In August 2025, Louis Nkembi, founder of conservation NGO ERuDeF, was abducted by militia fighters in Cameroon’s Lebialem Highlands. He was held for two weeks, hidden in a secret location inside a forest. “It was a traumatic experience,” he recalls. “I can’t go back to that area until everything is resolved.” Though Nkembi was eventually […]

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/34967698

  • Dozens of protected areas in Cameroon’s anglophone regions, including parks that are home to great apes and other threatened species, have been swept up in a decade-long armed conflict between government forces and separatist militias.
  • The ongoing conflict has blocked conservationists’ access to forests, and exposed conservationists, local civilians and the region’s wildlife to violence.
  • Displaced people have turned to farming and hunting in forests in order to survive, while militias also hunt and camp in the forest.
  • Conservationists have explored new strategies to keep their work alive, including working with local citizen scientists, but say the task of rebuilding organizations in the midst of a humanitarian crisis is huge.

(Note that this article may understate the francophone government’s role in the threat to non-human animals.)

Lebialem is a global biodiversity hotspot in Cameroon’s southwest, host to dozens of endemic and threatened species

For anyone who doesn’t know, “southwest” in this context refers to the region near the southern end of the border with Nigeria, NOT the southwestern corner of Cameroon near Equatorial Guinea.

Anglophone separatists declared a breakaway state of Ambazonia, comprising the Northwest and Southeast regions

Typo in the article. Not “Southeast” but the same Southwest region mentioned above.