Africa Wild

2013-11-15 08:45

Washington - An industrial rock crusher destroyed 6 tons of illegal elephant ivory in the US state of Colorado on Thursday, as the government said it wanted to send a message about the plight of African elephants and other species poached for their tusks.

The United States "will not tolerate wildlife crime that threatens to wipe out the African elephant and a host of other species around the globe," the US Fish and Wildlife Service said.

The agency - a bureau within the Department of the Interior - said the ivory was estimated to have come from the slaughter of more than 2 000 elephants. It included tusks, carvings, statues, ceremonial bowls, masks, jewellery and ornaments. It was confiscated from smugglers over the last 25 years.

Tens of thousands of elephants are killed each year for their tusks, and global trade in ivory is estimated to be worth $10bn.

Prior to being seized, most of the ivory crushed into gravel-size pieces on Thursday was destined to be sold illegally in the US or overseas, the agency said.

‘Horrific slaughter’

Dan Ashe, director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, said much of the world's trade in wild animal species - both legal and illegal - is driven by US consumers, making the US part of the problem. Therefore, "we have to be part of the solution," he said.

Many populations of elephants have shown recent signs of recovery, but rising demand for ivory is fuelling a "horrific slaughter of elephants in Africa, threatening remaining populations across the continent," said Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell.

The Fish and Wildlife Service said "well-armed and organised criminal enterprises" have taken advantage of insufficient protection of the animals in remote areas. US news reports said the Islamist al-Shabaab militia, an al-Qaeda-affiliated group, has been linked to the illegal trade.

Carter Roberts, chief executive of the World Wildlife Fund, noted that Gabon, Kenya and the Philippines have also held ivory crushing events in the past, and he encouraged other countries to do the same.

African elephants are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act and are protected under the African Elephant Conservation Act.

The ivory fragments left by the crusher will be stored temporarily at a Fish and Wildlife Service repository. The agency said it hoped to find ways to use the fragments to increase awareness of poaching.



- SAPA

BY KATIE DE KLEE, SPECIAL TO ETN | NOV 21, 2013

The African elephant is the world’s biggest land mammal; walking the earth at a dignified pace, the elephant has earned its place in the folklore and legend of many cultures. But this impressive creature is being slaughtered at alarming rate for it’s ivory: it is estimated one elephant is killed every 15 minutes. Check the time now; mark the moment the next grey giant falls. An emergency summit addressing the problems of the illegal ivory is to be held in Gaborone, Botswana at the beginning of December.

President Ian Khama of Botswana will open the summit, and Heads of State and representatives of African elephant range countries will be in attendance, along with high-level representatives from transit and destination countries.

The summit will aim to address the following topics: penalties for ivory trading, law enforcement, population monitoring and public awareness.

A study conducted by the Conservation Action Trust (CAT) found that there were radical differences in the legislation and penalties surrounding poaching in African countries. Punishment must be seen to outweigh the potential financial rewards of the illegal ivory trade, acknowledging the severity of the crime and acting as a real deterrent. Maximum and equivalent penalties should apply in all countries.

National task forces should be formed and an increase in law enforcement and wildlife rangers should be facilitated. Ivory poachers are now often part of organised, armed networks, better equip and connected than the rangers who they evade. More worryingly, the money from the poaching is increasingly often going towards armed rebellions and terrorism. The recent attack on the Nairobi mall by terrorist group al-Shabaab was partly funded by the illegal ivory trade.

The threat to national and international security would also be addressed by better intelligence sharing amongst States, another issue that will be given some time for discussion in Gaborone.

The IUCN will also propose that there needs to be better elephant population monitoring at national levels, and more effort should be put into raising public awareness.

Although the summit calls for global action, eight countries have been identified as being central to recent surges in elephant poaching. These countries are source counties Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, transit countries Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines, and destination countries Thailand and China. These countries are known as the ‘gang of eight’.

If satisfactory action is not taken by these countries to halt the trade of illegal ivory, the IUCN is suggesting heavy trade sanctions on all wildlife products – including the lucrative orchid and crocodile skin industries. Tourism is one of the biggest industries in many African nations, and the heads of these states must be shown that the greatest economic value comes from the living beast, and not from its bi-products.

At the beginning of the last century there were 10 million African elephants on earth. Now there may be just 400,000. According to IUCN, the number of elephants killed has doubled in the last decade. Southern Africa is their stronghold, but at the rate they're being killed, in 50 years time there won’t be one wild elephant left. That would be an unforgivable indictment of our species.

http://www.eturbonews.com/39884/elephant-emergency

Nov 21, 2013
Against the backdrop of an ever-escalating attack on Africa's wildlife and the particularly alarming increase in ivory poaching, the International Union of Nature Conservation (IUCN) has convened a meeting in Gaborone, Botswana, from December 2-4.

“African elephant range states, as well as many of IUCN’s members, are concerned that this problem, increasingly entrenched in networks of organised crime, cannot be addressed by the actions of environment ministries and wildlife authorities alone,” says the IUCN.

At the last count, sub-Saharan Africa is home to fewer than 500 000 elephants. The current estimated off-take from poaching is assessed at 40 000 a year. Without accounting for growth rates it will be a mere ten years before the herds are exterminated.

The elephant problem is indicative of the onslaught that all African wildlife is facing, and without wildlife, Africa's nature-based tourism industry will cease to exist.

The tourism industry currently employs 12.8 million people (direct and indirect) in sub-Saharan Africa and the social fallout of a collapse in the industry would be felt globally. Governments would also suffer a financial hit. Direct revenues from sub-Saharan African tourism industry were US$36 billion in 2012. This represents a total contribution (direct, indirect and induced) of 7.3% to GDP. The UNWTO predicts these figures will increase dramatically over the next decade.

The expected participants at the summit include heads of state and ministers of elephant range countries and key transit destination countries in the illegal African elephant ivory trade chain. Other participants include high-level officials from the IUCN, as well institutions and agencies that work in the fields of elephant conservation and the prevention of the illegal ivory trade.

The IUCN expects that any gains made through a focus on African elephants can be expected to benefit other work to control illegal and unsustainable wildlife trade, for example, rhino horn, lion bones and primates.
http://www.eturbonews.com/39883/upcomin ... -elephants

Hope China is at the meeting!

2013-11-30 19:49

Johannesburg - African ministers and experts meet next week in Botswana to chart ways to stamp out a spike in elephant killings fuelled by a growing demand for ivory in Asia.

"Poaching of elephants and associated ivory trafficking remain of grave concern," said Richard Thomas, spokesman for the animal conservation group Traffic.

The three-day meeting opening on Monday in Gaborone has been organised by the Botswana government and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Poaching has risen sharply in Africa in recent years and the illegal ivory trade has tripled since 1998, according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

Large-scale seizures of ivory destined for Asia have more than doubled since 2009 and reached an all-time high in 2011.

Pact

The meeting expects to adopt a pact that will commit signatories, including the biggest ivory markets such as China, to demonstrate political will at the highest level in the fight against poaching and ivory trafficking.

IUCN said increasing poaching levels and loss of habitat are threatening the survival of elephants in central Africa as well as in previously secure havens in west, southern and east Africa.

There are less than half a million elephants left in Africa compared with 1.2 million in 1980 and 10 million in 1900.

Poachers are becoming more sophisticated using helicopters and automatic weapons as the price of ivory on the black market shot up tenfold in the past decade to more than $2 000 per kg.

The tusk of an adult 30-year-old elephant can weigh around 20kg, according to experts.

"The situation is dramatic," said Stephanie Vergniault, who founded the charity SOS Elephants in Chad.

She warns that "in 10 years there will be no African elephants."

Most of the ivory ends up in the Middle East and Asia, particularly in Thailand and China.

Ivory funding extremists?

Beyond worries of the species' survival, elephant poaching has given rise to security and terrorism concerns.

Proceeds from ivory are believed to be financing groups such as Somalia's al-Qaeda linked al-Shabaab, Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army and Sudan's Janjaweed militia, according to conservation charities.

The Gaborone meeting is a follow-up to the Bangkok talks held in March under the aegis of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) at which eight countries were accused of failing to do enough to tackle ivory trafficking.

Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda as well as transit countries Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam, and top markets China and Thailand were identified as making insufficient efforts to curb the trade.

The next CITES meeting takes place in July and will "decide whether the eight countries are to face disciplinary measures," said IUCN's global species specialist Lynne Labanne.

All countries have to undertake to work together to curb the slaughter of elephants because "one country cannot fight trafficking alone", and penalties must be toughened, said Maine Sebogo, head of the global conservation group WWF in Botswana.

"We must go beyond speeches and move on to take concrete action," said Congolese Minister of Forestry Henri Djombo.

There is also a need to take urgent action to protect the elephants in previously safe zones of eastern and southern African countries.

Hundreds of elephants were this year poisoned in Zimbabwe for their tusks.

Rhino poaching

South Africa, which is already buckling under an unprecedented wave of rhino poaching, has so far been spared of elephant killings, but it is worried.

"Ivory poaching is now a reality in countries north of our border, including northern Mozambique," said General Johan Jooste, who heads the anti-poaching task team at South Africa's famous Kruger National Park.

"We are hoping to use the expertise we have gained in fighting rhino poaching to confront ivory poachers," he said.

Ivory trade is banned under the CITES. The illegal ivory trade is estimated to be worth up to $10bn a year.

Elephant tusks are used to make ornaments and rhinoceros horns are used in traditional medicine.

- AFP

Dec 04, 2013
Organizations concerned with escalating ivory poaching have called on the Mozambican government to halt rampant elephant poaching in its northern provinces. This follows an investigation by journalists Hongxiang Huang and Estacio Valoi published in Le Monde last week which suggests that blood money from ivory trafficking is being used to fund Frelimo and is fueling tensions in the run-up to the country's elections in October next year.


Conservationists in northern Mozambique, where an average of three to four elephants are being poached a day, have implicated local authorities in the killing spree. Rangers say the weapons used include helicopters and heavy-caliber guns normally used by military forces. In Niassa National Reserve, where elephant numbers have dropped from more than 20,000 in 2009 to about 9,000 earlier this year, Frelimo was accused of using the proceeds of ivory sales to fund its 10th anniversary congress in nearby Pemba last year.

According to the report, rangers involved in anti-poaching patrols in Niassa, who did not want to be named for fear of losing their jobs, said they had noticed the use of helicopters in poaching activities in the lead-up to the Frelimo conference in September 2012. The rangers said they had been excluded from an area near the party’s district headquarters in Mecula, and their efforts to report the slaughter to police officials and border guards were fruitless.

António Frangoulis, a criminologist at Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo and a former Frelimo member, told the journalists he had received reports from various sources claiming that local authorities were conniving in the poaching and that military weapons were being used. “We are talking about weapons normally used by the police and military forces,” he said. “We are talking about the involvement of official authorities.” Frangoulis was a member of parliament and head of the Mozambican police investigative division until he was sacked in 2009 for criticising Frelimo.

Alastair Nelson, director of the Wildlife Conservation Society in Mozambique, said the proceeds from ivory, which is smuggled via the nearby port of Pemba or across the border into Tanzania, were fueling corruption in northern Mozambique. Frelimo officials have refused to comment.

The Mozambican government is presently attending the IUCN Emergency Elephant summit in Gaborone, Botswana, aimed at obtaining concrete commitments from elephant range states to halt the illegal ivory trade in their countries

The Endangered Wildlife Trust, The Wilderness Foundation, OSCAP, The Lawrence Anthony Earth Organization, and The Conservation Action Trust…have called on the Mozambican government to stop the killing of elephants by ensuring that the Government, Frelimo or any individual Government officials are not implicated in the illegal ivory trade and to conduct a full investigation on the ongoing poaching and trade in ivory. We urge the Government of Mozambique to arrest, and prosecute those individuals and entities, including government officials, who are found to be involved, directly or indirectly, in poaching of elephants and trafficking and trade in illegal ivory, so that they are prevented from doing so any longer. Finally, we are extremely concerned that the laws in Mozambique do not impose meaningful criminal penalties for elephant poaching and illegal trade in ivory (which is still considered an administrative offence subject to mere fines as penalty) and we urge the Government to amend the relevant law to enable imposition of meaningful penalties including imprisonment.
http://www.eturbonews.com/40360/ngos-ca ... y-poaching

A newspaper story about the impact of the ivory trade has gone viral in China, raising awareness among millions of Chinese, reports the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).

The story, published on November 15 2013 in Southern Weekly, has been shared widely across Chinese web sites and social media, according to the conservation group. ”The total views of the original Southern Weekly Tweets and Retweets on Weibo (China’s Twitter/Facebook hybrid) exceeded 10 million. Most of these “netizens,” or members of the Chinese online public, were from Tier 1 Chinese cities (Beijing, Chongqing, Guangdong), the most significant consumers of ivory,” said WCS in a statement.

“The article was reposted on 24 online discussion forums or Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) including Mop and Tianya, two of the most popular in China. Thousands of comments were generated on the Tianya BBS forum alone. Overall over 5 000 comments on the article were posted on Weibo, BBS fora, and other websites.” The story received wide play outside environmental news, being picked up on finance sites, according to WCS. ”This represents an important shift for the topic of ivory from the specialist environmental pages to the mainstream debate,” said the group.


The poster reads: Protect the pandas of Africa – elephants. When the buying stops the killing can too. Image courtesy of WildAid.

The article, titled “The Blood Ivory: Behind the Largest Ivory Smuggling Cases in China”, identified Chinese consumption as the main driver of elephant poaching. It noted links between the ivory trade and terror and rebel groups in Africa.

The ivory trade has exploded in recent years due to surging demand from middle class consumers in China. Conservationists estimate that up to 35 000 elephants may have been killed in 2012 alone. The carnage has spurred several NGO’s, including WCS, to step up campaigns targeting both the supply and demand sides of the trade. In September, the Clinton Global Initiative gave these efforts a boost when it launched a massive push to catalyze support for stopping “blood ivory”.


The poster reads: Do you want to own ivory dripping with blood? When the buying stops the killing can too. Image courtesy of WildAid.

But reaching Chinese buyers has remained a challenge. Therefore WCS welcomed the news that elephant ivory is now garnering attention in China. “To have the influential mainstream media make the link between the elephant crisis and the Chinese demand for ivory is hugely significant,” Cristián Samper, WCS President and CEO, said in a statement.

“In China, it’s not just what is said but who says it,” added Joe Walston, Executive Director of WCS’s Asia Program. “To have the Southern Weekly give its front page to an article highlighting China’s role in the ivory trade is monumental. This is no longer a fringe topic.”

http://blog.africageographic.com/africa ... -in-china/

I already saw these pictures... they are great... if only they could be effective

Three detectives found in possession of ivory were caught red-handed during a transaction.

JOHANNESBURG – National police are now investigating whether three detectives found in possession of ivory form part of a wider syndicate, after they were allegedly caught red-handed during a transaction.

The trio, along with two civilians, will be appearing in the Johannesburg Magistrates Court this morning, where they will be charged with corruption and the illegal possession of ivory.

Six men were initially arrested on Tuesday but one suspect committed suicide while in police custody.

Gauteng police spokesperson Neville Malila says, “From the national commissioner’s side, to the provincial commissioner’s side, we indicated that we would deal harshly with any corrupt activity within the organisation. And they were arrested by our own; by officers who want to serve the community.”

Ai!

At least some are still honest!