Forest Elephants : Cameroon Loses 70 Per cent Of Its Population

Thanks to poachers, the number of forest elephants in Cameroon dropped drastically between 2008 and 2016, says the World Wide Fund for Nature, WWF, in a recent wildlife surveys report. According to Clotilde Ngomba, WWF Country Director for Cameroon, the studies were carried out between 2014 and 2016 in conjunction with ministries of wildlife in Cameroon, Gabon, Congo Brazzaville and the Central African Republic, CAR.
Covering a total area of 10 million hectares, the surveys, which included large mammals like chimpanzees and gorillas, show a 66 per cent drop in the number of forest elephants that regularly visited protected areas, logging concessions, hunting zones and other secure areas in the southern part of Cameroon. Most hit was TRIDOM, the cross-border protected area covering the Dja, Odzala and Minkebe national parks in Cameroon, Congo Brazzaville and Gabon respectively. Here, 70 per cent of elephants were decimated in less than 10 years – from 2008 to 2016.   
Clotilde Ngomba attributes the alarming development to poaching for ivory. “The illegal trade in ivory is more and more undertaken by organised criminal gangs in connivance with highly placed officials. One of the major reasons for this trade is the increasing demand for ivory from Asia, which has resulted in a hike in prices of tusks on the local black market,” she explained.
Apart from the killings in protected a...