Elephant Management and Poaching in African Countries

[Richprins]

Strange article...Gonarhezhou is not a giant park, and don't know how rhino are mentioned?

But point taken...poaching coming our way fast re. elephant!

[Lisbeth]

Elephant poaching in Tanzania: Is the government playing the role of a playboy?

TANZANIA (eTN) - The recent seizure of elephant tusks at Zurich Airport in Switzerland whose origin was Tanzania, raised a concern with several media houses in Tanzania questioning the authenticity of the outgoing government over its seriousness on conservation and protection of wildlife for tourism gains and heritage for future generations.

The seizure of 262 kilograms of ivory worth US$413,000 was smuggled out through Dar es Salaam airport last month, indicating that little effort is carried out to protect the African jumbos in Tanzania.

Wildlife conservationists are bitter over the widespread elephant killing, citing the past 10 years as the worst, during which time 99,000 elephants were gunned down by poachers.

This number of elephant killings has made Tanzania be known as “Africa’s elephant slaughter house,” and has been attributed to rampant corruption in government authorities and poverty among local communities where elephants roam.

Through a message issued by the Tanzania Country Office to the government of Tanzania, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), also known as the World Wildlife Fund in the US and Canada, the global wildlife watchdog, warned over the looming threat to elephants in this African country.

The WWF Tanzania Country Office message that was issued last weekend with a message “Conserve and protect the elephant from the numerous threats it faces,” the global wildlife and nature protection and conservation body said the world is presently witnessing brutality and annihilation of the African elephant at a shocking rate in all of human history.

The WWF further said in its message to the Tanzanian government that poaching, habitat loss, and other cruelty are alarming.

“Tanzania being a treasure of elephants in Africa has recently revealed its catastrophe. The recent elephant census conducted in the main elephant ecosystems for seven months consecutively from May to November 2014, indicates a significant decline of [the] current elephant population in Tanzania from 2009 to 2014 survey by 60 percent,” the message said.

During independence from Britain in 1961, there were 350,000 elephants, and in 2009 there were 110,000; by 2014, the number dwindled to about 43,521, the WWF message said.

“The increase in elephant poaching is highly linked to an increase of ivory prices and illegal markets in the Far East and Southeast Asia,” said Dr. Amani Ngusaru, WWF Tanzania Country Director, on marking World Elephant Day, August 12, 2015, in Tanzania’s capital city of Dar es Salaam.

Elephant poaching and trafficking of wildlife has increased dramatically in recent years, threatening the three pillars of life on Earth: sustainable development, peace, and human rights, he said.

“It is now more urgent and important to come up with interventions that address the root causes of elephant poaching through more and improved international cooperation in source, transit, and consumer countries, as well as to identify and address any gaps in the current anti-poaching strategies for better protection of wild elephants,” Dr. Ngusaru added.

The WWF Tanzania Country Office said there is also a need for improving enforcement policies to prevent the illegal poaching and trade of ivory, conserving elephant habitats, better treatment for captive elephants, and when appropriate, reintroducing captive elephants into natural and protected sanctuaries. These are the goals that elephant conservation organizations are focusing on around the world.

Due to poaching between the 1970s and 1980s, the elephant population in Tanzania declined to 55,000 but then the international ban on the sale of ivory and other elephant products, together with highly-effective, anti-poaching operations through Operation Uhai in Tanzania, resulted in the elephant population recovering from 55,000 in 1989 to an estimated 130,000 in 2005 and 110,000 in 2009, according to past censuses.

However, by 2011 there was an increase in commercial poaching targeting elephants, because the price of ivory went up tremendously in the Far East and Southeast Asian market.

“WWF is backing the government of Tanzania[‘s] efforts and contribut[ing] to combating poaching at the grass root[s] level while working with local communities in implementing government-inclusive management policies,” said the message.

The relevant policy approaches include Community Based Natural Resources Management (CBNRM) through the Wildlife Management Areas (WMA), Community Based Forest Management (CBFM), Participatory Forest Management (PFM), and Joint Forest Management (JFM). In some areas, even Beach Management Units (BMUs) as well as the Water Users Associations (WUAs) are useful in dealing with anti-poaching activities.

WWF Tanzania’s focus at local levels provides an important opportunity for engaging in protection of elephants and other natural resources by integrating conventional anti-poaching methods (boots on the ground) and community participation in the fight against all forms of illegal natural resources utilization including elephant poaching.

“In commemoration of the elephant day, WWF Tanzania calls the nation to wake up and deal effectively with this shame! Elephant poaching and trafficking should now be dealt [with] as a ‘serious crime’ that needs special national attention,” the message added.

“It needs to be addressed through applying the full extent of the criminal laws in conjunction with the Wildlife Act and other laws pertaining to Tanzania Revenue Authority (customs and excise) money - laundering - and to categorize illegal wildlife trade as a predicate offense to be investigated with related financial crimes,” the WWF warned.

The message further said it is equally important to strengthen the judiciary sector to ensure that prosecutions for wildlife crimes are conducted effectively and transparently, with the full extent of the law and using the strongest penalties available. Tanzania should also use the available legislative instruments to seize the assets used to commit poaching and illegal wildlife trade and other profit acquired through this trade.

It is also important to take urgent measures to ensure that the frontline staffs in fighting against poaching are professionally trained and equipped, have access to adequate welfare and support systems, and are legally supported to respond to threats to wildlife and themselves.

It is of urgency to support the development of Tanzania and implementation of the transportation sector protocols and/or guidelines to strengthen due diligence and other measures to eliminate illegal trade in wildlife.

“WWF Tanzania calls for government-led national campaigns that are well researched, aimed at behavior change, and demand reduction. It is important also to consider increasing the capacity of local communities to pursue sustainable and alternative livelihoods as well as enhancing local communities’ rights and capacity to manage and benefit from wildlife, and enable them to live in more equitable socio-economic conditions,” the message emphasized.

If successfully conducted, the integrated approach will provide a network of sympathizers at the grass roots level that would feed into the national anti-poaching intelligence network more efficiently and with less investment costs, it said.

Reacting to the WWF message, a section of wildlife experts said the government of Tanzania has been playing the role of a playboy on wildlife conservation and protection tasks, while taking politics as a tool for conservation.

[Richprins]

the international ban on the sale of ivory and other elephant products, together with highly-effective, anti-poaching operations through Operation Uhai in Tanzania, resulted in the elephant population recovering from 55,000 in 1989 to an estimated 130,000 in 2005 and 110,000 in 2009, according to past censuses.

However, by 2011 there was an increase in commercial poaching targeting elephants, because the price of ivory went up tremendously in the Far East and Southeast Asian market.

[Toko]

Namibia’s secret ivory business

[Lisbeth]

Very interesting and proves that the authorities do very little to stop the commerce with wildlife products, if it is possible to try to sell anything openly

[nan]

Kenya, Tanzania and lot of others... all the same

work for nothing
"war" for nothing
who/where are the responsibles

not only those we are thinking of

[Lisbeth]

Tanzania turns a blind eye to poaching as elephant populations plunge

For tour guides in Tanzania, the results of a continental elephant census showing that the country had lost two-thirds of its herd in five years and become Africa’s ivory trading hub came as no surprise.

They’d tried to prevent tourists from seeing the melting skins and drying bones littering the Selous ecosystem in southern Tanzania for years. But they couldn’t mask the shots heard from safari camps in a reserve once known as “the elephant capital of the world”. Last year it was named in the journal Science as Africa’s poaching hotspot, and a Unesco world heritage in danger site.

“When you hear the gunshots next to the camp, you know that they’re [elephants] being finished,” said one safari guide in Tanzania’s commercial capital, Dar es Salaam, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Elephant numbers in Tanzania’s Serengeti have increased in recent years due to the park’s inaccessibility for poachers. Photograph: Gary Roberts Photography/REX Shutterstock

As people cried foul over Cecil, a 13-year-old lion shot to fame by a holidaying Minnesotan dentist in Zimbabwe, the slaughter of five elephants by Tanzanian poachers in Kenya’s Tsavo park passed almost silently.

In Tanzania, it is not hunters who can freely take home trophy elephants, but illegal poachers, who have decimated herds in the Selous. Leaving behind mainly baby elephants waiting for tusks, they’ve followed disappointed safari-goers to Ruaha, Tanzania’s second greatest pachyderm-heavy area.

“At every camp in Ruaha we’ve either heard shots, seen poachers or elephant carcasses,” with the latter even spotted at the park gates that ivory flows out of on the back of motorbikes, in ambulances and on public buses, said the guide.

Sirili Akko, executive secretary of Tanzania’s Association of Tour Operators said: “We have to create international pressure on the countries which are defined to be the market for the ivory and other wildlife products, as now, the lions are going the same way.”

Like Tanzania’s huge trade in heroin, that floods its shores in small boats, ivory is a “syndicated business”, Akko says, made up of “untouchables” that can’t be named.

Tanzania’s home affairs minister says that exports are falling as police crack down on the trade, but admits that rampant corruption means many “close their eyes when they should keep them open”.

Last month, the European Union banned the import of hunting trophies from Tanzania as stock and quotas could not be verified, while president Barack Obama practically banned ivory sales in the US.

But in Tanzania, where tourism is the biggest foreign exchange earner, bringing in around $2bn (£1.3bn) a year, officials have tried to stymie negative reports about plummeting elephant populations. Past claims that there aren’t enough bodies for the mass murders calculated by experts, have resurfaced to try to bury an issue.

“These counts have been done scrupulously,” says conservationist Iain Douglas Hamilton , who did the first aerial count in 1976.

His methods are still being used today. But while he was counting Tanzania’s “boundless elephants”, today’s pilots are navigating “a bloodbath for elephants”.

In 2014, Tanzania’s national parks (Tanapa) denied allegations of increased poaching in Ruaha and threatened a local NGO over poor protection claims.

That same year, Ruaha’s elephant numbers reportedly tumbled by 60% from 20,000 to 8,200. The government has demanded a recount.

British safari guide Paul Ticker, who lives at the gateway to Rungwa-Ruaha’s parks says that its elephants are “clamouring together” in the area that tourists visit – roughly 2% of the reserves.

“They’re all there and they’re hugely stressed”, he says.

Forced into dysfunctional families and early adulthood because of the lack of older male tuskers, Ticker says that young bulls in Ruaha are hitting “ musth ” early and trying to mate. Others are showing distress through “temporal streaming” – weeping from a gland at the side of their heads – or by destroying habitats.

In 2012, intelligence sources gave Tanzania’s president, Jakaya Kikwete, a list of high-profile business people and politicians involved in the poaching. But it has quietly vanished.

In 2013, Khamis Kagasheki, minister for natural resources and tourism, named four ruling-party MPs linked to poaching and spoke of “rich people and politicians who have formed a very sophisticated network”.

He was fired after a military campaign to stop poaching – which Kikwete announced at a London summit of more than 40 countries held last year in London on wildlife crime – was mired in human rights abuses.

Meanwhile, “the Chinese are really moving in” to Ruaha, says one local conservationist, who thinks that trade in lion teeth and claws is roaring “but hasn’t really hit the radar yet”.

Many fear that poachers will move to Tanzania’s renowned Serengeti next, where inaccessibility has allowed elephant numbers to increase in recent years.

A deal to evict over 40,000 Maasai to make way for a paved highway through paradise and a private hunting ground for UAE royalty was halted.

But as international protest focuses on well-known parks or famous lions, new laws in Tanzania criminalising the publication of embarrassing numbers ahead of October’s elections could further silence the slaughter of Tanzania’s elephants.

This article was first published by The Guardian on 20 Aug 2015.

[Richprins]

Kenya to destroy largest ever ivory stockpile at star-studded summit
AFP By Peter Martell
23 hours ago



Nairobi (AFP) - Kenya said Tuesday it will torch its vast stockpile of ivory at a star-studded summit to include Hollywood celebrities, presidents and business leaders against "poaching and illegal trade in ivory."

The fire will be eight times the size of any ivory stockpile destroyed so far.

"Kenya plans to use the occasion to torch as many as 120 tonnes of ivory, the largest stockpile of ivory ever destroyed by any country, as proof of our commitment to zero tolerance for poaching and illegal ivory trade," presidential spokesman Manoah Esipisu told reporters.

Kenya said "several" heads of state were expected to attend, along with Hollywood actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Nicole Kidman, and business tycoons George Soros, Paul Allen, Howard Buffet and Michael Bloomberg.

Others Kenya expects to attend include conservation icon and BBC legend David Attenborough, British musician Elton John, as well as former basketball star Yao Ming, who has led campaigns in his homeland of China to raise awareness of the damage elephant poaching causes.

President Uhuru Kenyatta set fire in March 2015 to a giant pile of 15 tonnes of elephant ivory, which conservationists said then was the largest ever burned in Africa.

Then, the pile of tusks burned made a dramatic three-metre (10-foot) tall pyre of tusks with huge flames, burning for several days until the ivory turned to ash.

At the time, Kenyatta said he set fire to ivory as a message because he wanted "future generations of Kenyans, Africans and the entire world to experience the majesty and beauty of these magnificent beasts."


The promised destruction of the remaining stockpile is now slated for April 29 and 30.



Veteran conservationist Richard Leakey, chairman of the government's Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), has championed the destruction of seized ivory.

Leakey said the average weight of an elephant's pair of tusks was around 36 kilos, meaning the stockpile represents the death of around 4,000 animals.

But other conservationists put a tusk's weight to be now far lower, meaning the stockpile could represent the deaths of even double that number.

The ivory includes tusks seized from poachers and from animals who died naturally.

The campaign is being organized by billionaire Russian publisher Evgeny Lebedev, owner of Britain's Independent and Evening Standard newspapers.

Leakey, a world famous paleontologist, is in talks to make a film of his life, made by Oscar-winning actress Angelina Jolie.

Speaking late last year, Leakey refused to confirm rumours Brad Pitt was tipped to play him in the film.

Ivory is sought out for jewellery and decorative objects and much of it is smuggled to China, where many increasingly wealthy shoppers are buying ivory trinkets as a sign of financial success.

Kenya's stockpile, if illegally sold on the black market at current prices, could be worth some $270 million (over 251 million euros), but conservationists say sale of ivory only serves to fuel further poaching.

It is estimated that more than 30,000 elephants are killed for their tusks every year.

The international ivory trade was banned in 1989 but one-off sales of ivory stockpiles have since been permitted and trade in old ivory is also allowed, giving criminal smugglers cover for their illegal trade.


http://news.yahoo.com/kenya-destroy-lar ... NlYwNzcg--

[Lisbeth]

Yesterday I saw a collection of art works in Ivory here in India. It is a private collection of some deceased billionaire. Obviously they do or did a lot of ivory carving works in India also. This collection was enormous! I have not heard of elephant poaching in India, but as they have lost most of the tigers and all the rhinos I presume that it exists or existed here too. Having many working elephants (still ) maybe a lot die a natural death. There was sign saying that all the pieces had been declared officially to the government. Must ask Google. Did! http://www.wpsi-india.org/projects/elep ... aching.php

Sorry for posting it here, but opening a new topic is not worth it, I think

Revi Karuna Karan Memorial Museum

From the internet

[Flutterby]

Interesting Lis, tx.