Wikipedia defines Poaching as the illegal hunting, killing, or capturing of wild animals, usually associated with land use rights. Poaching is becoming a serious threat for the World Environment causing a lot of harm to most of the animals. Poaching is prohibited throughout the world and people caught killing animals are seriously punished. Many offenses and violations are considered acts of poaching by the International Wildlife conservation these include:

- Hunting, killing or collecting wildlife that is listed as endangered by IUCN and protected by law such as the Endangered Species Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 and international treaties such as CITES.

- Fishing and hunting without a license.

- Capturing wildlife outside legal hours and outside the hunting season usually the breeding season is declared as the closed season during which wildlife is protected by law.

- Prohibited use of machine guns, poison, explosives, snare traps, nets and pitfall traps.

- Prohibited use of baiting with food, decoys or recorded calls in order to increase chances for shooting wildlife.

- Hunting from a moving vehicle or aircraft.

- Canned hunting is a particularly inhumane type of poaching wildlife as it often involves illegal activities such as trapping, caging, drugging animals, or cutting their feet with razor blades.

Just like many countries in Africa endangered species are elephants and black rhinoceros which are used for their ivory. The UN declared that about 450 elephants were killed for their ivory. This is really becoming out of hand and the government is trying to implement many sanctions in order to punish people caught practising. This is done through the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife with the introduction of wildlife guards which are there to protect the endangered species. People caught doing this are either sentenced to sanctions or even life imprisonment. The ivory is used to be traded for money, munitions and weapons. It pollutes the black market and this ivory is transported to other countries. The fight against poachers is taking a decisive turn. There is a school specialised for training forestry and wildlife in Yaoundé, capital of Cameroon more precisely in Mbalmayo, this school trains them to fight against poachers and to protect the forest and parks. There are many parks in Cameroon with a lot of animal species, so this country becomes a key place for poachers. Cameroon is considered as Africa in miniature, this means Cameroon engulfs most of the natural resources found in many African countries.

Poaching as any environmental issue has a lot of consequences on humans and the environment this include:

Reduction of animal populations in the wild and possible extinction.

Wildlife tourism destinations face a negative publicity those holding a permit for wildlife-based land uses, tourism-based tour and lodging operators lose income employment opportunities are reduced.

Results of research on wild chimpanzees in Cameroon indicate that they are naturally infected with the simian foamy virus and constitute a reservoir of HIV-1, a precursor of the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome in humans.

This is just to name some consequences of this evil practise. Though the practise is difficult to stop the government is trying all possibilities to stop the expansion of this act. With imprisonments and sanctions imposed on people. People are now scared to practise this illegal act so the percentage of poaching is gradually dropping though people still practise it.