Interview: Oliver Fankem, GC's new Director for Central Africa

Oliver Fankem is a conservation biologist from Cameroon and our new Director for Central Africa. 

Oliver’s dedication to conservation began in his childhood, when he spent most of his days exploring for “forest snacks” and fishing. He was in awe of a TV program called “Splendeur Sauvage” and of videos from Jacques Cousteau’s marine expeditions. 

Later, he completed two MSc degrees (Wildlife Management at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria and Conservation Biology at the University of Kent, UK). During his studies, he carried out work in the Republic of Benin, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, taking part in wildlife censuses, anti-poaching patrols, community engagement, and more in various national parks.

Over the last 15 years he has worked on conservation in Cameroon, providing technical support in protected area management, law enforcement, and wildlife monitoring, eventually securing a position with the Zoological Society of London (ZSL). Since 2009, he advanced within ZSL from Assistant Manager in 2009 to ZSL TRIDOM Landscape Manager in 2019. As TRIDOM Landscape manager, he was responsible for the management of all of ZSL’s activities, including liaising with other partners, in TRIDOM (a network of protected areas in Cameroon made up of Dja Wildlife Reserve, Mengame Gorilla Sanctuary, Ngoila Wildlife Reserve, Nki National Park, Boumba Bek National Park, and their peripheries).

This work gave him the opportunity to implement site-based protection systems in focal sites, coordinate community engagement, develop intelligence networks including a community surveillance network, coordinate multiple landscape law enforcement operations, and test several approaches to addressing Cameroon-Gabon transboundary wildlife crime. 

He has contributed to successful grant applications such as ECOFAC VI, USFWS African Elephant Conservation Fund, IWT Challenge Fund, Rufford, Arcus, and Save The Elephants, for a total of over three million dollars. Over the last three years, he has managed the delivery of ZSL’s TRIDOM Conservation Programme to ensure effective operations and delivery of ZSL’s strategy in Cameroon. 

We caught up with Oliver to learn more about him and his work.

Tell us about your role with Global Conservation.

I’m the Central Africa Director. I’m primarily focused on developing Global Conservation’s work in Cameroon and in Gabon. I am therefore in charge of opening and building a regional office based in Cameroon. This implies making key strategic Cameroon and Gabon operational decisions, recruiting and managing staff,  identifying fundraising opportunities, securing funds and managing those funds in a responsible manner, and ensuring the generation of accurate and timely financial and programmatic reports to donors, stakeholders, government, and Global Conservation. 

One of the biggest conservation issues to date in this area is elephant poaching in Cameroon, but more importantly the cross-border poaching operations. We’re also going to be working on establishing carbon financing projects to ensure long-term sustainability of this work. 

My vision for this project is to combine conservation technology approaches and community engagement programs. Having cooperation from communities near the reserve is critical. Communities are among our most important allies. For outsiders to come in and deplete their resources, hunt their wildlife, is not a good thing for them either. 

We make sure that they know their rights, and that they understand that we are there to protect their forests against intruders. We are there to secure their resources for their subsistence. We want to make sure their kids will still have these forests.

Bushmeat hunting in Cameroon.

Using a program like EXCITES (Extreme Citizen Science), they can help us collect information about illegal activities including poaching. Poachers can’t operate in an area without the support of communities – they have to hire porters, local trackers, buy food, etc. We can basically set up a system where, when intruders come into their area, community members can choose to just press a button and alert us to what is going on in terms of illegal activities.

What makes Dja Wildlife Reserve, where Global Conservation’s Cameroon work is focused, so special?

It’s a World Heritage Site, in large part because it’s a virgin forest. It’s never been cut before. The forest that we walk through now probably looks very similar to the forests our ancestors walked through here 1,000 years ago. It’s an intact, primitive forest.

It’s also full of an incredibly diversity of important and endangered wildlife species: elephants, gorillas, chimpanzees, mandrills, pangolins, leopards, various monkeys, antelope, and all kinds of different birds including African grey parrots and rock fowl (Pithacartes).

Dja is one of the world’s last remaining pieces of untouched forest. Even the Amazon is being destroyed by agriculture and logging at an alarming rate. Dja will remain when everything else is gone.

Logging in Cameroon. Image courtesy World Resources Institute/J.G. Collomb.

What’s something in your past work that you’re most proud of? 

While working at ZSL, we realized there was a lot of wildlife outside of protected areas in Cameroon that still needed to be conserved. Most of Cameroon’s great apes, for example, live outside of protected areas, in the forestry concessions. So, I started working with forestry concessions and helping them to figure out how to manage their wildlife. We wanted to make sure to secure movement corridors for wildlife outside of protected areas.

In the end, I helped create a wildlife management system for forestry concessions. This toolkit is based on the lessons learned working on addressing wildlife management in in logging concessions, which they could use to make sure their wildlife was protected. Many of those concessions ended up creating a job for a wildlife manager in their concession.

Do you have a favorite wildlife species in Cameroon and why do you like it?

That’s a difficult question to answer! I think most people would choose elephants, or maybe gorillas. I have a species that I definitely like but I respect gorillas as well: If you have ever come across a gorilla in the forest, you would understand. You’re walking through the forest, and suddenly, you come across a silverback. When you look into his eyes, and he looks into yours, it’s a feeling you’ll never forget. It sends a pulse through your body. It’s something I can’t describe, not even in French, my mother tongue; no word that I know can describe it.

That’s one of the things I love most about my job – there a lot of interesting encounters and discoveries working in these remote areas. I’ve gotten to see things that most people have never seen. That makes my job more exciting. Sometimes it feels like I’m a Formula 1 driver who is easily overtaking all of the other drivers: his emotions can only be understood by the handful of other people who have sat at the steering wheel of an F1 car. It’s a thrill, a special feeling inside. 

All of that said – I think chimpanzees are actually my favorite species. I had the chance to work with them when I was developing wildlife management concessions, and what struck me was how much they’re like us. They’re the most closely related to humans, and there are so many things that they do that remind me of us. Chimps also use tools in a way that’s so human-like. For example, they’ll take a stick and put it into an ant nest, and then pull it out and eat the ants just like it was a skewer of meat. On camera traps, you can really see their personalities. Sometimes, it seems like they come right up to the camera and smile.

They’re also territorial – they have their own core area, like we do with our villages. They have individuals who patrol the area and others who defend it. At one point, I was working with logging concessions, and I had to explain to them that they have to understand where each chimp group’s core area is, and to be careful not to cut the forest in a way that would force a group towards another one. Otherwise, the chimps would go to war, and the chimp numbers would drop. 

That’s why chimps are definitely my favorite. They’re interesting and complex, and so much like us.