Mission impossible: conserving Cameroon's natural resources

February 25, 1997
Web posted at: 7:07 p.m. EDT (1907 GMT)

In this story:

• Loggers fast depleting Cameroon's forests
• Unarmed forestry officers make few arrests
• Conservation a low priority
• Related stories and sites

From Correspondent Gary Strieker

EASTERN CAMEROON (CNN) -- Dieudonne Nguele is supposed to be a powerful government official in Cameroon's eastern province, but he admits that the joke is on him.

As the local boss from the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Nguele oversees the province's rich natural resources of forests, watersheds and wildlife.

He has a staff of about 100, and they are charged with monitoring several dozen timber companies as well as controlling the poaching of wild animals.

But in a region the size of New York -- larger than Austria and Switzerland combined -- Nguele has a budget of only $11,000 a year. What's worse, he has no cars, no trucks, no motorcycles -- not even bicycles.

"You want to go to the field," he says. "You know some illegal things are happening, but you just can't move."

When he does get to the field, it is usually on a logging truck. His situation isn't unique. Elsewhere in Cameroon, in virtually everything they do, poorly paid forestry officials depend on the companies they're supposed to control.

Loggers fast depleting Cameroon's forests

"How can these people be expected to control?" asks Steve Gartlan of the World Wide Fund for Nature. "It's biting the hand that feeds them."

Conservationists say expanding logging operations in eastern Cameroon are quickly depleting the forests, and officials admit many timber companies routinely violate forestry laws. They take trees below minimum size, and harvest beyond concession boundaries.

But enforcing the law is almost impossible with a staff that is poorly equipped and unmotivated. It is a situation many blame on the World Bank for imposing strict budget cuts on Cameroon's government.

"What they need is help," Gartlan explains. "They need help from outside. They need international institutions like the World Bank to be more responsive to environmental needs."

Accepting an invitation to ride in a car rented by CNN, Nguele traveled recently down a major logging road he had never seen before.

Unarmed forestry officers make few arrests

Along the way, he met some hunters, empty-handed, who convinced him that government laws protecting endangered animals like gorillas were working.

"The hunters say they don't hunt those animals any more," he says.

But a few kilometers farther, he happened upon a poacher with a freshly killed gorilla.

"This is the first time I've ever seen a gorilla out of the forest with its hands chopped off," Nguele admits, "because I never come to the forest. Why? Because I don't have the means. If you didn't come here for your report, I wouldn't have seen this." (228 K / 21 sec. AIFF or WAV sound)

For this crime, a poacher could get six months in prison. But working alone and unarmed, forestry officers make few arrests. And this man goes free.

Some people in the region argue that even if African governments had the means to enforce their conservation laws effectively, they lack the will to do so.

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Conservation a low priority

Timber exports are a major source of revenue in the region, but very little of that money is spent on conserving forests.

Critics say government leaders put no priority on conservation. Therefore, people like Nguele -- undermanned and unequipped -- face an impossible mission.

And without more financial aid and political pressure from the industrialized north, the endangered forests and wildlife in eastern Cameroon will remain unprotected

 

Related story:

• Endangered apes being killed for meat - December 9, 1995

Related sites:

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• World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF)
• The Nature Conservancy - Help Save Endangered Habitats!
• World Resources Institute - Environmental Education Project

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