YAOUNDE (Reuters) – more than 200 elephants have been killed in Cameroon at the hands of poachers in just six weeks, a “massacre” driven by Asian demand for ivory.
A member of the local Government said that heavily armed poachers from Chad and Sudan have decimated the population of elephants of the Buba Ndjida National Park in the North of Cameroon, in a wave of hunting in the dry season.
“We are talking about a very serious case of cross-border poaching, involving poachers well armed with modern weapons from Sudan and Chad, which are decimating this wild species to make fast money on the international ivory trade”, said Gambo Haman, Governor of the northern Cameroon region.
Told a local radio station, Haman said that some of the poachers were on horseback and worked confabulados with local citizens, who received free elephant meat and were glad of rid of some animals that damage their crops.
The Fund International for Animal Welfare (IFAW) said that cross-border poaching is common during the dry season, but the scale of the deaths so far this year is unprecedented.
“This latest massacre is massive and has no comparison with previous years,” said the group in a statement.
Citing a number record large seizures of ivory in 2011, the conservation group TRAFFIC, that records trends in trade in wild animals, has warned of a rise in illegal hunting of elephants in Africa to meet Asian demand for tusks for jewelry and ornaments.
Underlining the trend, Haman said that a group of 50 people had killed six Chadian soldiers who tried to arrest them as they fled with ivory.
“In January, we have 146 carcasses of elephants, and since the beginning of this month since we had about 60”. “This could be just the tip of the iceberg, since some may have been hunted in areas of the park that we can not access”, explained.
Cameroon has dispatched a rapid action force to the region, but Haman said that there are not enough troops to cover the remote Park, located in the far north of the country.
IFAW said it isn’t clear how many elephants are still in Cameroon, but that a 2007 estimate puts the figure between 1,000 and 5,000.
TRAFFIC said that the increase in the poaching and the illegal trade in ivory in Africa is a direct consequence of the investor momentum of China on the continent.
