Cameroon

Coordinates: 6°N 12°E / 6°N 12°E / 6; 12

Cameroon (/ˌkæməˈruːn/; French: Cameroun), officially the Republic of Cameroon (French: République du Cameroun), is a country in Central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west; Chad to the northeast; the Central African Republic to the east; and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the Republic of the Congo to the south. Cameroon's coastline lies on the Bight of Bonny, part of the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean.

Cameroon is home to more than 200 different linguistic groups. French and English are the official languages. The country is often referred to as "Africa in miniature" for its geological and cultural diversity. Natural features include beaches, deserts, mountains, rainforests, and savannas. The highest point at almost 4,100 metres (13,500 ft) is Mount Cameroon in the Southwest Region of the country, and the largest cities in population-terms are Douala on the Wouri river, its economical capital and main seaport, Yaoundé, its political capital, and Garoua. After independence, the newly united nation joined the Commonwealth of Nations, although the vast majority of its territories had previously been a German colony and, after World War I, a French mandate. The country is well known for its native styles of music, particularly makossa and bikutsi, and for its successful national football team.

Wildlife Aid Foundation

The Wildlife Aid Foundation is a charity dedicated to the rescue, care and rehabilitation of sick, injured and orphaned animals. Based in Leatherhead, Surrey, UK, the centre operates Surrey County's only wildlife hospital (one of the three largest such hospitals in the UK) and maintains a referral service for wildlife hospitals throughout Europe. The organisation also carries out environmental activist and educational roles. Wildlife Aid has attracted media attention for its rescues of photogenic wild animals like young foxes and baby badgers;Animal Planet's TV program Wildlife SOS chronicles the activities of Wildlife Aid volunteers as they rescue imperiled animals.

Wildlife hospital

Wildlife Aid got its start in 1979 when its founder, Simon Cowell, MBE, acquired a farmhouse in Leatherhead with the intention of starting a local wildlife rescue facility. Formally established a year later, the centre's activities steadily increased in scale; the hospital now treats more than 20,000 wild animals a year, returning 70% of them to the wild. It has saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of animals since the charity's formation in 1980. The organisation currently operates on a budget of £350,000 per year, and relies on over 300 volunteers to provide an all-year-round service. Its facilities include two operating theatres, a pathology lab, and an intensive care unit. The charity's longer term aim is to build a larger complex on a new site that will allow the expansion of the organisation's educational programmes; the planned expansion would increase the facility's footprint to 10 acres (40,000 m²), rely heavily on eco-friendly technology, and be carbon-neutral.

Wildlife

Wildlife traditionally refers to non-domesticated animal species, but has come to include all plants, fungi, and other organisms that grow or live wild in an area without being introduced by humans.

Wildlife can be found in all ecosystems. Deserts, forests, rain forests, plains, grasslands, and other areas including the most developed urban sites, all have distinct forms of wildlife. While the term in popular culture usually refers to animals that are untouched by human factors, most scientists agree that much wildlife is affected by human activities.

Humans have historically tended to separate civilization from wildlife in a number of ways including the legal, social, and moral sense. Some animals, however, have adapted to suburban environments. This includes such animals as domesticated cats, dogs, mice, and gerbils.Some religions have often declared certain animals to be sacred, and in modern times concern for the natural environment has provoked activists to protest the exploitation of wildlife for human benefit or entertainment.

Ape Action Africa

Ape Action Africa is a non-profit NGO founded in 1996 dedicated to the conservation of endangered gorillas and chimpanzees, threatened by the bushmeat trade in Central and West Africa. Ape Action Africa manages the rescue and rehabilitation of Great apes across much of Cameroon, with a large sanctuary in the Mefou forest. With more than 300 primates in its care, Ape Action Africa is now one of the largest conservation projects of its kind in Africa. Many of the animals arrive at the sanctuary as orphans, mainly due to the illegal bushmeat trade, which has grown in recent years as a result of deforestation of the Cameroonian jungle.

At the frontline of the organisation is Rachel Hogan, originally from Birmingham, who now lives full-time in the jungle.

Ape Action Africa is featured in the 2006 TV series Going Ape.

On 22 November 2010, one of the founding directors of Ape Action Africa, Avi Sivan, died in a helicopter crash while travelling between the cities of Douala and Yaoundé in Cameroon.

National park

A national park is a park in use for conservation purposes. Often it is a reserve of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that a sovereign state declares or owns. Although individual nations designate their own national parks differently, there is a common idea: the conservation of 'wild nature' for posterity and as a symbol of national pride. An international organization, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and its World Commission on Protected Areas, has defined "National Park" as its Category II type of protected areas.

While this type of national park had been proposed previously, the United States established the first "public park or pleasuring-ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people", Yellowstone National Park, in 1872. Although Yellowstone was not officially termed a "national park" in its establishing law, it was always termed such in practice and is widely held to be the first and oldest national park in the world. The first area to use "national park" in its creation legislation was the US's Mackinac Island, in 1875. Australia's Royal National Park, established in 1879, was the world's third official national park. In 1895 ownership of Mackinac Island was transferred to the State of Michigan as a state park and national park status was consequently lost. As a result, Australia's Royal National Park is by some considerations the second oldest national park now in existence.