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Poachers kill six troops, two others in Cameroon wildlife park
Poachers killed six troops and two guides in a wildlife park in northern Cameroon, Defence Minister Joseph Beti Assomo said Monday.
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Kenyan ranger of the canine unit Maseto Sampei holds his bloodhound during their trace training in the Mara Triangle, the north-western part of Masai Mara national reserve managed by non-profit organization Mara Conservancy, in southern Kenya, on January 24, 2018. In 2009, Mara Conservancy introduced a dog unit to chase or spot poachers across the grasslands. The unit is now comprised of four tracker dogs and two more trained specifically to sniff out ivory and guns at the entrances to the park.
(AFP/Yasuyoshi CHIBA)
Poachers killed six troops and two guides in a wildlife park in northern Cameroon, Defence Minister Joseph Beti Assomo said Monday.
"Six members of the defence forces and two civilian guides were killed " on Thursday during a clash with heavily-armed men on horseback in Bouba Ndjida national park in the north of the country, Beti Assomo said in a statement aired on state radio.
In 2012, 128 elephants were killed in the Bouba Ndjida park within two months, according to the government. The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) put the figure at 480.
The WWF attributed that massacre to poachers from Sudan and Chad.
Since March 2012, Cameroon has deployed a hundred troops in the wildlife reserve to help deal with the threat from poachers and protect the elephant population for which the park is known.
The eight people killed in Thursday's violence were carrying out a routine patrol, source said.
Poaching has killed an estimated 110,000 elephants over the last decade, with transnational organised crime syndicates taking over the illicit trade.
The most recent figures, for 2016, showed the global trade in illegal ivory continues to thrive in light of record seizures despite a decline in poaching.
According to the Great Elephant Census in 2016, the first ever pan-African survey of savanna elephants, numbers are estimated to have fallen to 352,000, down from 1.3 million in 1979.
