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Last Updated: Friday, 15 June 2007, 09:15 GMT 10:15 UK


'Man in black' fights for Cameroon apes
By Francis Ngwa Niba
BBC, Yaounde, Cameroon


Ofir Drori, a 30-year-old, fast-talking Israeli, is a man with a mission - to save endangered animals in Cameroon's rich equatorial forest.


Ofir Drori says protecting animals can be dangerous work
Known as "the man in black" because of his sartorial tastes, he slept inside the cage of the first sick chimpanzee he rescued from poachers and nursed it back to life.

He has succeeded in sending scores of wildlife criminals to jail and shows no sign of stopping.

"I arrived in Cameroon four years ago to write an article about the extinction of endangered animals - I still haven't finished that article," he told the BBC News website.

A 1994 wildlife law prohibits the sale or trafficking in endangered animal species including chimpanzees, elephants, gorillas and lions.

Until Mr Drori arrived and created The Last Great Ape Organisation (Laga), nobody had ever been prosecuted for violating that law.

That has all changed now.

An average of two people a month are now either arrested, imprisoned or fined for violating the wildlife law.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6702113.stm