Cameroon: War against parrot poachers
Monday, February 9, 2009 at 9:57
One of 47 parrot heads. The parrots had been beheaded and smokedGame rangers have waged war on parrot trappers in the Lobeke National Park, Southeast of Cameroon. A trapper was last week nabbed with 14 heads and nine live parrots. The global conservation organization, World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) is backing the operation that began this year.
The suspect had been released from jail some seven months ago for same crime. He revealed to rangers that he is part of a network of traffickers based in Kika, a logging town south of Lobeke to whom he supplies parrot heads. The parrot heads are later smuggled out to neighboring Nigeria. He is now awaiting trial at the Yokadouma prison.
The arrest comes a few weeks after a WWF monitoring team encountered two parrot trappers inside Lobeke with a bag containing 47 parrot heads. The parrots had been beheaded, smoked and the heads stocked in a bag. The poachers dumped their booty and fled when the team closed in on them.
According to WWF Jengi Senior Field Assistant, Vincent Anong, the poachers were returning from Djangui, a marshy forest clearing at the centre of Lobeke. Parrots visit the clearings to feed. Djangui clearing in particular harbours huge population of African grey parrots but has been under pressure from parrot trappers.
“African grey parrots are seeing red in Lobeke as poachers keep invading the park,” said Anong. “We have put in place a permanent monitoring strategy in the clearings to keep them safe from trappers,” added Anong.
This new approach to parrot trapping came to the fore in early 2008 following the arrest of a parrot trapper with 350 parrot heads and 2000 of the bird’s red tails. The suspect told game rangers he was taking the parrot heads to a witch-doctor in the West Region of Cameroon to continue curing his mentally ill brother.
Grey parrots are Class A (totally) protected species in Cameroon, and their capture is subject to a special authorization issued by Cameroon Forestry and Wildlife Ministry. CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) in collaboration with the Cameroon government fixed the quota for the number of parrots to be captured in Cameroon at 12,000 yearly since 1997. However, the rate of illegal exploitation shows that more than 20,000 parrots are captured each year.