0430-C1
Alfred Akumsi 1
Hunting wild animals for subsistence and income has been from time immemorial a common practice for local communities in the Mount Cameroon region. Besides food and income value, the resource is highly valued by some traditional societies for cultural reasons
Over the years, a high demand for wildlife products has turned the bushmeat trade into a very lucrative business employing thousands of men and women of youth and adult ages. The market chain for bushmeat trade includes: hunters, middlemen and restaurant operators.
As hunting methods get more sophisticated with the use of modern weapons, there has been a significant increase in the catch leading to a sharp decline in the wildlife population. Habitat destruction through bush fires and forest clearance for farmland also contribute to this decline.
The decrease in wildlife populations has been acknowledged as a major concern not only by conservationists but also by local inhabitants whose livelihoods are directly affected. Even though local communities in Cameroon see the need for sustainable management of the resource, the wildlife legislation does not give enough room for local resource users to participate in, or benefit from its management.
The Mount Cameroon Project (MCP) Limbe, a project funded by the Department for International Development of the United Kingdom, working in the area from 1994 to 2002 facilitated the development of a participatory wildlife management strategy for the Mount Cameroon region. This is still being tested and will be replicated in other regions of the country if it works.
Financial sustainability still remains a major challenge following the low financial value of wildlife. The cost of management far outweighs the financial benefits that accrue from it.
This paper sets out to share experiences and lessons learned from community wildlife management in the Mount Cameroon region.
The wildlife resource commonly called bush meat in Cameroon is very important in the livelihoods of forest dwelling communities across the national territory. It is hunted mostly for food and for commercial use. Some local communities attach a strong cultural importance to the resource, for example, some traditional societies in the mount Cameroon region belief in human incarnation to animals. This is used for prestige and to demonstrate level of power in the society. Although these societies have a strong cultural regard for animals, there exist no organized structure to manage it (Tako 1999).
Wildlife has been exploited in the Mount Cameroon region from time immemorial as a common property resource with almost all hunting activities being carried out illegally; hunters operating without permits, using unregistered guns and unconventional trapping equipment. In the early days, hunting involved the use of local material and the catch was mostly for household consumption. Over time, traditional hunting has gradually given way to more sophisticated hunting techniques. Individual hunters set as many as three hundred animal traps and fence traps are commonly used to increase chances of catch.
Another major contributing factor to wildlife loss in the region is habitat destruction through bush fires, large-scale forest clearance for agro-industrial farming and subsistence farming.
The bush meat trade employs both men and women of youth and adult ages. The user group market chain as described by Ambrose-Oji 1997, is made up of hunters, middlemen (retailers) and pepper soup sellers.
The hunters user group comprises mainly young men and two categories of hunters are identified in the region: part time hunters; these are hunters who have other occupations and only carry out hunting on occasional basis mostly for home consumption; and full time hunters; are professionals who invest most of their time and resources in the hunting profession. This group of hunters hunt for economic reasons and will move from place to place in search of forest rich in wildlife. The chain is so organised to an extent that the pepper soup sellers finance most of the hunting by professional hunters.
Middlemen include both men and women who buy from the hunters and resell to the public either as smoked meat or in its original fresh form. This group also contribute to the financing of the process.
Pepper soup sellers (restaurant operators) are exclusively women who prepare the meat and sell to the public as pepper soup dishes.
Approximately forty-five large and medium-sized (body weight greater the 3kg) mammals have been recorded around Mount Cameroon, which combine to account for the bulk of the faunal biomass in the forest and to form an important part of the ecosystem. Some of these animals are endemic to the region: the drill (Mandrillus leucophaes), Preuss' guenon (Cercopithercus preussi), the red-eared guenon (Cercopitherus erithrotis) and the Mount Cameroon francolin (Francolinus camerunensis). Elephants and chimpanzees are rare and endangered. The carcasses of all these animals together with some other common species are traded in the area for bush meat, although monkeys and rodents are most common (Tako C 1999).
To address the issue of declining wildlife populations in the region, the Mount Cameroon Project (MCP) Limbe, together with the local department of the ministry of environment and forests (MINEF) facilitated the development of a wildlife management strategy to ensure a sustainable wildlife management system in the area that would contribute to the improvement of community livelihoods. This emphasises on the involvement of hunters and other traditional authorities. The development of the current strategy under implementation took eight years of participatory work (from 1994 to 2002) and the process involved adapting and testing existing local wildlife management systems. Initial work from 1994 to 1996 focused on awareness raising and participatory collection of information necessary to develop the strategy, followed by implementation and modifications in subsequent years.
The strategy has as objectives to:
Hunters and other stakeholders were encouraged to form associations and wildlife management committees where rules and regulations for good hunting practices were negotiated and agreed with the forestry authority (MINEF).
It was realized that one of the basic requirements to empower local wildlife management authority is for the resource users to have legal documents that give them the stewardship to manage the resource. The Cameroon wildlife law is deficient in this area. Not only are hunting permits too expensive for the local hunters to acquire, but also dane guns that are widely used are not recognized by the administration. Thus hunting permits cannot be issued without gun licenses. The local forestry service in collaboration with the local administration made some concessions thereby simplifying the procedures for registered local hunters to acquire gun licenses and hunting permits. Special gun and hunting permits for registered hunters have been agreed locally as opposed to the national wildlife regulations.
Hunting seasons and community hunting areas have been defined. The importance of this is to limit hunting activities to particular areas and allow some places where animals can feel safe to reproduce. Trapping is also limited around community farming areas not more than one kilometre from the farms into the forest. This will serve the dual purpose of providing the trappers with bush meat as well as protect the farms from small animals, mostly rodents that have been identified in the region as farm pests. Also the number of traps per individual was limited to at most one hundred.
A simple monitoring and evaluation system has been developed in the region. The wildlife management institution is responsible to carry out regular monitoring of the wildlife resource. Monitoring information is recorded on specially designed sheets and yearly hunting quotas are allocated upon analysis of the monitoring data collected. Monitoring information is collected at the level of the forest and in the village; in the forest information relating the abundance of different species and their distribution is recorded, while information about off take is recorded in the village by pepper soup sellers and the hunters.
Hunting quotas for different species are allocated through a tag system following local abundance; metal tags are produced for the different species agreed to be hunted. At the beginning of the hunting season, the community wildlife institution gives out tags of different species to hunters. The number of tags given out for a particular species is equal to the hunting quota allocated for that species in the hunting season. The hunter attaches the tag to the killed animal and takes it to the village monitoring office for recording. The tag is then withdrawn and kept in the village office. Once the tags for a particular species are finished, then the hunting quota for that species for that season has been exhausted. Endangered species are excluded from species to be hunted and hunters have been sensitised using posters and the local media on the species to be hunted.
The wildlife management institutions are responsible to carry out regular forest patrols to keep out poachers. Control activities involve destruction of illegal traps and the arrest of illegal hunters. Penalties for illegal hunters include confiscation of hunting equipment and fines.
The wildlife management strategy is being implemented in the entire Mount Cameroon region with varied degree of success in the different communities.
3.1.1 policy:
The Cameroon wildlife legislation falls short of reflecting field realities in wildlife management and does not encourage local hunters to be involved in the management and use of wildlife. Some unrealistic provisions of the wildlife law include:
The high cost of acquiring hunting permits. Small hunting permits are far too expensive for a village hunter to acquire compared to small permits for artisan timber exploitation. Faced with this financial barrier, the local hunters prefer to go underground and carry out illegal hunting using unsustainable methods to maximize their exploits. In this case, endangered species are also killed.
Also, a gun license is required as a prerequisite to acquiring hunting permits; meanwhile dane guns (local guns) that are widely used by hunters are not recognized by the administration and can not be issued gun licenses. The local hunters are therefore left with one option (illegal hunting), using local guns that they can easily purchase.
The wildlife law recognizes trapping using plant materials and does not allow sales of any animals caught. The local reality is that snare wires are more effective for trapping and hunters will like to sell some of their catch to improve income levels.
The consequences of all this is that this drives the exercise underground and the government is unable to control.
3.1.2 community participation:
From the onset the wider village community was very reluctant to embrace community wildlife management because the financial benefits accruing from it are very low. It was very difficult to involve all hunters in the process; some hunters especially those who have hunting as their main occupation preferred to continue operating illegally since individual benefits from uncontrolled hunting are higher than when they have to operate by the rules and regulations of the community wildlife management institutions. They were also suspicious of the move by the government and considered it to be a trap by the government to arrest them or tax their activities. After continuous sensitisation, many more hunters became aware of the strategy and the number of registered hunters increased.
The wildlife management associations have agreed in their internal rules and regulations to operate within a close circle whereby pepper soup sellers buy only from registered hunters. This obliges more unregistered hunters to register and function within the framework of the strategy to be able to carry out their trade successfully. Also, MCP has introduced and trained community members to carry out other income generating activities to reduce total forest dependency
3.1.3 Control of poaching:
It has been very difficult to bring hunters that are not resident in the community to the discussion table. Such hunters come in unnoticed always through the conspiracy of some community members. Hunted animals are transported and sold out of the village in neighbouring urban areas. To combat this group of hunters, the communities developed joint control (control involving MINEF and wildlife management committees). This is very effective in checking illegal hunters out of the system in some areas, even though poaching still remains a problem in peri-urban areas.
3.1.4 financial sustainability:
A major problem identified in the implementation of the strategy is financial sustainability of the village institutions. The cost incurred in managing wildlife is far more than the benefits derived from its management. Village institutions are therefore unable to make enough money to sustain the management system.
As part of solution to this problem, the capacity of communities has been developed on broader forest management and communities encouraged to expand to broader forest management where benefits accruing from the management of other forest resources can support the cost of wildlife management. Many communities in the region are now following up the community forestry process whereby the government entrust the management of a piece of forest to a community that in return enjoys all the benefits of its management. Also income-generating activities were introduced to augment earnings of hunters and those involved in wildlife management.
3.2.1Awarenss creating:
A lot of awareness has been raised in the communities about wildlife management issues through continuous sensitisation, initially by MCP and MINEF, and later by the wildlife management committees. Community members are more conversant with the wildlife law and its provisions. There has been a change in attitude of community members from indiscriminate hunting to hunting of more available and less rare species. This is an indication of the level of awareness on the threads to wildlife in the area.
3.2.2 capacity:
A major achievement is that a partnership has been developed between MINEF, wildlife resource users and other stakeholders to reverse the decreasing pattern of wildlife in the area. Also, the capacity of community members to manage wildlife has improved. Local indigenous knowledge on wildlife is used to allocate sustainable hunting quotas. Hunting of endangered species and species legally protected by the Cameroon wildlife law has significantly reduced in communities where the model has attained an advanced level of implementation.
3.2.3 increase in wildlife population:
The use of local indicators developed by community members, and analysis of wildlife monitoring data show an increase in wildlife population; there have been more frequent sightings in the forest of species that were formerly very rare. Destruction of farms near to human habitation by larger mammals is an indication of increase in wildlife population from community perspective. However, for more quantitative and qualitative analysis, a detail wildlife survey is required to complement the results of community wildlife survey data to fully understand the impact of the implementation of the strategy.
3.2.4 livelihood improvement:
Many community members have engaged in other income generating activities that are complementary to forest management such as bee farming, snail farming and cane rat domestication. Some hunters have given up the hunting profession for the more lucrative livelihood options introduced.
3.2.5 Joint control:
Joint control operations have succeeded greatly in reducing poaching and even stopping it in some communities. Thousands of animal traps have been destroyed in the forest and some poachers caught and penalised according to the rules and regulations. Community members attribute the increase in animal population to the effective removal of traps in the forest.
3.2.6 Policy:
Experience gained in the implementation of the community wildlife management strategy in the Mount Cameroon region is currently informing the revision of the wildlife regulations to make it more practicable to local communities. Meanwhile the local MINEF has been very instrumental in simplifying the process to create a favourable environment to bring hunters and traditional authorities in the management of wildlife.
Continuous sensitisation was very instrumental in improving communities' knowledge of the law and the opportunities provided by the law for meaningful partnership between the state and local communities in the management of natural resources
Also, partnership with clearly defined roles and responsibilities, and elaboration of transparent systems contributed in reducing the suspicion of the local communities and gained their full commitment in the management of wildlife. It was useful in complementing the state effort in the management of natural resources.
A major lesson learned is that a legal frame work within which hunters could identify themselves and carry out their trade legally gives them more feeling of ownership and motivates them to manage wildlife in a sustainable way to ensure long term benefits. Legal recognition of the wildlife management institutions in the Mount Cameroon region gave them some level of power to be able to control illegal hunters. This also contributed to check the hunting of endangered species.
Indigenous knowledge about resource management should never be underestimated. The integration of local knowledge about wildlife in the development of a monitoring and evaluation system in the Mount Cameroon region made the system easy to use, cheap and easy to adapt.
Community wildlife management though still a new management approach in Cameroon, seems to remain the only hope to arrest the rapid decline of wildlife population in the Cameroon forests. The mount Cameroon wildlife management strategy has prospects of addressing wildlife management issues if implemented in a favourable policy environment. Knowledge gained should be used to revise the wildlife legislation. Also the government should encourage such an initiative to be replicated in other areas of the country.
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1 Community Development Staff, Regional Centre for Development and Conservation (RCDC) Limbe, Cameroon. [email protected]