An effort to save folk tales from west Africa, which have been passed down for hundreds of years, has been launched by an Oxford academic.

Dr Tom Moorhouse from the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit at Oxford University has teamed up with 11 other storytellers and an illustrator to produce a book of tales collected in Cameroon.

The finished work will be distributed to children who live in the country's Korup forest, to benefit their education and ensure stories from the country's oral tradition are not lost forever.

Dr Moorhouse and the team behind the book are aiming to raise £11,500 to help make it a reality and have already brought in more than £2,800 in just two days.

He said: "There is a big tradition of these guys getting together and telling the stories to each other.

"In one sense if does not matter that they are not written down because they are being presented through these traditions.

"But the traditions have been eroded to the point they do not exist any more.

"These children have literally no books and you cannot have an education that works terribly well if you have a school with only one textbook."

Dr Moorhouse's colleague Christos Astaras collected the stories while working in the Korup forest and gave them to Dr Moorhouse with the intention he would write them up, photocopy them and hand them to the children.

But when the East Oxford resident wrote the first story up he realised he did not want all of them to come across in his "English" style of writing.

He said: "The obvious thing was to get more people involved, more people with experience writing in Africa.

"We have gone for a diversity of authors.

"All the stories are now written and we have an illustrator but we need the money to produce the book."

Dr Moorhouse, 40, has set up a crowdfunding website which allows backers to buy a copy, which pays for its own printing and for PDFs to be sent to Cameroon and printed there.

They will then be given out to youngsters in the Korup forest so they can read the tales about tricky tortoises, cunning monkeys, flies stronger than elephants, despicable crocodiles and animals holding meetings in the sky.

Dr Moorhouse said: "So far we have raised a third of what we need.

"The book is in English and people have asked why we are sending an English book to Cameroon.

"But there are three major groups there and English and pidgin English are the languages they use to communicate between themselves.

"That is what lessons are taught in and that is what they will be able to read these books in."

To buy a copy of the book and support them being sent to Cameroon, visit indiegogo.com/projects/cameroon-stories#/