameroon that the growing power of Western

environmentalists can be felt. Eighty-five per cent of neighbouring

Gabon is still covered by forest that contains more than 8 000 plant

species, 150 types of mammal and more than 600 species of bird. In

Gabon, a small, oil-rich country, the virgin forest runs down to the

lagoons of the coast and to the seashore.

Take a boat across the N'Dogo lagoon, near the town of Gamba, and you

can see, unchanged, what the Portuguese explorers of the 1470s must

have seen. A coastline of impenetrable forest and mangrove swamps.

This area is still so unspoiled that you can watch forest elephants

swim the lagoon to get to the beach in search of salt. An

extraordinary sight - and hardly one you would associate with a

multinational like Shell.

Gamba is bizarre: a Shell company town full of expatriate Europeans

linked to a relatively prosperous African community. Here, in the

middle of the forest, are manicured lawns and nightclubs. Everyone and

everything in Gamba depends on Shell. The company has two concessions,

both onshore and in the forest. Flaring gas lights up the night sky at

the Rabi field, the largest onshore oilfield in sub-Saharan Africa.

Shell is also the largest oil operator in Gabon, where most of the

export income is derived from crude oil.

Here, the problem is not one of preserving the forest from loggers,

but of limiting the impact of oilfields on the environment. By making

it hard to get to except by expensive flights, Shell and the Gabonese

government have conspired to prevent Gamba becoming a magnet pulling

people off the land and into shantytown unemployment.

John Barry, Shell Gabon's managing director, seems nervous in the

presence of a journalist. After all, big companies put the interests

of shareholders above those of swimming elephants. The question is:

how best to do it? Shell Gabon has called in the WWF and is helping

them work in Gamba.

Asked if he thinks French companies are as ecologically conscious as

British ones, Barry lets the cat out of the bag: Shell is courting

environmentalists because it needs them. According to Barry, the

"negative impact" of certain "operations" - the Brent Spa oil rig and

Nigeria - have pushed Shell "further along this route than others".

In Nigeria, Shell helped open up the delta areas of Ogoniland. This

led to a quadrupling of the population, ecological disaster, Ogoni

unrest, the execution of activist Ken Saro- Wiwa and, eventually,

calls for a consumer boycott of Shell petrol. It does not take a

genius to work out why the WWF is courted in Gamba and why Shell is

happy to collaborate. The jury is still out on whether such cosy

collaboration between environmentalists and business will work.

Walk for an hour through the forest in the Dzanga-Sangha reserve in

the south-western tip of the Central African Republic (wedged between

Cameroon and Congo-Brazzaville), wade through rivers, and you might

find Andrea Turkalo. Working for the New York Zoological Society's

Wildlife Conservation Society, she has been studying the forest

elephants here for several years. She believes that, in this region

alone, there are 4 000 of them - she can identify 2 500, and has given

names to them all.

Whispering in a hide above a natural clearing in the forest, we watch

the elephants come down to find salt under the mud. This reserve and

park was supposed to be a showcase of how tourism could support a

community where loggers once provided jobs and poachers' meat. In

fact, it has shown just how hard it is. Tourists rarely come because

of past political instability, unreliable transport and the remoteness

of the place.

Turkalo admits that many locals regret that there is no more logging

here. Later, as night falls on her encampment, she says gloomily:

"Conservation does not work. The economics are against it. Imagine

being an African. When you wake up, what do you think about? Food. You

have to either kill or buy something. Besides, chopping down trees is

sexy work. People liked the noise."

Turkalo lives alone, apart from a detachment of pygmy guards. Tonight,

they are away, but for company she has her friend Louis Sarno, from

New Jersey, who spends months at a time with the pygmies. Bats make

strange whooping noises and the stars are diamond-bright in this

lonely place with no light or pollution to obscure them. Another

foreign environmentalist who lives in the region complains that,

although poaching is down, local officials still get pygmies to hunt

elephants for them. "I know who is doing it," he says, "but I can't

say anything or I'll be out of the country."

Recently, the redoubtable Turkalo found herself under attack from

robbers. They demanded money, and she went into her house to get it.

When she came out, she found they had fled. "They thought I was going

to get a gun," she says disdainfully. When it comes to hunters and

poachers, her lip curls. "There's a place up north where there was a

lot of hunting and poaching, but they killed everything. They are

still waiting for people to come back to hunt, but they won't -

because there is nothing left."

"I used to hunt everything," says Joseph Melloh. He is a bit of a

rarity: a commercial poacher who became a conservationist. He used to

make R400 a day in a country where the average wage is R220 a month.

Melloh now collaborates with Englishman Chris Mitchell, director of

the Cameroon Wildlife Aid Fund. He has created an orphanage in Yaound

's Mvog Betsi Zoo for young chimpanzees and other animals brought in

once their parents have been killed for meat.

In the forest, says Mitchell, "the loggers hire hunters but only give

them two or three cartridges. So they go for big animals such as

gorillas." The logging trucks also provide an opportunity for hunters

to sell meat to the truckers, who sell it on in the towns. "Where

logging goes, the hunters follow."

As if the devastation wrought by the consequences of logging were not

enough, this widespread consumption of forest apes, due to the opening

of logging roads, may have triggered the spread of Aids. Hopping about

in Mitchell's zoo are two monkeys infected with SIV, the ape

equivalent of HIV. The virus does not develop into Aids. However, many

scientists now believe that the species- jump to humans began when

SIV-infected monkeys became available as food in cities.

And who knows what else is lurking up there in the forest? In Gabon, a

recent outbreak of Ebola fever, which killed 13 people, was traced to

their having eaten a chimpanzee. While we speak, another monkey is

brought into the zoo. According to Mitchell, chimpanzees and several

other large mammals will be extinct here in five to 10 years.

It's a race against time to save the forests now. To save the animals,

but also to bring jobs and development to Central Africa. As Fran ois

Bikoro of Africa Express says, the struggle for forests, to conserve

them and their wildlife, is really a struggle for power "which begins

with schools and hospitals. Give us schools and hospitals, and we'll

give you your reserves."

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