A cross section of participants at the Nzimberg sensitisation meeting against illegal hunting.

The Central Africa forest region inhabits over 30 million people. Most of these people rely on bushmeat as an economically important food and income item for their rural and urban families. Statistics show that 1.1 metric tons of bushmeat is eaten in this region annually. The reason for this alarming figure is that as agriculture becomes increasingly unprofitable due to low cash crop prizes and the devaluation of the local currency, many rural people in the Congo Basin have resorted to unsustainable hunting and trading of bushmeat. This activity today, exposes rare and endangered species such as the elephant, chimpanzees, gorilla and bufalo to extinction. Illegal uncontrolled hunting is therefore causing a major threat to the future of wildlife in this sub-region.

In the Bakossi and Muanenguba forest regions of Cameroon, endangered species of wildlife, particularly primates such as Chimpanzee(Pan troglodytes) Drills(Mandrillus leucophaeus), Preuss’s monkey (Cercopithecus preussi) Putty nose nose guenon(C. nictitans) are under great pressure and threatened with extinction due illegal unsustainable, non-selective hunting methods and practices and the rising bushmeat trade in the region.

Therefore this participatory project aims at raising communities’ awareness on the impact of such unsuitable practices on people and wild animals, particularly endangered species. CAD attempts to achieve this through community-based sensitisation campaigns against poor hunting methods, explanation of wildlife policies and regulations to local communities and improving grass root participation in the reinforcement and implementation of such policies on the ground.

Furthermore, the project addresses issues of poverty by introducing and promoting viable alternative activities to hunting such as beekeeping, snail farming and livestock production, thus, promoting the conservation of biodiversity through non-consumptive use to alleviate poverty among forest dwellers. These activities are intended to meet with the food and income requirements of local populations and reduce the time put set aside for illegal hunting and sale of bushmeat. Our long term goal therefore is to:

1) Endear the concept of conservation practice to indigenous and peripheral forest dwelling populations;

2) Soothe their eventual loss of land and access to other natural resources when many more protected areas are created out of the zone to meet the national target under protection;

3) Improve local incomes without endangering the lives of wildlife in the Bakossi and Muanenguba forest regions.