Cameroon

Who is allowed to hunt wild animals?

In Cameroon, the national parks, the hunting of wild animals is prohibited. Including the local Baka population suffers. Because she lives to Hunt from to and from to Collect. The Baka are demanding a greater say in the management of protected areas.

It is eerily quiet in the dense rain forest in southeastern Cameroon. “You can walk there for hours through the forest and hear not a single animal,” says John, Church gate, was for the conservation organization World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), often in the country. Actually, the forest is home to elephants, Gorillas, antelopes and chimpanzees. But
the business with ivory is booming, and with the growing population, the Hunger grows Wild. The so-called ‘Bushmeat’ in Cameroon is a popular delicacy. In a large scale poacher clear the forests empty. “You have to shoot on everything that moves”, so the Church gate.

Since the ‘ 90s, the WWF is involved in three protected areas in Cameroon, close to the border with the Central African Republic. The Organisation trains local, state game wardens, which should put the poachers in the craft. Because, within the national Park, all hunting is prohibited.

Indigenous population of wild guardians abused

However, this prohibition applies also to the Baka, an indigenous people, formerly referred to as the ‘pygmy people’. The Baka
life for centuries in the forest and feed on self-hunted Wild game and local plants. Because the stock of wild animals
because of the criminal hunters drastically reduced, penetrate the Baka in the meantime, up in the national Park to search for animals. Gamekeeper, the so-called ‘Ecoguards’, is the Baka there for more than ten years, regularly abused, and tortured. In Cameroon, the Lord is a strong climate of discrimination and marginalisation, Church gate says. “The Baka are not considered by the majority population, partly once as a human. Since it is quite possible that this also occurs in the case of the Ecoguards.”

The Hunger for ‘Bushmeat’ a result, many forests are now empty

So something should not happen, warns Ulrich Delius of the society for threatened peoples (GfbV). “If an organization takes care of the protection of an area, then you must also ensure that there are no people to pass law violations.”

With training and education of the WWF wants to put the abuse to an end. And he wants to set up special use zones in national parks, where the indigenous population still do not hunt, but after all, honey, medicinal plants or mushrooms may collect. The organization has also helped, a 500-acre community forest for the use of the Baka decide for themselves. You can hunt, collect honey, and sustainable forestry.

The Baka want to have a say

The Cameroonian ethno-Jean Nké Ndih, has spent a lot of time with the Baka, boxes, this is not enough. “The Baka say: If national parks are to be created, then you will need to include them also in the management of these forests, which are their habitat.” Their voices would be heard gradually. “At the beginning, it was the protection of the environment organisations for the protection of the Flora and Fauna, cares little for the lives of the Indigenous.”

2012: members of the Baka show maps on which the locations are listed in the rain forest, from which, in the past few years, and in simple villages resettled were displaced

Its residents are the best protectors of the forest, says Delius of the STP. “The most sustainable assistance, it would be, if you are the traditional inhabitants of this area directly in the forest protection. You have a strong self-interest that goes beyond the pure cash acquisition of a dedicated gamekeeper. Their Motivation is to stay long in the forest and to preserve their economic and livelihood.” Therefore, we must bring all actors to the table and designing a common approach, instead of deciding over the heads of the local population.

It is a very important approach of the WWF, the Indigenous place always and everywhere, to include, John stressed the Church gate. However, there is not, in fact, many Baka, which would work as a game warden. “This is a dangerous Job, because you also need a kind of military training.”

Time is of the essence: at the end of December 2015, the poachers had killed in Cameroon within just five days of 20 elephants. A Baka said as a result, the human rights organization Survival International: “you let the elephants in the forest to die, and at the same time they prevent us from eating.”