Cameroon:Government Incinerates Tusks, To Step Up Fight against elephant poaching

A pile of 2,000 elephant tusks and 1,753 ivory objects, evaluated at over FCFA 2 billion was the theatre of attraction at the Yaounde Conference Centre in Yaounde on 19, 2016 as the pile was burnt to ashes  in the presence of US Ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, who is currently visiting ‪‎Cameroon‬.

The bloody toll in elephant poaching continues to climb in Cameroon, where security forces reportedly killed a handful of Sudanese rebels suspected of slaughtering the animals for their valuable ivory tusks.

Colonel Didier Badjeck, spokesman for Cameroon’s military, told VOA that security forces recently have engaged in gun battles with poachers in Bouba Njida National Park in the country’s north.

Approximately 20 elephants also were killed in the immense park within 2015. Sudanese rebels on horseback, armed with automatic weapons, are believed to have killed hundreds of elephants there in 2012, National Geographic reported last month.  

Cameroon’s government deployed its military to protect national parks in the north after they lost nearly 2,000 elephants between 2012 and 2013.

The rebels are believed to be selling elephant tusks to fund their activity. A kilogram of raw ivory commanded $2,100 last year, up from $750 in 2010, according to Save the Elephants, a conservation group.