Elephant Management and Poaching in African Countries

Discussion on Elephant Management and poaching topics
User avatar
Lisbeth
Site Admin
Posts: 67241
Joined: Sat May 19, 2012 12:31 pm
Country: Switzerland
Location: Lugano
Contact:

Re: Elephant Poaching in Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, ...)

Post by Lisbeth »

What a nice couple they are! :twisted: :evil:


"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." Nelson Mandela
The desire for equality must never exceed the demands of knowledge
User avatar
Richprins
Committee Member
Posts: 75838
Joined: Sat May 19, 2012 3:52 pm
Location: NELSPRUIT
Contact:

Re: Elephant Poaching in Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, ...)

Post by Richprins »

Animals.


Please check Needs Attention pre-booking: https://africawild-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=322&t=596
User avatar
Lisbeth
Site Admin
Posts: 67241
Joined: Sat May 19, 2012 12:31 pm
Country: Switzerland
Location: Lugano
Contact:

Re: Elephant Poaching in Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, ...)

Post by Lisbeth »

Poachers kill nearly 11,000 Mozambique elephants in 7 years

BY JON SHARMAN - 12 FEBRUARY 2018 - INDEPENDENT

Image
A herd of elephants in Mozambique’s Niassa National Reserve Wim Ebersohn

Poachers have killed more than four elephants a day since 2011 in a Mozambique nature reserve, cutting the population from 12,000 to as few as 1,500, according to a conservation group.

Fauna and Flora International (FFI) said it feared surviving elephants in the Niassa National Reserve may be wiped out if heavily-armed poaching gangs are not shut down.

In the last two months, the group said, up to five per cent of the reserve’s remaining elephants had been killed for their ivory.

Its chief executive, Mark Rose, said: “The value of Niassa as one of the continent’s last great wildernesses should endure beyond a short-term scramble for ivory and other illicit goods, such as minerals.

“Its long-term economic, social and cultural significance cannot be overstated.

“The Mozambican government must take immediate action to curb this poaching crisis before it is too late.”

Niassa had been home to 70 per cent of Mozambique’s elephants, FFI said. The reserve covers more than 16,000 sq mi.

Matt Rice, a conservationist who runs the Chuilexi tourism concession inside Niassi, told The Independent he believed the area’s poaching crisis had begun in 2009 and only escalated since then.

Poachers carrying large-calibre hunting rifles and illegal AK-47 assault rifles outgunned the teams trying to disrupt their activities, he said.

“We … can only get access to pump-action shotguns [which are only effective at short range]. We struggle to get licences for shotguns, so many of our scouts are unarmed.”

Chuilexi employs some 60 scouts in its conservation effort, which is required by its contract and was a key reason he signed it, Mr Rice said. He added that he believed Mozambique had been identified as a “softer target”, a country where the law enforcement regime is less robust than elsewhere on the continent.

Mr Rice said: “The consensus is that it’s largely being driven by Chinese syndicates. This goes hand-in-hand over the last decade with a substantial increase in Chinese investment and Chinese nationals that are living and working in these African countries.

“It’s fantastic that China are making the moves that they are [against the ivory trade]. However, there’s still a burgeoning illegal trade.”

The syndicates are also involved in trading the scales of highly endangered pangolins, he said.

At the end of January Hong Kong politicians voted to outlaw the sale of ivory in the region by 2021. Hong Kong is thought to be the world’s biggest retail ivory market.

Mainland China, the biggest source of global ivory demand, banned sales at the start of the year after shutting all carving factories and shops last March.

The World Wildlife Fund called for governments in other Asian countries such as Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Japan to institute similar bans, saying there was evidence those markets were increasingly catering to Chinese visitors.

China and the UK unveiled a joint effort against illegal wildlife trading during Theresa May‘s recent visit and pledged to share expertise in tackling the trade with southern African nations.

Wildlife campaigners believe 30,000 African elephants are killed by poachers every year.

In neighbouring Zimbabwe earlier this month, four elephants died of cyanide poisoning after poachers contaminated their water sources.

Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority spokesman Tinashe Farawo said poachers were increasingly turning to poison instead of using noisy rifles as police and park rangers increased joint patrols.

Mr Farawo added that poachers were also injecting cyanide into oranges and pumpkins, which are favourite foods of elephants.

Read original article: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 06626.html


"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." Nelson Mandela
The desire for equality must never exceed the demands of knowledge
User avatar
Richprins
Committee Member
Posts: 75838
Joined: Sat May 19, 2012 3:52 pm
Location: NELSPRUIT
Contact:

Kenya wants Life Sentences for Poachers

Post by Richprins »

At rhino's memorial, Kenyan minister urges life sentences for ivory possession

Kenya had 20,000 rhinos in the 1970s, falling to 400 in the 1990s. It now has 650, almost all of them black rhinos.

Reuters | about 17 hours ago

NANYUKI, Kenya - The death of the world’s last male northern white rhinoceros this month led a Kenyan government official to declare anyone caught possessing ivory should be sentenced to life in prison.

“Ivory belongs to elephants and rhinos,” said Najib Balala, Kenya’s tourism minister, during a memorial service held at Ol Pejeta Conservancy on Saturday for Sudan, the 45-year-old rhino, who died 11 days ago.

Wildlife officials at Ol Pejeta, about 250 kilometers north of Nairobi, put down the rhino on 19 March because of rapid deterioration in his health.

Sudan is survived by the last two females of his species, his 27-year-old daughter Najin and 17-year-old granddaughter Fatu. The only hope for preserving their species is through in vitro fertilization using their eggs and stored semen, according to Ol Pejeta.

Thousand of southern white rhinos still roam sub-Saharan Africa, but decades of rampant poaching have drastically cut the number of northern whites. Poachers could sell northern white rhino horns for $50,000 per kilo, making them more valuable than gold.

Kenya had 20,000 rhinos in the 1970s, falling to 400 in the 1990s. It now has 650, almost all of them black rhinos.

“We are going to change our laws so that anyone caught with ivory will be jailed for life,” Balala said.

Kenya introduced tough wildlife-protection laws in 2013 in an attempt to stop highly lucrative ivory smuggling, mainly to Asia, which has led to the slaughter of thousands of rare and endangered animals.

Those found guilty of ivory trafficking already face a life sentence. But the minimum sentence for possessing it is just five years.

After a court sentenced a Kenyan man to 20 years in jail for possessing ivory, the top prosecutor sought for the punishment to be changed to a life sentenced. The convicted man’s appeal is still in the courts.

The slaughter of endangered animals in Africa for profit continues, but there is ever greater awareness of the bloody cost of ivory, and more international action to stop the trade.

In a move with major implications for the illegal wildlife trade from Africa, China banned ivory sales in December. The country is the world’s largest importer and end user of elephant tusks.

http://ewn.co.za/2018/03/31/at-rhino-s- ... possession


Please check Needs Attention pre-booking: https://africawild-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=322&t=596
User avatar
Flutterby
Posts: 44150
Joined: Sat May 19, 2012 12:28 pm
Country: South Africa
Location: Gauteng, South Africa
Contact:

Re: Elephant Poaching in Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, ...)

Post by Flutterby »

The Bloody Toll of Congo's Elephant Wars

BY TRISTAN MCCONNELL
April 16, 2018

In Garamba National Park, in Democratic Republic of Congo, 13 park rangers have been killed in the past three years, and 256 elephants have been taken for their tusks—and these days, the poachers often arrive in uniform, with an arsenal of weapons to match.

Fifteen shots felled the elephant. It was a few weeks into Congo's springtime rainy season, and the animal, an adult male, collapsed among dense green stalks of yard-high grass. A few miles away, Dieudonné Kanisa, a compact and muscular Congolese ranger, heard the shots as he patrolled the northern bank of the meandering Garamba River, looking for poachers. With his four fellow rangers beside him, Kanisa moved toward the gunfire.

Back at headquarters, the manager of Garamba National Park, Erik Mararv, grabbed his rifle and headed for the park's helicopter with pilot Frank Molteno, a South African with a lifetime's experience flying all kinds of aircraft, often in places without runways or rules. Mararv, a lean 32-year-old Central African–born Swede, oversaw the rangers tasked with protecting Garamba, a park the size of Delaware in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The 80-year-old World Heritage Site is an immense stretch of savannah and woodland in the heart of Africa, a gently undulating landscape of nine-foot-tall elephant grass and scattered sausage trees, interrupted by swamps and pocked with the scars of abandoned termite hills. It is also home to one of the largest, most threatened populations of elephants in central Africa. In the past three years, 13 rangers have been killed in 56 shoot-outs with poachers. The corresponding elephant death toll in that time: 256.

Every rifle shot in Garamba sets off a dangerous race to find the carcass before poachers can chop out the tusks and make off with the ivory. Less than 20 minutes after the elephant was felled, Molteno located a clearing and put the helicopter down next to Kanisa's rangers. Every extraneous piece of equipment had been removed to make space for the rangers, who clambered in with their weapons. Everyone aboard the chopper had an AK-47 assault rifle. One clutched a grenade launcher.

The poachers had covered the dead elephant with camouflage—branches and thick stalks of grass—making it hard to spot from the air. Mararv and the rangers swept low over the area for the next 45 minutes, finally spotting an eddy of vultures, which indicated a carcass below. Molteno prepared to land. As the helicopter closed in, Mararv could see bloody hatchet marks in the animal's face, but the tusks, a modest 22 pounds each, were still in place, meaning the poachers were likely close by. Such tusks might earn a few hundred dollars for the poachers, but by the time smugglers ship the raw ivory to China, it could fetch more than $14,500.

Molteno landed about 500 feet from the carcass, allowing Mararv and the rangers to jump out before the helicopter took off again. As the noise from the rotors faded, the firefight began. The six men dropped low, fanned out, and edged forward, shooting. As they approached, the poachers responded with a hand grenade that exploded 15 yards in front of them. Kanisa discovered, too late, that their own grenade launcher had been left behind in the helicopter.

Mararv was the first one hit. The bullet came from the left, punched through his right inner thigh, and smashed clean through his femur, leaving a fist-sized exit wound. His shattered leg gave way beneath him and he tumbled to the ground with a cry. Orodrio Dodo, a talented young ranger, crawled through the waist-high grass to Mararv's side and cinched a tourniquet tight around his leg. Moments later Richard Sungudikpio Ndingba was hit. The bullet entered from the left, just below his rib cage, tore through his chest cavity, and exited through his right side. Kanisa heard him crumple and ordered Pipili Langotsi, a 20-year veteran ranger, to help him.

Bullets snapped in from the front and left. Then, from the right, came a shrill whoop as a third group charged out of the bushes, shouting and firing. Ranger Dieudonné Tsago Matikuli, the closest to the poachers, was shot in the head. Outnumbered and outgunned, with three rangers down and two assisting the wounded, only Kanisa was now shooting back. He fired in short bursts—left, front, right—until he too was hit, a bullet gouging a deep furrow in his right forearm and heaving him backward, the rifle knocked from his grip.

Mararv handed Dodo his last magazine, with 30 rounds, and urged him to go back to the others. Dodo crawled forward to rejoin Langotsi in holding off the poachers. To his left, Ndingba and Kanisa lay wounded in the long grass, with Matikuli dead nearby. Mararv hauled himself away from the firefight, hoping to use his radio to reach Molteno, but there was no signal. They were in a dead zone.

Six months after the attack, I arrived in Garamba aboard a single-prop Cessna piloted by Alain, a jolly, middle-aged Frenchman in a pilot's shirt with epaulettes, who didn't want his full name printed ("I am hiding from my wife," he explained with a grin). From the air, the park reveals itself as a near-flat expanse of grassland abruptly replacing the rock-pierced forests to the south.

The poaching threat here is not from opportunistic locals, encroaching farmers, or illegal subsistence hunters. Instead, Mararv and his units are up against uniformed gunmen from South Sudan, Janjaweed horseback raiders from Darfur, armed cattle herders from Central Africa and beyond, the extravagantly brutal Lord's Resistance Army (L.R.A.) and, on at least three occasions, unidentified helicopters that killed elephants from above with single shots to the skulls. The different factions commonly have powerful patrons in the government or military from their home countries, who shield the poachers from prosecution and profit from their crimes. The result has been a catastrophic collapse in African elephant numbers, which have fallen by a quarter in the past 10 years to an estimated 415,000.

As we approached the park headquarters, Alain banked low. Thatched rondavels and tin-roofed houses were clustered in the crook of a wide bend in the Dungu river, whose placid surface was broken by snorting pods of hippopotamuses. We made a bumpy landing on the grass runway and found a ranger waiting in the shade of a small corrugated iron hangar. The short drive from the airstrip took us past a red-brick church, a swept parade ground, a warehouse that was recently renovated after being damaged by an L.R.A. assault in January 2009, and a padlocked ivory store.

The rangers regularly face opponents with assault rifles, belt-fed machine guns, and rocket-propelled grenades. In the weeks before the April 2016 incident, the rangers had been tracking, but never quite catching, a group of seven L.R.A. fighters who were hunting ivory to trade for weapons with Sudanese merchants and, allegedly, the military. Over a 15-day period, the insurgents had two shoot-outs with rangers. "The rules of engagement for the poachers are 'shoot as soon as you see a ranger,' " said Naftali Honig, a 32-year-old New Yorker in charge of Garamba's intelligence-gathering operation. "The rangers have to cope with that. Our job is not to monitor extinction; our job is to do something about it."

Extinction is not theoretical in Garamba. It is both real and recent. At the start of this century, the park was home to the world's last known wild population of northern white rhinos. By 2006, poachers had killed the last of them. The elephant population has also been decimated, falling from 22,700 in the mid-'70s to less than 1,200 today. The fate of the northern white rhino—the last two on earth are living under constant guard in central Kenya and are unable to reproduce—is a glimpse of the elephant's future if the poachers are not stopped.

The tourniquet had stemmed the worst of the bleeding as Mararv pulled himself through the grass trying to find a radio signal. Just a few miles away, Molteno was already returning with five more rangers. Flying in fast, the pilot pointed out to the men which of the figures in the grass below were poachers and which rangers. Suddenly, his radio crackled to life and Molteno heard Mararv say he had been shot in the leg and was bleeding badly.

Molteno dropped the reinforcements to the north, hoping they could outflank the poachers. Then he took off again to find Mararv, who by now had reached a clearing where he was visible from the air. Molteno had no choice but to put his helicopter down into the middle of a still-fierce firefight. Kanisa and Dodo heard the thumping of the helicopter blades but were unable to signal their location. If they stood up, they knew, they risked being hit. Instead, they stayed low, out of sight of the poachers but also invisible to Molteno.

Mararv threw his rifle into the helicopter, then hauled himself in, wincing in pain as the mangled ends of his thigh bone crunched together. Molteno, meanwhile, had climbed out of his pilot's seat and was taking shots at the poachers, all the while scanning the area for the wounded rangers. A bullet flew in through the open pilot's door, whistled past his chest and left a neat hole in the opposite window. Incoming fire continued to crack over Mararv's prone, bloodied body. Molteno, fearing for the chopper's safety—and realizing Mararv might be bleeding to death—decided to return to headquarters, 15 miles away, to retrieve a third team of rangers and seek medical attention for Mararv.

Another five-man Congolese ranger team was armed and ready to go as soon as the helicopter landed. Mararv was lifted out and taken to a medic, who stuffed his wound with hemostatic gauze and gave him a painkilling fentanyl lollipop to suck. It was only after the arrival of the third squad of rangers that the battle finally ended, nearly two hours after it had begun. The poachers escaped, without the tusks, having abandoned much of their gear and leaving a trail of blood through the grass. Kanisa, Ndingba, and another wounded ranger, Rigobert Anigobe Bagale, were lifted into Molteno's helicopter. Mararv was flown to a hospital in Bangui, the capital of Central African Republic, where there was a vascular surgeon who could tend to his leg.

It was not until the next morning, when Mararv awoke from a ketamine-induced sleep, that he learned both Ndingba and Bagale had died from their wounds. The same morning, Matikuli's body was found hidden in the long grass. It had been one of the deadliest days in Garamba's history.

Park rangers everywhere would rather concentrate on conservation, preserving habitats, and guiding visitors. But in Garamba, the demands are different. "To be able to fight the poachers, first you have to have training," said Mambo Marindo, a quick-to-smile ranger in his 40s who has spent half his life patrolling Garamba. "But after training you need the equipment," he said, gesturing toward a nearby collection of refurbished shipping containers that serve as the park armory, where aging AK-47s are stored alongside grenade launchers and boxes of ammunition. "It's the same for the poachers and for us: We are planning how to attack, and they are also planning."

After the April 2016 shoot-out, the London-based Endangered Species Protection Agency brought in a tough and wiry former special operations soldier named Mark Billingham to battle-train Garamba's rangers. He drove the rangers on long, quick marches with their assigned "mentors" (all former British paratroopers or French Foreign Legion), led them through live-fire exercises, and accompanied them in overnight bivouacs in the equatorial rain. "The rangers need to look the part and act the part so these fuckers don't come in here," said Billingham, taking a break from the afternoon torpor on the porch of his riverside cottage in a grove of almond and bushwillow trees. "It's a conflict out there. They're fighting a rebel war."

Shortly before dawn one morning, a few days after I arrived, a group of 21 rangers waited, each carrying a rucksack heavy with 45 pounds of sand, as Billingham and the other trainers arrived in a battered Toyota pickup for a five-mile march through the morning mist. After breakfast, they fired off magazine after magazine of bullets as they practiced frontal assaults on poaching gangs. Later in the week, they stayed out all night with their trainers, lying on a slippery mud bank in the unrelenting rain to launch a live-fire dawn raid on a fictitious poachers' camp.

The April 2016 incident was "a wake-up call," said John Barrett, a former British paratrooper in his 50s who was recently appointed Garamba's general manager. "Poaching and the insecurity in the region has created a unique set of conditions that routine anti-poaching setups aren't man enough for," he said. Billingham and his colleagues "provide muscle."

African Parks, the South Africa–based nonprofit conservation organization that runs Garamba (in partnership with the Congolese Institute for Nature Conservation, a government body), has ramped up its assistance as well. The budget for the park has tripled to $10 million, much of it funded by the U.S. and European Union. "We were losing," said the group's co-founder and CEO, Peter Fearnhead. "The forces we are up against in Garamba are not poachers. They are highly militarized groups that happen to be killing elephants as a way of funding their war machines." Dieudonné Kanisa believes the poachers who shot Mararv and the others belonged to the South Sudanese military.

Garamba's intelligence operation has been expanded with money donated by the Elephant Crisis Fund, an initiative seeded and supported by actor Leonardo DiCaprio. The plan, according to Barrett, is to bring in sniffer and attack dogs and to increase the ranger force. Garamba has already increased the force by nearly 25 percent in the past year, which helped the park halve the number of elephants poached in 2017. This will likely help alleviate some of the stress that comes with being on a constant war footing. There are multiple armed contacts with poachers every year, and the regular battles in which friends are killed or wounded take their toll. Barrett knows from experience what war can do to the minds of soldiers and said Garamba is no different: "I can see a bit of PTSD here, and I don't think it's surprising," he said.

"I've been in a lot of firefights," said Kanisa, a solemn man in his early 30s. "A lot." After a pause, Kanisa spots a handmade Congolese harp resting against a wall. Without a word, he tunes the instrument carefully, his head cocked to one side, and smiles as the notes reverberate. Like many of the Garamba rangers, Kanisa comes from Faradje, 15 miles from headquarters, where there are few options for making a living. He has three children under the age of nine, and he said in the fall of 2016 that his $250 monthly salary allowed him to feed them and send them to school. But to risk your life to protect an animal or a park requires a degree of missionary zeal. "It is God's plan," said Kanisa. "When we take the decision to carry a gun in the park, we swear an oath. We have to protect the wildlife for our children, even our grandchildren."

After the ambush, as the tusks left behind by the poachers were locked up in storage at park headquarters, Mararv underwent three surgeries. For a time, he feared he might lose the leg to infection. After spending a month convalescing, he returned to Garamba. I asked him if he regrets confronting the poachers. "We're sitting with the result in hand," he said. "Clearly it was the wrong decision. As soon as somebody gets killed, it's always the wrong decision, but you don't have too much of a choice." The alternative is to let the poachers go about their business, in which case Garamba is lost.

Dodo, the ranger who likely saved Mararv's life with a tourniquet, likewise thinks the choice to defend Garamba is simple. "Don't ask why I protect this animal that God put here," he said. "Ask the poachers why they seek to kill them."

Tristan McConnell is a foreign correspondent living in Kenya.


User avatar
Lisbeth
Site Admin
Posts: 67241
Joined: Sat May 19, 2012 12:31 pm
Country: Switzerland
Location: Lugano
Contact:

Re: Elephant Poaching in Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, ...)

Post by Lisbeth »

This is a war drama :shock: Sounds more like an action movie than a fight against poachers.

Those rangers are heros ^Q^ ^Q^ ^Q^ and they are not fighting normal poachers, not even trained and well equipped poachers, but trained cruel soldiers :evil:

Obviously it is too easy to travel around, because if they come from South Sudan, they have to pass quite a few frontiers.


"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." Nelson Mandela
The desire for equality must never exceed the demands of knowledge
User avatar
nan
Posts: 26304
Joined: Thu May 31, 2012 9:41 pm
Country: Switzerland
Location: Central Europe
Contact:

Re: Elephant Poaching in Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, ...)

Post by nan »

not only Elephants.... Gorillas too O-/

war... war... I think of people too :-(


Kgalagadi lover… for ever
https://safrounet.piwigo.com/
User avatar
Flutterby
Posts: 44150
Joined: Sat May 19, 2012 12:28 pm
Country: South Africa
Location: Gauteng, South Africa
Contact:

Re: Elephant Poaching in Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, ...)

Post by Flutterby »

Woman fighting elephant poaching in Zimbabwe

phpBB [video]


User avatar
Lisbeth
Site Admin
Posts: 67241
Joined: Sat May 19, 2012 12:31 pm
Country: Switzerland
Location: Lugano
Contact:

Re: Elephant Poaching in Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, ...)

Post by Lisbeth »

I love success stories O/\ O/\ No doubt that women have more sense of ethics, morals and empathy, generally speaking. The down side is that they are physically weaker, but have a lot of determination to make up for that \O


"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." Nelson Mandela
The desire for equality must never exceed the demands of knowledge
User avatar
Lisbeth
Site Admin
Posts: 67241
Joined: Sat May 19, 2012 12:31 pm
Country: Switzerland
Location: Lugano
Contact:

Re: Elephant Poaching in Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, ...)

Post by Lisbeth »

The last hope for the elephants: Can a Chinese law help stop the slaughter in Africa?

BY DAVID MCKENZIE, BRENT SWAILS & ESTACIO VALOI - 19 JUNE 2018 - CNN

Image
PEMBA, MOZAMBIQUE: It’s no secret where the ivory deals take place in Pemba.

Despite a new blanket ban on the ivory trade in China, the closest major city to Mozambique’s largest nature reserve remains a smuggling hotspot for criminal gangs.

In shabby three-star resorts and half-empty Chinese trading offices, illicit deals are discussed freely, especially the illegal trade in ivory.

Posing undercover as ivory middlemen, an investigator is invited into a Chinese investment center near the international airport to talk business. The red-brick, two-story building is like many of its kind, where everything from cheap fashions to toilet seats are on sale.

They meet in an internet café inside the building and within minutes a conversation with a Chinese trader has turned to ivory.

“I have two tusks,” our man tells the trader, flipping through photos of ivory on his smart phone, and promises to have a steady supply ready to export.

“How many meters do you have?” the potential Chinese buyer asked in broken Portuguese, “can you get ten meters?”

Haggling ensues.

The trader questions whether he can get the ivory into China.

“That’s a crime,” he says.

It’s either a negotiating tactic to lower the price or a sign that new laws in China are having an impact.

But will those laws stop the slaughter?

Even Closer to Extinction

Years of catastrophic illegal poaching have pushed African elephants closer and closer to extinction.

More than 30,000 have been killed annually since at least 2010, according to a study known as Great Elephant Census.

But 2018 was supposed to be a banner year for elephant conservation.

“The year of the elephant!” one headline gushed. In January, the Chinese government banned all ivory trade.

By criminalizing the purchase of ivory, the ban is meant to stop people from selling and buying ornaments and trinkets made from ivory.

Conservationists heralded the move as the best chance yet to stop the slaughter across Africa and squash demand in the world’s largest market.

Now, six months after the measure took effect, a CNN investigation has found that smugglers are still working with near impunity, and in some cases Chinese investment in Africa is facilitating the trade.

The Niassa Reserve in northern Mozambique, one of the last great wildernesses of southern Africa, is becoming both a test case and emblem of the ban’s failures.

With more than 16,000 square miles of protected reserve bordering Tanzania, it’s about twice the size of South Africa’s famous Kruger National Park. It’s become the epicenter of poaching on the continent.

So far, there has been no statistically significant drop in the levels of poaching since the Chinese ban was implemented, says Richard Thomas of Traffic, a wildlife monitoring group.

“The China ban was widely hailed as a potential game changer,” said Thomas.

“But, there is no evidence that this has been realized at this stage.”

Image
Mozambique’s Niassa Reserve

China’s Role

Demand for ivory is largely driven by China, where intricately carved ornaments have long been considered a sign of wealth and ivory products believed to hold medicinal value.

But an investigator who is tracking the Chinese nationals suspected of running ivory smuggling networks out of Pemba, Mozambique, says the ban has done little to halt ivory transactions in Africa.

The investigator can’t be named for his own safety; tracking syndicates can be a dangerous business. He’s worked all across Africa, but he has never seen it this bad.

“This is the worst. This is the worst. This one, is the worst place,” he said, shaking his head slowly.

He gathers actionable intelligence from a group of informers inside the very networks he is trying to bust.

Some traders are doing so well that they are buying up tracts of beachfront property along the azure coastline, he said.

There is some indication the ivory they’re selling doesn’t just go to mainland China, but to other places in Southeast Asia to be sold to Chinese nationals, tourists and others trying to evade the Chinese ban, says Thomas.·

In mid-April, authorities confiscated 867 pieces of ivory in a container in the capital of Maputo, piled up with recycling and bound for Cambodia.

Fernando Tinga of the Mozambican tax authority estimates 433 elephants were killed to make up the haul that weighed more than three tons.

“It was a Chinese trading company, but the suspects were not arrested. They escaped once they heard about the seizure,” says Tinga.

CNN’s repeated attempts to get hold of the company were unsuccessful.

Aided by Corruption

Peter Trevor, an operations manager for the Wildlife Conservation Society says there’s a direct link between Chinese expansion in Mozambique and the smuggling of ivory out of the country.

Chinese companies have built roads and railways, cities and schools all over the continent. In 2017 alone, China pledged $60 billion of investment in Africa — just the latest commitment in a long-running trade bonanza.

And while China’s scramble for African resources and tenders is hotly debated, the assessment by conservationists is uniform — it’s a major push factor of wildlife crime.

The connections are obvious, Trevor says, slapping his hand on a map of the region. “Gold mining, gold mining, gold mining, timber. To slip a tusk or two into a truck full of timber is easy,” he says.

Armando John Wilson, the prosecutor for Cabo Delgado province where Pemba is located, says he believes that Chinese are involved in poaching and ivory trafficking although no Chinese traders have been arrested.

He also blames corruption despite the country introducing in 2014 harsher sentences for wildlife crime.

“We have no doubt about it. Corruption is the source of the poaching,” he says.

Wilson says measures have been put in place to punish corrupt officials and they have set up dedicated teams to just deal with wildlife crime.

“There is a commitment by the state to prevent this kind of thing,” he says.

Image
A ranger is seen in Mozambique’s Niassa Reserve.

The investigator who is tracking the syndicates says that corruption is perhaps his biggest enemy.

The lack of prosecutions and money flowing through the system is hampering their ability to stop the poaching.

“That one, is now the biggest problem. I think they are buying their way out,” he says.

Eden Empty

Ground zero for the gruesome work of poaching is in Niassa Reserve — 13 numbing hours of dirt roads and overflowing streams away from Pemba.

The huge reserve should hold tens of thousands of elephants. But there could be fewer than 2,000 left, according to Philip McLellan, a conservation pilot brought in by the Wildlife Conservation Society.

The organization has had some modest successes combating poaching in the reserve. During the height of the killing season, they brought in a chopper to mount surprise attacks on groups of poachers. They’ve also developed systematic scouting patrols driven by intelligence.

But, for now, it’s just McLellan and his Cessna 206 patrolling in the air to track the elephant population and scare off teams of poachers. Heavily dependent on grants, they can’t afford to pay for much more

After days of sustained rain in the reserve, McLellan is skirting past the imposing granite inselbergs that thrust majestically out of the forest floor. He peers down at his iPad in one hand, his other hand on the controls of his plane.

He’s tracking elephants, which are tagged with GPS tracking collars. After several wide arcs of the plane, there is no sign of the matriarch. “We are approaching her last known tracks,” he says. But all the way to the horizon it’s just verdant bush.

The flight over Niassa to find the elephants isn’t yielding results, the GPS icons of the animals checked off one by one.

Tracking to the left, McLellan points out the enormous granite of Mecula mountain.

“Herds often spend their time on there,” he says hopefully.

The mountain slopes down into the Lugenda river. It is an ideal spot for an animal that drinks 50 gallons (227 liters) of water a day.

But lately, they have been only coming to drink in the middle of the night, wary of the poachers that come into their habitat by boat.

“That is the tragedy of Niassa Reserve. The pristine wilderness has been raped. The many elephants that used to roam this area are now down to the bare minimum numbers,” says McClellan.

Poachers

Of course, prospective buyers and ivory kingpins don’t actually go into the bush in Niassa to shoot the elephants — much like a drug lord wouldn’t harvest his own cocaine.

When scouts catch those that actually kill elephants in Niassa, they are often brought to Montepuez, a hub half way between Niassa and the Pemba at the coast.

Some locals call this trading town El Dorado because of the precious stones and goods that pass through its markets. Mozambican, Somali and Chinese vendors sell stereos, mattresses, clothes and rubies in the bustling market streets. And, of course, ivory.

Image
A main street in the Mozambican city of Montepuez. The town is called “El Dorado” by locals. It’s located midway between Niassa Reserve and Pemba, and surrounded by mining operations. It’s also known as a hub for illegal trade.

Its prison is surrounded by a rickety reed fence and doesn’t look much like a prison at all. The cell block is a stained cream tin-roofed single-story building. The iron grate is wide open.

In the under resourced, overcrowded prison, guards lead out a suspected poacher with his hands behind his back like he is wearing cuffs. But he has none.

“We were in the bush when we found a group of elephants. I shot the first one, then I shot the second one,” says the poacher, who goes by the nickname Tunda Tunda, gesturing his arms like a rifle.

Like other poachers, he is remarkably disconnected from the killing that leads to the trade.

A Tanzanian middleman hired him but he says he didn’t know where the ivory would go or who the end buyer was.

Tunda Tunda says he already spent a year in jail for a separate poaching incident. But his choices are limited. He would do anything to help his family escape grinding poverty.

“I went poaching because I was suffering, I had nothing to survive and I am desperate,” he says.

The poachers who kill the elephants are usually poor and just looking for a way to feed themselves or their families. Often, they don’t have alternatives to wildlife crime.

“Poverty is causing poaching in Mozambique. Even if the Chinese ban is put in place at the end market, it is different for poachers on the ground. They hardly read the papers, they don’t have TV sets. They will continue doing this to build up stock for buyers,” says the intelligence agent.

The harsh truth is that even if Chinese government bans the trade effectively in the long run, it may not be enough to stop those who turn to poaching from a life of poverty.

And the investigator knows that he is running out of time. The criminal networks’ ability to operate with near impunity makes him pessimistic. Sitting on his porch in the gloom he shakes his head slowly, deliberately, as he speaks:

“We will be losing all the elephants in the near five years if it continues like that. In Niassa, there will be nothing left,” he said.

Read original article: https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/19/africa/m ... index.html


"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." Nelson Mandela
The desire for equality must never exceed the demands of knowledge
Post Reply

Return to “Elephant Management and Poaching”