Wildlife experts seek follow-up measures on logging concessions

It was in 2011 that Cameroon ratified the agreement with the European Union that stresses, amongst other things, that timber that goes to that economic zone must be legal and respect environmental norms. Article V of the said article, experts say, specifies that biodiversity and wildlife within logging concessions must receive proper protection.

Four years after, it is clear that the terms of the deal are not effectively being implemented. Officials from the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife, members of the civil society and some representatives of biodiversity and conservation networks meeting in Mbalmayo, Nyong and So’o Division of the Centre Region on October 27, 2015, were unanimous that the criteria for assessing and evaluating the efforts of logging concessions to protect wildlife and biodiversity within their area of exploitation, are not felt.

The Inspector General in the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife, Jean Avit Kongape on behalf of his boss as well as the Director, Cameroon Country Programme, Wildlife Conservation Society, Roger C. Fotso, recalled that the Mbalmayo get-together was to agree on the criteria that could press logging concessions to respect the rules of the game binding them with the European market.

They stressed on the need for legality, saying the difficulty, has since, been the inability to effectively implement the rule of fairly and accurately evaluating wildlife and biodiversity within logging concessions.

The meeting was within the framework of the project to follow-up the management of wildlife and biodiversity on logging concessions in Cameroon, SEGeF. SEGeF was launched on March 19, 2015 and is being supervised by the Wildlife Conservation Society.

It is a European Union-Food and Agriculture Organisation-Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (EU-FAO-FLEGT) that falls within the Voluntary Partnership Agreement signed between the EU and Cameroon in 2010.

The overall initiative is to eradicate the illegal exploitation and associated trade out of its supply chain, a practice which experts say generates forest degradation, opens up tracks to poachers, gives place to corruption in the sector, and causes significant losses in State revenue.