The Face of Poaching

In 2002, this silverback gorilla wandered out of the jungle into the town of Abong-Mbang, Cameroon. Swamps in the jungle kept the ecosystem intact right to the edges of town until recently. The silverback wandered around the dirt streets of Abong-Mbang and was shot near the hospital by a retired gendarme. Though killing a endangered species was illegal at the time, the law against doing so went unenforced. For a few dollars, wildlife traffickers and poachers could bribe government officials to look the other way. Ofir founded his organization, LAGA, precisely for the purpose of pressuring the government to enforce laws against killing and trafficking in endangered species. Jane Goodall’s prophesy that apes in the wild would soon become extinct has largely been proven true in Cameroon in terms of gorillas, which Ofir says his investigators seldom see anymore in the illegal animal trade.