The other day, while working on a local flight to Lagos, I
witnessed two sacs-full of pangolin meat (protected and endangered species)
being seized from two Chinese by the customs. And it’s not the first time such
a thing is happening. In fact, a majority of such butchered endangered species
get seized and even boarded here every day. And it happens with the complicity
of Cameroonian middlemen. Asians come here and pay for the poaching of our
endangered animals (bush meat, tusks, ivory etc) and rare wood and we let them
do it. They kill an elephant, use an engine saw and saw off its tusk as if they’re
sawing wood and abandon the carcass to rot there. (I really feel sorry for
elephants and especially rhinos because they are moving with millions of
dollars on their heads.)
Our national animal is the lion, our resident president is
even nicknamed “lion man”. Our football team is called “the indomitable lions”
(even though these days anybody whips them and we now call them Domitable
lions. Anyway, let me jump into that.) In the seventies, we used to have a
thriving population of lions at Waza Park in northern Cameroon. In 2013, Waza
park has no single lion, they’ve all vanished because of poaching, zero
conservation efforts and zero government effort to stop poaching. They only
seize dried meat (when the animal killing has already been done!) Stop the
poachers instead! I really admire the Kenyans and South Africans where wild
life conservation is concerned. And when Cameroon has to play football they
start showing us TV images of majestic lions with big manes when they’re none
left in the country.
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