Giving the Forest Back to Pygmies

The menacing mimicry of animal cries echoes through tangled rain forest from a band of diminutive human predators.

Suddenly, frantic squeals ring out as a scrawny, wide-eyed antelope gets tangled in a net trap. A woman clobbers it with a stick. Two other antelopes meet the same fate this morning, a modest take compared with those of yesteryear.

As they have done for more generations than anyone can remember, the Pygmies of the BaAka tribe are again on the hunt.

Legendary people who rarely grow to more than 5 feet tall, several million Pygmies once roamed the rain forests of Africa, hunting wherever and whatever they pleased.

That began to change when taller and more powerful Bantu warriors and farmers forced them farther into the woodlands. Then poachers using guns and deadly wire snares depleted the herds, and loggers attracted by mahogany started reducing the forests.

Now, an estimated 250,000 Pygmies from different tribes remain, with about 3,000 BaAka eking out an existence in shabby camps around Bayanga in the southwestern corner of the Central African Republic.

“The forest was being basically pulled out from under them like a rug,” said Richard Carroll, director for West and Central Africa and Madagascar at the Washington-based World Wildlife Fund. “Once the forest is depleted, then who cares about the Pygmies? They are left marginalized in roadside camps with no means of support.”

Slowly, and with mixed feelings, the BaAka Pygmies are abandoning their age-old ways of hunting and foraging.

The instrument of change is the Dzanga-Sangha Project, an initiative to promote wildlife conservation, rural development and tourism. It offers the Pygmies a chance to save a substantial amount of the natural resources on which they’ve always depended.

The Dzanga-Ndoki National Park once was a prime hunting ground for the BaAka Pygmies. It now is off limits to any pursuit of game. Hunting is confined to a special forest reserve, where Pygmies are encouraged to use only traditional weapons such as nets and spears.

The reserve takes up two-thirds of the original hunting ground. The remaining territory is dedicated to the national park.

As the project, which is sponsored by WWF and the German Technical Cooperation, marks its 10-year anniversary, the Pygmies are still trying to come to terms with its impact. Their lifestyle has become more settled, and many Pygmies now cultivate small plots.

Pygmies Recruited as Tour Guides

Though most Pygmies are hesitant to openly criticize the project, environmentalists acknowledge that there are still constant requests for the boundaries of the national park to be altered to allow hunting.

“It’s not easy to work with forest dwellers because they are naturally predators,” said Georges N’gasse, a local environmentalist. “They believe natural resources are for their use. That is why the strategy for conservation needs time.”

In an effort to win over the Pygmies, the project recruits them as trackers, seed experts and guides for adventure tourists who want to try net-hunting or search for medicinal plants.

The amount of tourism still is minuscule. Reaching parts of this most inaccessible of regions may require an awkward waddle waist-deep through water turgid with elephant dung and rife with snakes and leeches, followed by a trek through masses of twisted undergrowth.

On one afternoon in a sun-drenched clearing called Dzanga Bai, scores of forest elephants tunneled their trunks beneath the slushy soil in search of mineral salts while the younger jumbos playfully rumbled and wallowed in the mud.

About 2,500 forest elephants have been identified here, according to Andrea Turkalo, an American researcher who has monitored them for several years. The elephants are stockier than their counterparts that roam Africa’s eastern savannas, and their harder pinkish ivory is favored by artisans.

“Because the savannas are being depleted of tusks, there will be a lot of pressure on the forest elephants,” Turkalo said. “This place is a jewel. We have to protect it.”

Salaries paid to project staff, who work as guides and trackers, typically are much higher than for any of the few other jobs available in Bayanga. As a reward for adhering to good conservation practices, Pygmies are also offered health and education programs. Many can neither read nor count, and few even know their age.

“In the long term, you can’t protect wildlife if you have an opposing population in the area,” said Allard Blom, a conservationist with WWF who was previously based in Bayanga. “You have to convince the majority of people in the area that it is to their benefit.”

In Mossappoula, a conglomeration of mud, grass and thatched huts where residents lost a huge tract of traditional hunting ground to the national park, many still pine for the days when they could hunt gorillas, leopards, elephants and giant pangolin, a scaly anteater. But most were quick to underscore that they now limit themselves to hunting duikers (antelopes), bush pigs and porcupines.

“Our living conditions are better now than what our fathers had,” said Kamo Adamson, a nurse’s assistant at a mobile clinic in Mossappoula. “We get medicines for our health, and our children go to school and can get a good job.”

“In the past, I wore leaves. Now I wear clothes,” added Aureline Bambu, a hunter whose husband has found work as a tracker.

Being employed by the project has also given the BaAka--long discriminated against by other ethnic groups--greater self-esteem.

Many recalled how Pygmies were forced into labor, made to sell their game at lower prices or cheated because they couldn’t count.

“Before the project came, we were treated inferior to the people who live in the village,” said Angel Mokinda, a cheerful woman with teeth filed to razor-sharp points, a mark of beauty among the BaAka. “Now with the project, we are told we are equal to everybody.”

Hunting Remains a Source of Pride

Privat Mokedji used to hunt gorillas for meat. Now he helps researchers monitor the gorillas’ movements and try to determine how many there are. It is part of a project that environmentalists hope will eventually attract a flood of tourists.

“I think it’s good not to hunt such animals, because if we continue to [do this], there will be no animals around for our children,” Mokedji said as he lounged in the dirt in the shade of his hut in Mossappoula.

However, hunting still remains a passion and source of pride. A rapturous, high-pitched polyphony accompanies most game expeditions as the Pygmies anticipate a catch.

Using nets made of creeping vines, homemade spears and sometimes bows and arrows, the Pygmies use their size and dexterity to maneuver through a sea of trees and twisted branches.

On the morning that the three small antelopes were caught, there was jubilation all around.

No part of the carcass went to waste. Each portion was neatly wrapped in broad leaf, ready to be transported home.

Limited hunting grounds and weapons, as well as competition for game, have meant that the Pygmies now catch only enough to eat, and not to sell. This sometimes leads to temptation to use more destructive wire snares, most often made from bicycle or moped brake cables, that are guaranteed to kill or maim.

“Anything that happens to stick its foot in a snare will get caught,” said Carroll of the WWF. “It’s not selective.”

Environmentalists estimate that up to 30% of animals caught in cable snares are left to rot because the hunters don’t check their traps regularly. Some prey escape but are severely injured and die later, out of reach of the hunter.

Uphill Battle Against Illegal Hunting

Project guards have confiscated and destroyed almost 50,000 cable snares over the last 10 years, together with several large-caliber elephant guns and illegal shotguns. But preventing illegal hunting has been an uphill battle because the trade in bush meat and ivory is lucrative. Project guards have confiscated more than 17,000 pounds of bush meat since 1990.

“Some people understand the need for conservation,” said Lisa Steel, the principal technical advisor for WWF based in Bayanga. “But they don’t stop trapping. They don’t believe that it is possible for the game meat to run out.”

Pygmies blame villagers from other ethnic groups for setting illegal traps. But local conservationists say Pygmies also have been enticed into the practice by senior government officials and prominent businessmen.

N’gasse, the environmentalist, says many Pygmies were paid or given prized tobacco and alcohol in exchange for hunting big game for “untouchable” senior members of society. Government officials blame others who they say slip in from neighboring countries.

The forestry industry also has taken its toll on the region. Roads built by logging companies have allowed commercial hunters to move into protected areas. Job prospects have attracted immigrants, who have no qualms about pillaging game because they lack any attachment to the land. Environmentalists say logging trucks also are often used to transport illegal bush meat.

“If you look at it from an ecological point of view, no logging is best,” said Blom, the WWF official. “But realistically, the government is poor and needs money so must allow it.”

Government officials have welcomed environmentalists’ efforts to promote tourism. This country is one of the few places in a region rocked by political turmoil and civil war where game is still abundant and can be safely viewed.

“We have to try and make the population understand that, in the world, it is becoming rare to find animals in their natural environment and, if they don’t destroy all the animals, it will bring money from tourism,” said Germain Nadjibe, the country’s minister of commerce, industry and tourism. But he acknowledges that revenues from foreign visitors are small.

Still, many Pygmies say the idea of conservation is rubbing off.

“At first, we didn’t understand the need for conservation,” said tracker Alphonse Ndiki. “But now we understand that it’s our forest, and what the project is doing is not for them--it’s for us.”