30 November 2008

A WWF Jengi team recently tagged a male elephant in the strategically important Ngoyla-Mintom forest block. The forest block covers more than 932,142ha with 30% situated in the South Region and 70% in the East Region of Cameroon.

Ngoyla-Mintom forms Cameroon’s segment of the Tri-national Dja-Odzala-Minkebe (TRIDOM) inter zone that links protected areas in Cameroon, Gabon and Congo Brazzaville. The inter zone is a super highway used by large mammals and other wildlife to roam around TRIDOM’s many protected areas.

The elephant was tagged in the far north part of the block, not too far from the Dja River. According to Dr. Mike Loomis of the North Carolina Zoo USA, who led the 16-man tagging team, the mammal was the largest forest elephant the team has tagged in Cameroon. “We had difficulties getting the satellite collar on the animal because of its size and the way it fell. It took us about one hour, instead of the normal 20 minutes to deploy the collar. It woke up just two minutes after we had deployed the collar,” said Dr. Loomis.

Over the years WWF in collaboration with the North Carolina Zoo has been deploying satellite collars on elephants in the Southeast and other parts of Cameroon. The collars provide information via satellite on the movement pattern of elephants essential for the conservation of this charismatic mega vertebrate.

“It is a strategically important area because we want to document elephant corridors crossing from the Dja Reserve into the Ngoyla-Mintom massif. There is also a lot of crop damage in the area and if we succeed in documenting the movement pattern of the elephants then we can come up with strategies to minimize the harm being done in the area,” says Dr. Loomis.

Elephants in the Central African Sub-region in general and the Ngoyla-Mintom Forest block in particular face serious threats from poachers and habitat destruction. The tagging team could not deploy a second collar in the southern part of Ngoyla-Mintom near Cameroon’s border with Gabon because “the area has extremely high hunting pressure. In the three days we prospected in this area, we found 22 hunting camps. At least ten of them had recent activities,” disclosed Dr. Loomis. The team also found many snares. “We found duiker carcasses in snares and a poached elephant carcass,” he revealed.

According to Dr. Loomis, elephants in the south of the Ngoyla-Mintom inter zone do not stop in the area to feed rather they just move across the area due to poaching and human presence. “So although we did find elephant tracks, we never got close to them because they never stopped.”

Given that the planning process of the Ngoyla-Mintom forest block is on course, every fresh data collected add to the information to be used in the process. “For instance, if we can identify elephant corridors coming from the Dja Reserve into the Ngoyla-Mintom block, then it may be possible to put extra protections on those areas.

“Because of the strategic location of the Ngoyla-Mintom forest to TRIDOM inter zone, it is extremely important for us to tag elephants in this area and identify movement corridors to maintain elephant habitat connectivity between Dja, Nki, Minkebe and Odzala national parks.

Though a recent World Conservation Union, IUCN Red List report shows that African elephant has progressed from vulnerable to threatened, due to the mammal’s increase in population in the Southern and Eastern parts of Africa, forest elephants remain extremely in threatened Central Africa.

According to Dr. Leonard Usongo, WWF Jengi Regional Coordinator, this tagging exploit rekindles hope for better documentation and protection of elephants that have been a target of ivory traffickers over the years in Southeast Cameroon in particular and the Central African sub region in general.