Fighting wildlife crime and corruption: an interview with Ofir Drori WORDS JAN FOX | OFIR DRORI PHOTOGRAPHS OFIR DRORI
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fir Drori is an Israeli wildlife law enforcement activist and anti-corruption whistleblower. His life was transformed in July 2002 when he rescued a baby chimpanzee from poachers in a remote town in eastern Cameroon. Determined to prevent the extinction of great apes through the bushmeat trade, and to fight the pervasive corruption within the Cameroonian government, he founded the world’s first wildlife law enforcement NGO – LAGA (the Last Great Ape Organisation). Just seven months after its creation, LAGA brought about the first wildlife prosecution in West and Central Africa. The NGO’s model has since been replicated in eight other countries across Africa, forming an association of activists known as The EAGLE Network (Eco Activists for Governance and Law Enforcement). Ofir’s story is one of courage and adventure. Before founding LAGA, he embarked on a number of solo journeys in remote corners of East and West Africa, taking few rations to immerse himself as fully as possible in his surroundings. By cutting the ‘safety rope’, as he calls it, he was able to open up to more fulfilling experiences in his engagement with the isolated communities that he encountered along the way. But it also nearly killed him, on more than one occasion. In Nigeria, he scrambled out of a steep valley after a horrific bus accident. On the bank of Ethiopia’s Gibe River, on the verge of starvation, he fed on the carcass of a baby hippo. And, again in Ethiopia years later, he escaped from the jaws of a three-metre long Nile crocodile. I spoke to Ofir about his extreme adventures, and his environmental activism.
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Thanks for your time, Ofir. Tell us a bit about the work of LAGA and EAGLE. The EAGLE Network now operates in nine countries, in East, West and Central Africa. It’s a wildlife law enforcement NGO, which means that we attack trafficking from the enforcement side. We have local teams in each country with four different departments.
