Elephants at Risk as Ivory Trade Picks Up

by Tansa Musa

The baby jumbo, named Marc, was rescued from the wild by forest rangers and game wardens after poachers wounded it and killed its mother. Now the forestry officials are nursing the deep wounds sustained by the young elephant, which they keep in a makeshift zoo they built for him early this month.

Marc was orphaned by hunters at the service of ivory traders, who have been active in Cameroon in recent months although it is hard to say whether this has anything to do with the relaxation in mid-1997 of a worldwide ivory ban imposed in 1991 under the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).

On April 13 this year, customs officers at the port of Douala seized some 150 kg of ivory hidden in a container loaded with timber for export to Spain. According to Bubinga, a monthly paper that specializes in the environment and development, about half a ton of ivory has been seized at the port in the last six months. The paper believes a much larger volume has slipped past customs officials.

"There is a high demand for ivory on the world market which has led to a considerable rise in prices in recent months, thus making the trade in ivory even more attractive," warns Bubinga.

"This has raised fears that the elephant, the main source of ivory, may disappear if nothing is done, especially in poor developing countries such as Cameroon, to halt its trade."

About 25 percent of the elephants live in the dry savanna of northern Cameroon, 70 percent in the dense tropical rainforest in the southeast and five percent are spread over the south-central and south-western parts of the country.

In the savanna, the elephants' number has been increasing and this has been causing greater damage to property and human life. But in the forests, poaching continues and there are indications it may be increasing significantly, according to a publication from the Ministry of Environment and Forests.

"Throughout the 1980s, Cameroon was a steady, but modest, source of raw ivory for the world market," says Dr. Martin Tchamba, a consultant on wildlife in Cameroon. "While there is a general belief that the international ban had a positive effect in reducing the illegal killing of elephants throughout Cameroon, reliable data are not available to support this contention."

He is convinced, however, that there has been a recent upsurge in forest-elephant poaching in southeastern Cameroon.

According to reliable sources, an average of about 10 elephants were poached per month between March 1996 and March 1997 in southeastern Cameroon's Mesok area alone. No one knows for sure how many have been killed since then.

Cameroon has long been a major contributor to the global ivory market. From 1978 to 1988, an estimated 40 tons of ivory were exported from the country and, between 1990 and 1994, about 10 tons were seized at Douala, where about 550 kg were intercepted from November 1997 to April 1998.

The Director of Fauna in the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Djoh Ndiang, admits that the government is unable to deal with the activities of poachers who, he says, have developed sophisticated means of hunting and run a strong underground system of trade that is difficult to break.

"Our government has a good wildlife conservation policy but we lack the means to implement it," says Djoh Ndiang.

He cites the case of the 180-hectare Benue National Park in the north that has only 15 unarmed wardens without any means of transport or communication and who are up against "poachers who often are well armed and who do not hesitate to put their fingers on the trigger."

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the government of Cameroon are now designing a National Elephant Management Plan which, they hope, will help develop and implement a rational policy of conservation and protected area management.

"The general purpose," says a joint study, "is to use the elephant as an indicator or flagship, a species which is highly visible and well known, which can act as an indicator of progress towards development of a national conservation program."

At present, there is virtually no management of Cameroon's elephant herd. Information about elephant numbers, behavior and movement patterns is fragmentary.

Moreover, says Tchamba, people's tolerance towards elephants has been strained by increasing human-elephant conflict, especially in the savanna, where the rural population is now so hostile towards elephants that many would welcome their disappearance.

But Cameroon's elephants are most threatened in the southeast rainforest, where the majority of them live outside protected areas.

"It is essential that protected status be given to parts of this forest and its elephant population," says WWF Cameroon. "In addition, management provisions should be made for securing those elephants outside the protected area system, and (determining) which parts could be trophy-hunted on a sustainable basis."