Cameroon : the french woman who is saving the monkeys | M6 | 66 minutes

Cameroon used to have the strongest economy in sub-Saharan Africa, but at the end of the 1990s the fall in the price of its export products such as coffee and cocoa badly affected the population. The devaluation of the CFA franc plunged the country into an unprecedented economic crisis that drove the population to hunger riots that were the cause of some thirty deaths at the end of the winter of 2008 following clashes with the forces of law and order. The population turned to the forest, which used to provide an inexhaustible supply, but today is reaching its limits because of the general move to consumption of wild meat, which is less expensive than farm-produced meat. This film shows the food chain in Cameroon, where we follow first a poacher setting out into the bush to find meat to feed his family, then an anti-poaching team as they carry out investigations and preventative operations. It is against this background that Patricia has been fighting to protect chimpanzees for over ten years and save a species. She rescues orphan babies and rebuilds clans in the jungle, in the heart of the poachers’ territory. Hungry Cameroonians just turn to a forest that has always provided an inexhaustible supply, but those times are gone. With the demographic explosion, resources are dwindling and healthy animal populations are suffering enormously.