Elephant Management and Poaching in African Countries

[Lisbeth]

Have you ever seen a leopard walk for hours along the fence?

With all the documentaries that have been done over the years, there is no need for Zoos. The only admittedly excuse could be to avoid the extinction of certain species.

[Lisbeth]

US to support Zimbabwe’s trade in baby elephants

BY MELISSA REITZ - 2 AUGUST 2019 - BULAWAYO 24

US zoos now plan to import baby elephants from Zimbabwe, undeterred by the international furore over their 2016 import of 18 wild elephants from Swaziland.

The US Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) media liaison, Rob Vernon, has confirmed “knowledge of a possible (elephant) import by AZA members and others,” but denied knowledge of which facilities are involved. Unconfirmed reports from a reputable Zimbabwean source state that San Diego Zoo is likely to be one of the importers.

Vernon did not reply to queries whether AZA endorsed the import of wild-caught elephants.

This import is despite ongoing international campaigns against Zimbabwe’s wild-caught elephant trade and international condemnation for the 2016 US purchase of 18 wild elephants from eSwatini (Swaziland) by AZA accredited zoos.

Of the “Swazi 18” sold to Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo, Wichita’s Sedgwick County Zoo and Dallas Zoo, two have died (one during preparation for the export) and two were re-sold – despite promises to keep families together, which is vital to their physical and emotional welfare.

Adding to this, in violation to CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) regulations and International Air Transport Association (IATA) transport guidelines, one of the exported elephants was pregnant.

“It is unconscionable that US zoos would continue to play a part in perpetuating the cruel trade in live elephants. This seriously undermines any claim by zoos to care about animal welfare or the conservation of African elephants,” says Catherine Doyle, Director at the Performing Animal Welfare Society (PAWS).

US captive elephant populations are declining, necessitating the continued import of wild-caught elephants. In AZA accredited zoos alone 76 elephants, 24 of which were under the age of 2, have died since 2000 – an estimated death rate 54% of captive-born calves. Roughly 305 elephants are being held at 62 AZA accredited zoos in the US.

Meanwhile 37 wild-caught juvenile elephants are currently incarcerated near Hwange National Park pending a stalled export to zoos in China and Pakistan.

This is in addition to the approximately 125 baby elephants Zimbabwe has sold to Asia since 2012, despite ongoing international resistance and objections by animal welfare organisations worldwide, including the Zimbabwean NSPCA, who state that the cruel exports have no conservation value to Zimbabwe’s elephant populations.

Over US$ 2.5 million has been made from elephant sales so far. It is unclear whether this money has benefitted wildlife conservation.

Chairman of the Zimbabwean NSPCA Ed Lanca, says “There is no sound basis for the removal of wild-caught baby elephants to facilities that are ill equipped nor prepared to provide adequate long-term care for these animals.”

According to CITES Appendix II listing, under which Zimbabwe’s elephants are listed, trade in live elephants is allowed only “to appropriate and acceptable destinations” that “promote in situ conservation”.

But research by elephant experts confirm that zoos are unable to provide for the physical and emotional welfare of elephants, and high mortality rates and ineffectual breeding of captive elephants undermines conservation efforts.

“(…) zoos, as they currently exist, are not suitably equipped to house and care for, and should not be considered appropriate and acceptable destinations for, live, wild-sourced African elephants,” says a CITES report on International Trade in live and wild-caught African elephants by Keith Lindsey of the Amboseli Trust for Elephants and Iris Ho of Humane Society International.

The IUCN African Elephant Specialist Group said in 2003: “Believing there to be no direct benefit for in situ conservation of African elephants, the African Elephant Specialist Group of the IUCN Species Survival Commission does not endorse the removal of African elephants from the wild for any captive use.”

CITES regulations also state that elephant exports must “not be detrimental to the survival of the species” and the animals must be “legally obtained.”

But Zimbabwean NGO, PESLawyers says that the elephant trade permits are illegal, in contravention to national law and CITES regulations since due process and public participation has been ignored.

An interdict to halt the export of the 37 elephants has been launched by the People and Earth Solidarity Law Network (PESLawyers) in Harare.

“CITES regulations are being broken with no regard and no address to the flouting of terms by both Zimbabwe and China. National Laws (of) Zimbabwe’s Wildlife Act are clear and the capture and export of wildlife has to meet a specific criteria, the current crises (of) “snatch and go” (of wild baby elephants) with neither transparency nor accountability is unlawful,” says a letter addressed to the European Parliament from wildlife activist, Sharon Hoole, requesting CITES to investigate unlawful permitting.

Brett Mitchell of the Elephant Reintegration Trust says that without a well-planned and costly reintegration programme “the likelihood of these calves surviving on their own (in the wild) or finding their family groups again is extremely low and they’re unlikely to be accepted into another wild herd.”

At the upcoming CITES 18th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 18) in August, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia and South Africa, are proposing that their elephants remain listed as Appendix II( which allows trade in hunting trophies, animal products ,ivory – and live animals),but removing the current restrictions limiting ivory trade This means that while elephants in all other African range states remain on Appendix I which does not allow the trade of ivory and live elephants “for primarily commercial purposes”, these countries are requesting unrestricted trade in elephants.

Original article: https://bulawayo24.com/index-id-news-sc ... 67399.html

[Lisbeth]

As long as Mr. Trump is in power you can expect anything from the US

At the moment he is busy ruining the economy of most of the world up to a point that in the near future there might be an armed conflict

[Lisbeth]

HOW AFRICAN ELEPHANTS HAVE BECOME ENDANGERED

[Lisbeth]

Elephant carcasses pile up amid conservation tensions in Niassa

12.09.2019 | Mozambique trafficking links by Oxpeckers Reporters

Rangers on the ground say a tug of war among decision makers is exposing Mozambique’s largest national reserve to poachers and ivory traffickers. Estacio Valoi investigates


Rangers fighting a wildfire in Niassa. They say poaching is still rampant in the national reserve. Photo: Estacio Valoi

On May 25 2019, during the celebration of the 8th anniversary of the creation of the National Administration of Conservation Areas (ANAC) in Mozambique, this institution announced that the country was registering a substantial reduction in elephant poaching and gave as an example the Niassa National Reserve, where it said a year had gone by without the slaying of elephants by poachers.

During the presentation, ANAC expressed concern about cases of individuals accused of committing environmental violations who were being released on bail and granted impunity even though they had committed crimes against wildlife with the involvement of Mozambican leaders.

Incessant poaching has in the past five years not only affected the pachyderms, but also “at least 65 leopards, 85 lions, 44 hyenas and 25 wild dogs which were slayed in Niassa Reserve”, ANAC said – a practice that according to sources on the ground hasn’t reduced. Niassa is situated in northern Mozambique and forms a transfrontier conservation area with the Selous Game Reserve in Tanzania.

According to management at the Lugenda Camp, part of the private Luwire Wildlife Conservancy inside Niassa, five old elephant carcasses had been found, but they were already registered in the database of the Wildlife Conservation Society some years ago.

However, this information is being contested by rangers working in Luwire and Niassa, who say it was a cover-up. “It’s lies,” say the rangers. “In the Luwire concession we found five elephant carcasses that were poached in the last three months of 2018.

“Two more carcasses have been found this year, which means there now seven carcasses. They are from this year, not from previous years as the Luwire-Lugenda Camp management said.”

According to the rangers, “No one does intensive anti-poaching operations. In the areas where elephants are poached there aren’t any rangers and no anti-poaching operations because of the new Luwire managers.”

In January 2018 ANAC recorded the number of rangers in Niassa – which covers 42,000 square kilometres, including the private operators’ areas – as 190, of which 90 were under the reserve’s administration. Recently Baldeu Chande, the reserve’s administrator, told an international media member that “the reserve has a total of 300 scouts [rangers]”.

This figure doesn’t match the information that Oxpeckers received, directly from the Luwire administration, that the number of rangers had currently reduced to 50: “We have 50 rangers. We expect to go back to 80 by the end of this year.”

The rangers on the ground say, “In 2018 Luwire fired about 30 rangers. At the time each one was earning a salary of 6,062 meticais [about R1,687].”


Luwire is a privately run wildlife conservancy in Niassa National Reserve, Mozambique’s largest game reserve that forms a transfrontier conservation area with the Selous Game Reserve in Tanzania. Source: luwire.org

Rapid Intervention Unit

According to the rangers, poaching has continued despite the presence of members of the Rapid Intervention Unit (FIR), who were introduced in Niassa after the first attacks allegedly by Al-Shabaab in Mocímboa da Praia.

Luwire addressed a letter to its rangers on December 24 2018 explaining why it had to terminate some working contracts: “In May 2018 President Jacinto Nyusi and Celso Correia [Minister of Land, Environment and Rural Development] intervened and introduced the special FIR in the reserve to execute some operations to fight poaching…

“As a consequence of this intervention of FIR and because there hasn’t been elephant poaching since March 2018… this drastic change means that, instead of Luwire having to focus on law enforcement, it can once turn its attention to its main mandate, which is hunting and wildlife safaris in Block-L.”

The rangers say elephants run away from the Kambako hunting concession in Niassa to the Luwire-Lugenda conservancy looking for protection. “In Kambako only guides are available for trophy hunters that come there. In the Kambako area, which borders Cabo Delgado, between Montepuez and Mueda, they do whatever they want.”

Tensions have arisen about Zimbabweans employed by Luwire. “With the new Luwire manager, John Nel, things became tough,” says one Mozambican ranger. “Luwire mistreats the rangers who have been fighting poachers for a long time. The only ones who have the right to a good salary are the Zimbabweans.

“A Zimbabwean technician earns 52,000 meticais [about R14,460 a month] against the 23,000 meticais [R6,400] the chief ranger gets, despite that he has done so much in this reserve. He sleeps badly and has no transportation, but a Zimbabwean has. Whoever complains is expelled, just like the rangers who were fired.”

The local rangers are also unhappy with their working conditions, which include total food provision of 12kg of maize flour, 12kg of beans and 12kg of rice to last for three months. “The foreigners have more rights than us, who do a lot of work. They reduced our salary. We are miserable, doomed,” says one.

Some local rangers asked the Mecula police commander to bring Correia and Niassa administrator Chande to sort out the problems, but they say ANAC blocked the move and that “Chande is sinking the reserve”.


Rangers say associates of Mateso Kasian, the mastermind of the poaching syndicate, have been released. Photo: supplied

Tug of war

Amid all these tensions, and a tug of war between the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Mozambican administration over Chande’s administration procedures, well-known poachers who were previously arrested are being released because of the lack of follow-up by the Niassa Reserve.

This includes associates of Mateso Albano Kasian, the poaching and trafficking mastermind who was arrested in July 2017 in a joint operation involving Niassa Reserve’s officials, ANAC and Mozambican Criminal Investigation Services with the Tanzanian authorities. Kasian was given an unspecified jail sentence in Mozambique in 2017 and was extradited to Tanzania, his home country, where he remains in jail.

His alleged associates were placed in the Niassa police cells in 2018, but have since been released. The rangers identified the suspects who have been released: “It was Rachado Fernando Araújo, Carlitos Jorge, Salmo Macho and Carlitos Rubaine, who were implicated in evidence involving the .375 of Mateso during the last operations of 2018.”

As for the 20% economic benefit share promised to local communities, training of staff and rehabilitation of conservation areas through the construction and maintenance of management infrastructure and the reintroduction of emblematic species for the attraction of tourism and ecosystem recovery, according to the rangers, “nothing has been paid”.

Questions sent to Luwire Wildlife Conservancy and the Niassa National Reserve about the issues raised by the rangers remained unanswered at the time of publication.

Estacio Valoi is a Mozambican journalist and Oxpeckers associate who assists the unit with transnational investigations into environmental problems in the sub-Saharan region, including the trafficking of ivory from northern Mozambique

[Lisbeth]

Zimbabwe elephants: Report identifies existing conservation problems, calls for community involvement

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Africa Geographic Editorial in the DECODING SCIENCE post series.


© Charl Durand

DECODING SCIENCE POST by AG Editorial

A brief report has identified existing problems within Zimbabwe’s conservation industry, caused by bureaucratic incompetence within Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority (ZimParks) and erosion of ethical principles, and resulting in habitat destruction and indiscriminate killing of wildlife. The report suggests that the old ‘fortress’ model of conservation has to adapt to now also include the socio-economic expectations of surrounding communities.

The report notes “ZimParks is expected to generate its own income from both non-consumptive and consumptive activities, such as ecotourism and sport hunting. However, a perennially lean budget, use of obsolete equipment, low morale among the staff, and a high staff turnover,” and continues “the situation is continually made more dire by fraudulent tendencies, where ZimParks officers, state police and politicians are incessantly implicated as accomplices in wildlife poaching syndicates. On the other hand, the techniques used by poachers are dynamic, with recent elephant (Loxodonta africana) poaching tactics involving lacing water sources and salt licks with cyanide poison, which also kills secondary targets such as scavenging vulture species.”

Mention is also made of certain international NGOs that pursue agendas to hoodwink donors and generate ‘lavish lifestyles’ for NGO management, far away from the reality on the ground in Zimbabwe.

The report suggests that the granting of wildlife concessions to NGOs and ecotourism establishments can lead to natural resources being “looted and mortgaged [by] predominantly foreign influences, with unverified management concepts”.

The report stresses the importance of “Active involvement of local communities in mainstream conservation [that] could harness indigenous knowledge systems for effective wildlife conservation”.

The report recommends: “the establishment of Community Share Trusts, funded through levies on local ecotourism, sport hunting and the extractive industries, such as mining. Such devolution could finance compensation schemes and capital development projects such as value addition to non-timber forest products, livestock and crop insurance, and mitigatory initiatives such as the ‘fencing people in, fencing elephants out’ concept.”

Full report: Hlengisizwe Ncube (2019). A call to embrace adaptive management for effective elephant conservation in Zimbabwe. South African Journal of Science. https://doi.org/10.17159/sajs.2019/5413

[Lisbeth]

Tanzanian arrested with tusks from 117 elephants

2019-09-05 22:05

A Tanzanian man has been arrested after authorities found a stash of ivory buried under his house, estimated to come from around 117 elephants, authorities said Thursday.

The suspect, who had been sought by authorities since 2016, had in his possession 338 pieces of elephant tusk, and 75 whole tusks, the minister of natural resources, Hamisi Kigwangalla, said in a statement.

He was arrested along with seven alleged accomplices, and the tusks are believed to have come from Tanzania and Mozambique.

"Until his arrest on Tuesday, he was unable to move this stock, because we have become extremely vigilant," said Kigwangalla.

"I am giving a period of grace of one month for any person in possession of elephant tusks to hand them in to authorities without facing prosecution."

Since 2016, around 1 000 poachers, some heavily armed, have been arrested in Tanzania whose elephant population plunged 60 percent between 2009 and 2014 due to poaching.

In February a Tanzanian court sentenced Chinese citizen Yang Fenlan - dubbed the "Ivory Queen" - to 15 years in jail for her role in trafficking tusks from more than 400 elephants.

Poaching has seen the population of African elephants fall by 110 000 over the past decade to just 415 000 animals, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

The slaughter is being fuelled especially by demand in Asia, where ivory is used for jewellery and ornamentation.

[Richprins]

[Lisbeth]

Three alleged poachers arrested in a hotel in Makokou (Gabon)

POSTED ON 27TH OCT 2019 | By Christian Balade, Gabon Actu



The search brigade of the commune of Makokou, capital of the province of Ogooué Ivindo, has recently arrested three alleged poachers in possession of two ivory tusks, a source close to the gendarmerie reports on Friday.

François Moukambi Moubey, Jean Marie Pilima and Mohamed Backo were caught in the act of possession of a pair of elephant tusks. According to the source, they were arrested in a hotel room previously reserved for the transaction.

Presented to the local prosecutor’s office, the mis-en-causes were put under arrest warrant while hearing their trial.

Because of poaching for its ivory tuskss, the elephant is threatened with extinction in many places.

According to a recent scientific study, the brutal killing of these species has currently reached nearly 100 elephants per day in Central Africa.

The forest elephant population in Central Africa has declined to more than 60% during the last decade. In Gabon, the elephant is one of the species fully protected by the law that punishes the import, export, possession and transit on the national territory of fully protected species.

[Lisbeth]

Malawi government hails jail sentences on wildlife criminals

POSTED ON 27TH OCT 2019 | By Owen Khamula, The Nyasa Times



Director of Wildlife Brighton Kunchedwa has hailed as landmark recent convictions and sentences of wildlife criminals. Kunchedwa was commenting on the latest sentencing of a man to two years’ imprisonment with hard labour for being found selling pieces of ivory in Mangochi worth K1 million.

“These sentences should deter other would be offenders. The courts are really helping us now, they are meting out stiff punishment,” he said.

He attributed this to the new Wildlife law which he said is now tough on those who commit crimes on wildlife and their products. Another case is still in the court at Lilongwe magistrates’ which involves a Chinese national and Kunchedwa said his office was following the case with interest.

This week, a 37-year-old man was slapped with a two year-jail term for being found with two pieces of ivory valued at K987,000. The Mangochi second grade court sentenced Useni Wali to the two-year jail term after he was convicted for an offence of illegal possession of listed species which contravenes the Wildlife Act.

State assistant prosecutor Efford Kamphonje told the court that on October 18, 2019, Awali was found selling the ivory.

In court, Awali pleaded guilty and he was convicted on his own plea. He however prayed for a lenient sentence saying he was selling the ivory out of ignorance. But magistrate Augustine Mezaya slapped Awali with the two-year jail term, saying this would deter other would be offenders.

Awali hails from Mwala village in chief Chowe’s area in Mangochi.