Posted on 18 December
2012 | Bouba N’Djida National Park, North
Cameroon: Fifty kilometers from Chad’s border,
at the edge of North Cameroon’s Bouba N’Djida
National Park, speaking to media, General
Martin Tumenta does not mince his words.
“We are not dealing
with ordinary poachers,” he told a group
of national and international reporters.
“They are highly armed,
they have heavy machine guns, automatic
rifles… they wear uniforms, they are organized
and they are after our elephants.”
“What we are dealing
with is an army, platoon, battalion, that
does not hesitate to cross our borders to
rob it of its natural heritage.”
“My job, to preserve
the territorial integrity and biodiversity
of our country,” the general, who heads
military operations in the North of the
country, said as he announced over the weekend
Cameroon’s decision to mobilize over 600
soldiers and a helicopter of its elite Bataillon
d´intervention rapide (BIR – Rapid
Intervention Battalion) to stop poachers
from entering its territory to kill elephants
for their ivory.
The move was in response
to an incident earlier this year when Sudanese
poachers travelled more than 1,000 km on
horseback from northern Sudan across the
Central African Republic and Chad to kill
over 300 elephants in the Bouba N’Djida
National Park.
According to WWF sources,
several groups of these poachers have decided
to return earlier than usual this year in
order to take advantage of the greater ground
cover available during the rainy season
and to catch the park guards by surprise
by arriving sooner than expected.
Cameroon’s announcement
of its military response was immediately
applauded by WWF International Director
General Jim Leape, who called it a “bold
and courageous move, and sets a new standard
for other governments in the front line
of deterring wildlife poaching and trafficking.”
“WWF would like to congratulate
the President of Cameroon for the decision
to deploy Special Forces to protect vulnerable
areas, people and elephants from heavily
armed foreign poaching gangs.”
“That incident (in Bouba
N’Djida earlier this year) underlines the
fact that poaching and illegal wildlife
trade has become an issue of national security,
with serious consequences for a country’s
economic and social prospects,” he said
in a statement.
The killing of Africa’s
elephants for their ivory has a long history.
Between 1970 and 1989 half of Africa’s elephants
– perhaps 700,000 individuals – were killed
due to illegal wildlife trade.
More recently, elephant
poaching and related illegal wildlife trade
is estimated to have decimated half of Central
Africa’s remaining elephants between 1995
and 2007. And the rate of killing of elephants
has steeply increased since then.
At the root of the problem
lies skyrocketing demand for ivory, a consequence
of rising incomes in South-East and East
Asia, coupled with cultural attitudes to
this good. Ivory that used to sell at around
$10 per kilogram five years ago in the local
villages of the Congo Basin countries, will
now fetch up to $300. With an average mass
of 6.8 kg per tusk, one elephant can represent
a multiple of the average income of many
in Central Africa.
The increase of large
scale ivory seizures of African ivory both
in Africa but much more in Asia is evidence
of the growing involvement of organized
crime in the illegal trade in wildlife.
This activity has become an organised transnational
crime involving significant violence, which
is destabilising societies and jeopardising
the reputations of African countries as
good places to invest and do business.
Left unaddressed, wildlife
crime undermines governments’ efforts to
halt other related illicit trades, such
as arms and drug trafficking, facilitates
the growth of organised crime, and adding
fuel to regional conflicts.
The operation, entitled
“Peace at Bouba N’Djida”, will cover an
area of around 12,000 square kilometers,
including and surrounding the Park of about
200,000 hectares, which is patrolled by
teams of the BIR’s anti-terrorism brigades
at all times. All activities should be seen
as support to the sixty ecogards in the
region, who do not have the capacity to
face this new threat, Tumenta said.
Since it began about
a month ago, “there have not been any signs
of poachers,” he said, adding that the BIR
would remain in the area until the poachers
had given up on their target.
“These forces will be
permanently, I say permanently, and I repeat
permanently, in this territory.”
“I advise (the poachers),
in light of the resources at our disposal,
not to step foot in this country,” Tumenta
concluded.
“Let us hope that Cameroon’s
emphatic response to this latest threat
will be enough to dissuade poaching gangs
from crossing into their territory,” Leape
added.
WWF is campaigning for
greater protection of threatened species
such as rhinos, tigers and elephants. In
order to save endangered animals, source,
transit and demand countries must all improve
law enforcement, customs controls and judicial
systems. WWF is also urging governments
in consumer countries to undertake demand
reduction efforts to curb the use of endangered
species products.
