Born Free

The other week I attended the CITES Standing Committee meeting where international law governing trade in endangered species was being negotiated. It is a political battle field protecting wildlife against strong trade interests. For me it is a fight between values and dollars.  LAGA has been very active in this UN convention for the last 5 years.

Horline, our head of legal unit, was supposed to represent us and work mainly on great apes issues and ask the parties to the convention to take stricter measures against Egypt for its inability to do anything against extensive illegal trade in chimpanzees and gorillas.  However, at the last moment, Horline as a Cameroonian was refused a visa to Swistzerland and I had to fill in for her with two days notice.

LAGA managed to stir up a debate through initiating a side event screening the film The Cairo Connection by Karl Amman (http://karlammann.com/pasa-cairo-connection.php) working with other partners within the Species Survival Network (www.ssn.org).  We did our best to show the Egyptian diplomat that lack of action will not be tolerated.

It is estimated that illegal dealers well known to us, but enjoying government protection, traffic around 25 baby chimps each year. The Jane Goodall Institute estimates that for each baby chimp discovered 9 other chimps were killed in the process, as the chimpanzees live in families who protect each other when attacked by poachers.

After visiting Eunice and Cynthia, LAGA family members in the UK for studying, I continued to Israel.

I am in Israel right now, doing some work writing the story of LAGA so it can be published as a book.

The LAGA family is managing on its own.

The operation tackling lion skin dealers had a great deterring impact as Vincent and his media department got it broadcast in radio and TV and ran the story in many of Cameroon’s newspapers.

The LAGA investigations team and of course the wider family is always in need of funds for its work – it costs us about US$200 per month to fund an investigator.  For these investigators to proficiently undertake their roles they also need excellent communication tools spending time on the telephone and on the Internet, all of which LAGA must fundraise to cover.  If you would like to donate, you can do so here on Wildlife Direct.

We had an attempt for an operation against an ivory dealer that didn’t succeed as the dealer got suspicious at the last moment. Trapping some of the more sophisticated dealers requires a lot of  patience, sometimes getting back to the same targets after a few months of cooling period.

This weekend was a difficult one for our family as Horline lost her grandmother, that was very close to her, Emeline lost her great grandmother and Anna’s father reached a critical condition.

We hope this week turns to be better.

Ofir

PS

something that came yesterday -

http://www.radionetherlands.nl/radioprogrammes/earthbeat/080726-cameroon-gorillas