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Cameroon court jails elephant poacher for 5 years

04 Nov 2008 19:23:30 GMT
Source: Reuters

YAOUNDE, Nov 4 (Reuters) - A Cameroon court sentenced a poacher to five years in jail and a hefty fine for killing eight elephants, a government official said on Tuesday.

After a tip-off from villagers, a 23-strong search party of paramilitary gendarmes, government officials and park guards caught Job Akah, 33, with nine elephant tusks and eight tails in a remote village near a national park, the official said.

"In court we pleaded with the magistrate to impose the heaviest sentence so that it could serve as a deterrent to other people who may want to take up poaching of elephants as their pastime," Margaret Mbah, a provincial official with the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife, told Reuters.

Akah was seized along with firearms and ammunition in the remote village of Esukutan, north of the Korup National Park where the elephants are thought to have been killed. Korup lies on Cameroon's eastern border with Nigeria.

Akah pleaded guilty before a court in Mundemba in South-West province which sentenced him last week to a fine of 3.8 million CFA francs ($7,500) -- the equivalent of several year's wages for many in the impoverished country -- as well as jail.

Cameroon is home to an estimated 18,000 forest elephants, which are smaller and more reclusive than their savannah counterparts.

Wildlife conservation group WWF Cameroon said the endangered species is threatened by the trade in ivory and a dwindling natural habitat.

The trade has also flourished in the central African country in recent years due to the corruption and complicity of some local government officials, said Ofir Drori, director of the Last Great Apes Organisation Cameroon (LAGA). (Reporting by Tansa Musa; writing by Katrina Manson; editing by Alistair Thomson)

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