More Poaching Evidence

More Poaching Evidence

Photo courtesy of INTERPOL.
Photo courtesy of INTERPOL.

European governments have joined Kenya to keep pressure on the Obama administration to end its silence on supporting continued protection of elephants during the upcoming CITES convention in March.

Today, officials from Kenya’s police and army, led by the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), released photographs and other details of a huge inter-country sting operation against illegal poaching, initiated by INTERPOL in July.

More than two tons of ivory was displayed as Kenyan officials described the operation, code-named ‘Costa’ in recognition of former Tanzanian wildlife director, the late Costa Mlay. The international sweep also resulted in the seizure of “huge caches” of firearms and ammunition, vehicles, cat skins and other contraband wildlife products.

It was the largest international action against wildlife crime ever, according to INTERPOL.

“We in KWS strongly believe that ivory trade fuels illegal killing of elephants,” said Kenya Wildlife Service Director Julius Kipng’etich who again appealed to the Obama administration to support a Kenyan initiative to keep elephants listed as an endangered species when the CITES convention convenes in March.

There has been growing frustration among conservation organizations at what seems to be the Obama Administration’s reluctance to stand with the Kenyans against Tanzania and other countries lobbying for a downlisting of elephants.

The operation began in July 2009 and was coordinated by INTERPOL’s Wildlife Crime Working Group based in Lyon, France.

With Kenya as the coordination center, sting operations in five other countries began simultaneously. Most of the individuals targeted by the operation, as well as associates who were trying to flee Africa, were successfully stopped at Nairobi airports.

KWS Deputy Director in-charge of Security, Peter Leitoro, said six foreign nationals were among more than 65 still being held in Kenyan jails.

“The success of Operation Costa is notable not only for the sheer volume of illegal ivory which has been recovered, which is among the biggest-ever hauls recorded, but because it also clearly shows the ability and will of law enforcement to effectively tackle wildlife crime,” said Peter Younger, manager of INTERPOL’s Operational Assistance, Services and Infrastructure Support (OASIS).

Baboon’s Thanksgiving

Baboon’s Thanksgiving

baboon driverBaboon Thanksgiving
Thank you, humans, for all your friendship. On this day of American Thanksgiving we are specially thankful for human Americans.

Thank you for your heart-felt concern for our well-being,
Thank you for your careful attention to our seeing
That you’re coming to observe us conquering the wild jungle.

Thank you for your massive support of our jungles,
Thank you for your attentive concern that our bundles
Of nuts and grains and white ants isn’t very tasty.

Thank you so much for your respect of our wild natures,
Of our need to be free of all your terrible human layers
Of politeness and courtesy and simple creature respects.

Thank you most of all for keeping your cars unlocked,
Your safari pop-tops opened so the smell of that box lunch
Can infuse all our jungle with the empathy of Thanksgiving.
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And thank you especially for being so much smarter than us.
For taking care of us, and worrying about our security
And little babies and global warming.

Happy Thanksgiving, humans!

Mara Muddle

Mara Muddle

If the Mara conservancies don’t get their act together, visitors might be paying $400 in daily fees!

One of the world’s most fabulous wild reserve is really a very small area that’s being cut apart into even smaller pieces that are squabbling with one another.

In a worst case scenario that I just can’t imagine happening anywhere in the universe except in Kenya, a guest at the Mara’s eastern-most lodge, Keekorok, who wanted to spend the day exploring the whole reserve with a picnic lunch traveling as far as Serena Lodge in the west, would incur reserve fees of $400 per person!

Until last week the three main sections of the Mara reserve (Sekanini, the furthest east third; Musiara, the main central part; and the Mara Triangle, the area west of the Mara River), all respected each other’s fee receipts as adequate to entering their own area. This core area of the Mara is only about 590 sq. miles. It really is possible on a single long day’s game drive to go through the entire area, easily going in and out of all three parts.

The visitor never knew they were technically moving from one reserve into another or back, again. And surrounding the Mara are a number of private reserves acting similarly.

But last week the Mara Triangle indicated it may stop accepting Musiara and Sekanini fee receipts. That would mean if you crossed the Mara River, you’d have to pay, again. And oh by the way, the three Mara conservancies now charge the highest of any reserve in Africa: $80 per person per day.

The remaining two portions are now threatening to do the same in retaliation. If this happens and you were a traveler staying at Mara Serena Lodge (in the Triangle), traveling on the new road from Nairobi via Narok, you would have to pay $240 just to get to the lodge! To get to the lodge you have to drive through the other two parts of the sanctuary.

This is getting ridiculous. It was, in fact, ridiculous before now. The very idea that a small wilderness reserve would be cut into separately managed sections is absurd.

Each section charges and accounts for its own fees, of course, but also trains and deploys its own set of rangers, and tries to enforce its own sets of rules and regulations. It’s patently absurd, and the reason it’s this way is because the Maasai politicians always refused to allow the federal Kenyan government to manage the area.

So such important things as wildlife management, wildlife research, visitor management and the like are often different every ten miles as your drive through the reserve. There’s no coherent marketing or planning of any sort. Mara.com, Maasaimara.com and even Masaimara.org are all privately owned websites exploited by local Kenyan business interests!

When Richard Leakey was head of the wonderfully managed Kenyan Wildlife Service (KWS) he tried to force the Maasai to relinquish control of the reserves to KWS, as numerous other ethnic groups had done to produce such wonderfully managed reserves as Samburu and Tsavo. In response, someone bombed his plane while he was flying and he lost his legs.

So for years and years, the Amboseli and Mara (Maasai reserves) have been administered by their own (incredibly corrupt) county councils. And now, they are fighting among themselves!

Balloon safaris will have a particularly difficult time as the three parts bureaucratically separate. The balloons (of which there are now 16 rising daily in the Mara) pay a “launching and landing fee.” If they bump down in an area other than from which they launched, they’ll be double taxed.

Not to mention the intrepid traveler who is trying to follow the wildebeest migration. Imagine being stopped dead at some signpost and being told to go over there to where the million wildebeest are will cost you another $80!

It gets worse. As the steam of anger boils over, the three fiefdoms are considering a rule that is used to my great consternation in neighboring Tanzania. The “one-time entry rule” means that if you leave one reserve for another, you have to pay again to re-enter the first reserve.

That means wherever you’re lodging and paying the daily $80 per person fee, that if you go out, then come back, you have to pay twice that same day!

THAT MEANS if you transected the Mara on a good long day’s drive, you could theoretically have to pay $400 PER PERSON!

Why oh why is all of this happening?

Money.

Tourism is way down. The government and community institutions controlling these marvelous parcels of wilderness got used to a certain revenue stream that they don’t have, now. And frankly, I don’t think they’ll ever have, again.

But if there’s anything that will totally destroy the little that’s left, it’s this current nonsense going on in the Mara. Please, folks, let’s not discharge our responsibilities with the same acumen as a warthog!

Mali Travel Warning

Mali Travel Warning

In a rare consensus between usually disparate advisories, most of the developed world issued warnings this week against traveling to Timbuktu and much of Mali.

The announcement couldn’t have come at a worse time for Mali tourism. January is the month of the growingly popular Festival in the Desert, Africa’s largest annual rock concert. Officials for the concert insist it’s going ahead, but a number of performers are already canceling.

Several countries, including Canada and France, make a serious distinction between many of the more developed areas along the Niger River west of Timbuktu, explaining that those seem to be OK to visit. But the UK and US were less sanguine and issued much more serious warnings.

The U.S. warning, in fact, specifically restricts any U.S. government employee or subcontractor from visiting these regions – including Timbuktu – without “prior authorization.” This is the highest level of American warning.

The problems began last January when a group of travelers exploring a remote part of the Sahara Desert far north of Timbuktu were kidnapped. The kidnappers claimed to be “Al-Qaeda in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb” and later killed one of the hostages, Edwin Dyer, a British national. The British travel office said in its November 20 warning that “further kidnap attacks are likely.”

Since the January incident, tourism in Mali had fallen by 50% but had begun to slowly recover. These announcements are likely to seriously impede any recovery.

The January incident led to Mali government military actions in the remote Saharan frontiers, and much more serious gun battles occurred than were expected. None of these were reported as Al-Qaeda incidents, but rather “Tuareg rebel groups” which are much more likely organized bandits than terrorists.

Gibbs vs. Crater Lodge

Gibbs vs. Crater Lodge

From Johanna@

Q. We are currently scheduled to stay at Gibb’s Farm but were wondering if &Beyond’s Crater Lodge or Tree Lodge would be nicer? What is your opinion?

A. Some itineraries are designed for certain properties, and some itineraries are designed for game viewing, and all itineraries are constrained by budget and time. So it’s hard to answer you without knowing all your details, but let me try in general.

Gibb’s is located almost exactly in between Tree Lodge and Crater Lodge. Tree Lodge is in Lake Manyara, which is just south of the town of Karatu where Gibb’s is located, which is just south of the crater. So being in the middle, Gibb’s is perfectly located to visit either Lake Manyara or Ngorongoro. With the other two properties, of course, you’re limited to visiting the park in which they’re located.

And that’s the main difference between all three properties. Crater Lodge and Tree Lodge are located in reserves — in fact, while you stay there you’ll also be paying government game viewing fees. Gibb’s, on the other hand, is located on private land outside any reserve.

So why even consider Gibb’s? Price and style.

I think that Gibb’s cottages are nicer, more comfortable, more functional and more beautiful than either of the two &Beyond properties. We call them Nantucket cottages since they were styled after small beach cottages on that New England escape. And significantly, you can stay for two nights at Gibbs for the price of a single night at Crater Lodge. (It’s just a little less expensive than Tree Lodge.)

But why not consider Gibb’s. Animals.
Gibb’s is a great interlude to intense game viewing, because even while you can base yourself from here to visit Manyara or the Crater, most guests don’t. They just luxuriate in the spectacular surroundings. Many guests remark that the farm setting reminds them of being in Tuscany. There are sweeping views of the valleys surrounding Ngorongoro Crater.

But there’s no game. While at Gibb’s you mountain bike, visit the organic farm, hike, make an appointment with a Maasai masseuse or shaman, visit the nearby town and school … do all the things cultural that many safaris leave out.

Safari travelers often discount the importance of taking a deep breath on safari and just relaxing for a while. And it’s true that a well disciplined traveler can do this anywhere.. just skip a game drive, for instance. But that’s really Gibb’s main attraction, a short vegging out from the intensity of dawn game drives and sitting in a vehicle all day.

I love both Tree Lodge and Crater Lodge deeply. It comes down to a decision of price & style.

New Airline Compensation if Delayed

New Airline Compensation if Delayed

Passengers delayed by European airlines for 2 or more hours will now be compensated up to $850 per passenger!

In an historic ruling by the European Court of Justice, yesterday, two Austrians and two Germans were awarded damages against Air France and Condor airlines for having been delayed. The justices then expanded the civil suit into a new European regulation.

It was not immediately clear whether the ruling will be applied to all passengers or only passengers holding European citizenship. Since the ruling didn’t specify, it’s likely that foreign nationals delayed in Europe by European airlines will be able to demand the compensation, at least for the time being until the issue is contested.

The ruling is comprehensive and cutting. Compensation is awarded if a flight of 1500 km or less is delayed for more than 2 hours. (About 930 miles: for example, London to Venice). Long-haul flights of more than 1500 km receive compensation if the delay is 3 hours or more. And any flight, of any length, delayed more than four hours receives compensation.

The Court plugged a possible loop-hole and said that airlines couldn’t protect themselves from this ruling by canceling a flight just to avoid the compensation.

In other words, a London to Venice flight that is ready to go 2 hrs and 5 min after scheduled departure would not have the option of canceling the flight just a second before 2 hours in order to avoid then paying compensation.

Moreover, the judges restricted all exceptions to the ruling (such as “technical problems” which allowed airlines up to this point to avoid earlier court rulings) to events which “by their nature or origin are not inherent in the normal exercise of the activity of the air carrier concerned and are beyond its actual control.”

Wow.

The compensation may come in the form of services. And these are “minimum” services that if they exceed the $850 per person must still be offered. They include:

* Two free phone calls, faxes or e-mails;
* Free meals and refreshments; and
* Free hotel accommodation and hotel transfers if an overnight stay is required.

And finally, if the delay is more than 5 hours, in addition to the compensation, the airline must agree to refund the ticket in full.

This is major.

For a long time American passengers have trailed behind the rights of passengers in other developed parts of the world. This is particularly true of travel insurance, which European governments mandate must be much more comprehensive, and cheaper, than what Americans get.

The hidden surcharges and taxes on advertised American ticket prices would never be allowed in Europe. The current “special” by United Airlines of only a $390 roundtrip fare between Chicago and London becomes $780.10 when actually ticketed!

American deregulation cheats the customers and ultimately destroys the airlines. The rampant deregulation that began in 1983 migrated across the pond, but European regulators are now pulling back the reigns, as they should.

Will we be able to, too?

The Dark Squeeze

The Dark Squeeze

Born Johnathan Shapiro in Cape Town in 1958, Zapiro is South Africa's most read political cartoonist.
Born Johnathan Shapiro in Cape Town in 1958, Zapiro is South Africa's most read political cartoonist.
Corruption gets worse in Africa, stays about the same in the U.S., and very few people really understand what it means.

Yesterday Transparency International released its corruption list for 2009. All of Africa got worse when compared to 2008. In East Africa, Kenya is at the bottom of the pack at 146 of 180 countries rated; Tanzania is 126, Uganda is 130, and Rwanda is a pleasing 89. All fell from last year.

The United States fell to 18 from 17. New Zealand is the best in the world. Somali is the worse. The tiny islands of the Seychelles considered a part of Africa makes it the best in its category at 54, but South Africa at 55 is the best on the continent.

Corruption is linked to economy in a bell-shaped relationship. There is least corruption in times that are considered normal, when economies are performing in ordinary ways. There is most corruption when economies are either doing extremely well or extremely bad.

If corruption were measured by quantity, then the U.S. would be the most corrupt place on earth, and the undefined country of Bernie Madoff would outrank every country in Africa. With Enron, Tyco and a few notable others, the U.S. in aggregate followed by about a dozen of its smaller parts like Madoff would top the list of corruption.

Bernie Madoff lost or stole (depending upon how you look at it) 4 times Kenya’s annual GDP.

So what does this mean? It means in a very dispassionate way that corruption is driven by economic trends.

In the west people like to say this trend is greed. And to be sure, that’s a fair explanation for Madoff, Enron, Tyco and the like. It’s fair to say that in times of plenty, greed is the driving force of corruption.

But in times of want it’s quite different, and most of the time, Africa is in want of a lot.

The way I see it, intelligent and usually talented individuals rise to positions of power in African governments with the most laudable motives. Time and again I’ve watched a Jomo Kenyatta or Jason Zuma or Milton Obote be applauded into office with nothing but the most transparent ideals.

Time passes and Africa just doesn’t move fast enough. Misery grows faster than happiness. This isn’t the fault of these great men, or their ideas or management, but simply the institutionalized poverty in the world order.

The rich can’t get richer unless the poor get poorer, and we all know what side Africa is on.

And these intelligent and talented African leaders come round to seeing the truth of this.

Their education into this realization is mightily helped by many of the richer companies and individuals that come to their lands to “strike deals” for oil and other minerals, tea and spices. Outside the limiting laws of their own countries, these representatives of the less corrupt nations become the most corrupt deal-makers on earth.

All driven by the mighty dollar, driven by greed.

Right now, China is throwing money at Africa in unheard of quantities, requiring no transparency whatever. As much as $40 billion (US) has been given to East African countries in the last two years as blanket grants requiring no accountability.

And it’s not just China. I recently reported how the Toronto mining company, Barrick Gold Corporation, was unable to account for $1.6 billion dollars in payments to the Tanzanian government for the development of the world’s second largest clump of gold near Lake Victoria.

There is a difference between China and Canada, of course. China doesn’t care, so long as it gets oil. Canada is ashamed: it’s going to get rid of the mine as soon it can, but it was unable to impede the corruption.

So the African leaders give up. Once they realize there’s nothing significant they can do for their country, all that’s left is their family. And boy, a few dinners and drinks with Chinese or Canadian businessmen, and their family is set for life.

Today, most of Jomo Kenyatta’s family lives in Colorado. Jomo Kenyatta was the first president of Kenya. Most of Julius Nyerere’s family lives in London. Nyerere was Tanzania’s greatest president. And without doubt, I’m sure that these progeny are all upstanding, law-abiding moral folks.

Transparency International’s ratings, I think, are valuable for the countries rated least corrupt. But for those poor countries on the bottom, let’s understand where this all comes from. The dark force squeezes down the bottom.

How does that old teaser go? The island is sinking, and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it. There’s one little boat with you at the oars. Who do you row to safety?

Ivory Crisis Continues

Ivory Crisis Continues

Yesterday Tanzanian wildlife officials announced they would join a Zambian initiative to allow sales of elephant ivory by downgrading the elephant’s status as an endangered species.

The move is part of the important politicking that is occurring before the March meeting of CITES, the international conference on the trade in endangered species.

Kenya denounced the move and also appealed for a third time to the Obama administration to take a stand on the issue.  For some reason the Obama administration is not acting on the Kenyan request.  It’s almost unthinkable to believe that the Obama administration wouldn’t support Kenya on this.  It was Kenya and the United States which wrote the first elephant ban in 1983.

That move at the time was supported by more than 180 countries.  It stopped the rampant poaching of elephant at the time.

“We are convinced Tanzania has contravened the spirit of the (moratorium) agreement and Kenya is totally opposed to their proposal to sell ivory,” said Mr Patrick Omondi, a KWS senior assistant director.

However, Tanzania’s director of Wildlife Erasmus Tarimo disagrees.

“We’re doing what is best for our elephant population,” he said in a phone interview to Africa 2000, adding that revenues from the sale would go towards elephant conservation.

Ironically, Tarimo was in the news just last week commenting on a Dar-es-Salaam police action against suspected poaching.  Four people were arrested in possession of over 30 elephant tusks.

According to sources within the wildlife industry, the ivory weighs more than 100 kilos and is believed to have come from at least 18 poached elephants killed within the vast Selous Game Reserve.

Other sources within the police force have described the latest seizure of poached elephant tusks in Dar es Salaam as further proof that the city is now a major transit point for ivory smuggling.

This latest development comes just days after THISDAY, one of Tanzania’s more aggressive newspapers, published a detailed expose on how the world-famous Selous has been turned into a veritable killing field where hundreds of jumbos are regularly slaughtered for their ivory.

The report actually suggested the poaching is once again going corporate.  “This looks like a chain network of poachers and ivory smugglers at work,” THISDAY reported.  The paper further claimed that some disgruntled game scouts are believed to be either turning a blind eye to illegal hunting activities or themselves taking part in killing the same animals they were hired to protect.

”An average of 50 elephants are being killed in the Selous each month…and that is a conservative estimate,” an official working in the Selous told THISDAY.

As I’ve explained in earlier blogs, poaching goes on the rise when the economy tanks.  Tanzania’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism used to pay game scouts a working allowance of between $250 – $300 a month in addition to the salary to cover the expenses of fuel and food for extensive patrols in The Selous.  But due to budgetary constraints that allowance has been suspended.

Sources have described finding heaps of jumbo carcases minus tusks left lying on the mud roads within the Selous.

Tarimo has denied the increased poaching.

“A recent aerial count found 41 carcases of elephants,” he admitted.  “But 41 dead elephants is minimal compared to the total Selous elephant population of around 40,000,”  he said, adding that some elephants had died of natural causes.

Misery in the Mau

Misery in the Mau

Photo by Joseph Kiheri of Nairobi's Daily Nation
Photo by Joseph Kiheri of Nairobi's Daily Nation

Today a stream of now homeless farmers began leaving Kenya’s Mau Forest for fear they would be killed by security forces.

The Mau Forest story is one of the most heart-wrenching in Africa.  It has parallels to development stories throughout the world, including America’s Dust Bowl of 1930-39, and it is as somber and seemingly irreconcilable as any Grapes of Wrath saga.

But as with all modern phenomenon in Africa, everything is sped up in the time warp of development.  It took a decade or more to discourage then displace the American southern plains farmer in the thirties, and moving at that speed even the American government was able to gear up to provide work through the WPA and useful advice on how to better use the land.

In the end only about a quarter of the southern plains farmers couldn’t make it through.

But in Kenya the drama is all but three years total.  In the end there won’t be one remaining of the 40,000 families who last year were farming the Mau.

And not a cent of the promised government compensation of just under a million shillings per displaced family (about $120,000) has been seen.

And if they aren’t successfully evicted, it is likely that within a decade there won’t be a drop of water for Nairobi.

The Mau Forest is considerably west of the Aberdare and other highland mountain catchments that feed Nairobi’s three reservoirs, but it’s now understood that they are all intricately linked.  The Mau directly feeds the Great Rift lake system of the central province (Naivasha and Nakuru) as well as the Mara River.

These areas provide the irrigation for huge agricultural areas as well as the country’s extremely important flower export business.  Without the Mau’s water, the Rift agriculture would start to die quickly.

And as this became apparent, the agricultural interests would begin long-distance siphoning, or would actually move further east towards the Aberdare which is the water catchment area for more than 7 million people in and around Nairobi.

There isn’t enough water to do all this.

Too many things are happening too quickly in Kenya.  Progress fighting aids and other mortal diseases like malaria have buoyed population growth.  GDP growth averaging twice that of America is creating a middle class that wants better cars and longer showers.

But the land of Kenya is one of the most stressed on earth.  Only 14% of the country is arable; the rest near desert useful only in some sections for stock farming.  It is mineral poor.  And only the few highland areas, like the Mau and Aberdare, catch water for the 40 million people.

The drought of the last three years (breaking now at last) focused into stark relief to Kenyan leaders the looming disaster.  And despite the enormous media attention given to the drought, it was mild when compared with  droughts of the past.

Global warming actually makes the equatorial regions of the world wetter than they would otherwise be.  But the lust for water for development is just too great.

In 1996 after the last more serious drought the then dictator Daniel Moi began handing out choice parcels of the Mau forest, mostly to his fellow Kalenjin tribes people.

Bigwigs were actually given deeds.  Many others were given little “resident cards” and thousands others simply followed their kinsmen from the dry lands of the kalenjin onto this fertile ground.

No one knows for sure how many people ended up first clearing the forests to sell the timber, then farm this critical ecological zone.  The government says 40,000 families, and the average size of a farming family in Kenya is between 6 and 7.  So that could be about a quarter million people.

I’ve seen the beautiful little homesteads in the Mau.  The many log houses are tidy, with little vegetable and flower gardens, and often a cow or two in a tiny fenced area.  There are small fields of corn, millet, potatoes, beans and even wheat in some places.  Any random scene in a farming village in the Mau would likely depict a near idyllic scene for a developing African country.

Schools wre built and the government supplied teachers.  Dispensaries and some of the best small hospitals in Kenya were built here.  A sheep industry developed, and many residents wore heavy sweaters and woolen coats self-made as protection against the highland climate.

A typical Mau Forest farming family looks pretty well off.

It was not a surprise this would happen.  But last year into the 2nd year of the country wide drought, Nairobi water reserves began to be rationed.  Crops failed lower down the forests, even though the Mau and other highland areas were still getting reasonable rainfall.

Sixty Minutes from America produced a television story on the great wildebeest migration, and showed the declining level of the Mara River, and wondered if this were “the end of the migration.”

Actually, it was the start.

The government decided last year the Mau had to be cleared of farmers.  A security contingent swept in, burned homes, released livestock and randomly shot farmers who resisted.

The scandal erupted into huge Parliamentary fights and became – as so much in Kenya does – tribal.  The evictions were halted, but ultimately, they had to be restarted.  More carefully, with more notice, and with a better management of the idiot politicians trying to earn kudos with the controversy, the evictions have started for real.

And they will continue until not a man is left in the Mau.  And only a fence and heavily armed security forces surround the 16,000 sq. miles.

It seems like a pretty small area for a population approaching 40 million.  But that’s Africa, today.  Every little bit counts.

Pangy Pain

Pangy Pain

The rain brings luck, and luck brings the pangolin, and the pangolin brings more fortune!
pangolin.karatu.2009
Yesterday a fight nearly broke out between residents of Mangola town, about 10 miles west of Karatu towards Lake Eyasi, when conservation officials removed a pangolin that had been found by villagers.

I’ve never seen a pangolin in the wild, and its cousin, the aardvark, only twice.  Both are common animals and their rarity comes from the fact they are so incredibly nocturnal.  Like vampires, they will actually wilt in the light, their eyes are so sensitive.

Both feed on termites.  Both have massive claws and ludicrously long tongues to nip white ants by the hundreds.

The rains which have come in spades lead to huge increases in the termite populations.  The rains also flood holes that pangolins and aardvark live in, flushing them out despite their better natures.

But unlike the aardvark the pangolin is an animal of great mystic stature.  It has little fear of man, is rather slow moving, and protects itself and any young clinging to its scales by rolling into a near perfect sphere and closing itself shut to the outside world.

And more to the point, villagers still believe its appearance presages great fortune.  The Malonga villagers tried desperately to figure out if this just meant more rain, better harvests, or new roads.  They put out a pile of corn next to a bowl of water next to a pile of asphalt, peeled the animal apart, and nudged it to move as a choice of one or the other offerings.

Peeling it apart is no easy task.  The scales are sharp and the pangolin has an anus gland not dissimilar to the skunk.

The pangolin chose the maize, or so it was determined, meaning that the future held outstanding corn yields.  The Chicago mercantile exchange didn’t move much, though.

And as they were trying to unpeel it for a determination of second place, Ngorongoro Conservation Authority rangers arrived just in time to rescue the poor animal from the medieval performance.  At one point, machetes were drawn against rifles.  (Probably neither worked.)

The head of NCAA Conservation Services Department Mr Amiyo T. Amiyo said “good Samaritans” had informed the rangers about the ceremonies.

“I have been a conservationist with the NCAA for almost twenty years now but throughout this period I have never encountered a pangolin. I think this is the first such animal to be seen in the neighborhood,” he said.

But all was cool in the end, and pangy was taken to the nearby forest and released.

“We couldn’t keep it, because we don’t have a cage,” Mr. Amiyo explained.

Monkeying Around Works!

Monkeying Around Works!

Duke researchers have once again made some amazing discoveries in East Africa, this time suggesting that interbreeding between quite different animals may provide survival advantages.
091111-kipunji-monkey-vmed-142p.widec
The setting is Tanzania’s Udzungwa National Park, absolutely one of the most beautiful wildernesses I have ever visited.  More than 120 endemic mammals and 13 primate species are found here that exist nowhere else on earth.  The discovery is about the most recently discovered primate, the kipunji (Rungwecebus kipunji)

There are just over 1100 kipunji left on earth, making them one of the most endangered animals creation has left us.  And they all live in just 7 square miles!   And very interesting, there are two separated populations: only about 100 in the Udzungwa park, and the remaining 1000 in a lower altitude area.

Yesterday a team of researchers led by Trina Roberts of the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, N.C. (Duke) announced that while the two separated populations look identical, they have significantly different DNA.

The larger population has baboon DNA!

Note carefully.  The research isn’t saying that the two species once had the same ancestor (which may be true but isn’t the point), but that modern baboon interbred with modern kipunji recently… basically since any normal evolutionary changes (through natural selection) occurred.

In fact appearances suggest the two animals if they had a common ancestor diverged a very long time ago.  Baboon (Papio genus) looks more different from kipunji than chimps do from modern man.  The baboon has a long flat nose not found in kipunji, and male baboons weigh up to 65 pounds. Male kipunji weigh less than half that.  There are many other anatomical differences.

But at some point in the past, Papio and Rungwecebus had a tryst (that was certainly the scandal of the century up there in those xenophobic forests).  The DNA analysis even tells us that Mom was Papio, and that baby Papio/Rungwecebus became the matriarch of the stronger group of kipunji.  They don’t look a lot different, but DNA doesn’t lie.

“In the evolutionary history of this population there was at least one event where there was some cross-fertilization with a baboon,” said study researcher Tim Davenport of the Wildlife Conservation Society.

We know that normally when species hybridize, the offspring are almost always sterile: (mules is the common example).  In East Africa we have many bird species, especially among the starlings, which hybridize and live for a single generation.

But not always.  The best alter example is our own yellow-rumped warbler, which hybridizes and continues to breed so quickly field guides have a very difficult time keeping up with the new birds.

But in animals it’s extremely rare.  Giraffe are probably the best exception, as evidenced in zoos where interbreeding in earlier years caused serious embarrassment to zoo directors.  Look carefully in backwoods’ zoos and you might find a rather unusual looking giraffe.

But now the Duke researchers are suggesting there might be a reason for all of this.

The population which is strongest of the two kipunji is the one with baboon DNA.  Baboon are a very successful primate in the evolving modern world dominated by a single all-powerful primate known as man.  Many tree dwelling monkeys aren’t.  Is the larger kipunji population, larger, because it got something, or learned something from being hard wired to a more successful cousin?

This would introduce a new evolutionary mechanism that works a bit faster than waiting for gamma rays to move chromosomes around in some useful way.  It’s really quite exciting research.  And it probably correlates in some way to current research into whether modern man interbred with Neanderthals before sending them into extinction.

Kipunji was discovered in the Udzungwa in 2003, the twelfth new primate to be discovered in this forest during my life time, but the only completely new primate species discovered in the world since 1923!

Udzungwa National Park is only 785 sq. miles, but that’s because it sits in rugged forests that still remain unpopulated and not yet deforested that – well – don’t require protection…  Yet.  The overall huge area of pristine marvels is almost 4,000 sq. miles.

It’s not easy to visit.  My few visits have hardly touched the edges of this massive forest.  I tend to think that Tanzanian authorities are following the unofficial advice from WCS and the World Wildlife Fund not to develop the park.  There are more tourists that visit Mikumi National Park every week (a half hour away) than all the kipunji in existence!

Becoming Human Becoming Silly

Becoming Human Becoming Silly

Yesterday evening PBS’s NOVA series aired its second of three parts on “Becoming Human.”  Entertaining, yes.  Enlightening? … no.

Those of us passionate about early man would stop all other work to review the newest Far Side cartoon, and not because we didn’t have good, steady work demanding our attention.  It’s just … well, he was so good!

Same with grand productions like NOVA and the BBC.  But in contrast to Far Side and last month’s Discovery Channel production of Ardi (see earlier blogs), NOVA’s “Becoming Human” series doesn’t tell us much new and actually takes a few too many liberties in order to make short sentences.

Much of the footage, in fact, can be found in earlier NOVA productions, especially those about Asian and Indonesian early men.

Part II repeated nearly 10 minutes of footage I originally thought was specific to Part I, and the background music sounds like a single-tracked hominid grinding a street organ.  Another 5-6 minutes came from earlier NOVA footage of the story of Toumai.

Well, so what, eh?  Well… there are a few too many simplicities.  Like the near complete ignoring until the end of Part II of Homo habilis, and prior to the admission that this “human” species preceded erectus (the star of Part II), endless repeating that Homo erectus was the “first human.”

Carefully without saying so, the repetitious and too quick presentation of NOVA’s chart of early man could be easily interpreted as linear rather than branching as it really is.  This unearths a debate that was put to rest a generation ago.

I can’t wait for Part III to clarify that no, Part II didn’t really mean we evolved directly from Homo erectus.

And then there’s the curious way the producers present a not new theory that evolving brain size was an adaptation to climate change.  And how “fast” that climate change was.  (One or two or maybe three hundred thousand years.)   However you cut it this remarkable simplicity can be easily transformed into acceptance of our current climate change crisis.

Here’s how the NYTimes TV critic, Neil Genzlinger, put it:
“Here’s some cheery news: that global warming thing everyone is so worried about is actually going to make us all a lot smarter. Unfortunately, it’s also going to leave us with heads the size of basketballs.”

Genzlinger goes on to positively review the series, but I think he might also be under the spell of big, public TV.

One really good feature almost redeems the entire presentation: the discussions of aging and dating.

Dating is so crucial to early man finds, and both the graphics and explanations especially of the Afar finds were done masterfully.  The explanation of how DNA corruption can pinpoint the time that two species diverge was magnificent.

And for the first time I can recall, the brilliant way scientists study fossilized teeth was described in detail, explaining how a specimen can be aged.  My goodness what a blast it was to hear how dental examination showed Turkana Boy to be 8 not 14 years old, and Lucy to be 3 not 12!

The older ages of Turkana Boy and Lucy that have been presumed for years had been derived from more classic anatomical analysis, specifically in the state of fusion between limbs.  So what the dental analysis shows was that early man was growing up much faster than had previously been speculated by his slowly growing brain.

This is enlightening.  Let’s hope Part III has more of this.  So far, though, Discovery 1 – NOVA 0.

Heifer Charities

Heifer Charities

Heifer may be one of the better charity-direct not-for-profits for Africa, and then again, it might not be.

I am often asked for recommendations of charities serving Africa, and I am often asked specifically about Heifer.  There are actually two “Heifers”, and here are my thoughts and some background.

The Heifer Project International (“Heifer”) was founded in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1944 by an Arkansan who had just returned from the Spanish Civil War.  Dan West was deeply religious and had been deeply impacted by the terrible and mostly pointless war in Spain.  He grasped upon a Christian biblical maxim that it is better to teach a man to fish, than simply to give him a fish to eat.

Today Heifer is one of the more prominent aid organizations in Africa.  It is on the Forbes Ten Best Charities list and recently received a generous contribution from the Gates Foundation, which is probably the lead NGO in Africa.

For relatively small contributions, the organization buys livestock (sometimes trees and other plants) and gives them to individuals mostly in Africa.  The bulk of the purchases are dairy cows.  The idea is that the individual receiving the gift will learn to tend the animal, harvest its milk, and hopefully breed it.

Because a cow today in Africa averages only $120, the charity has especially appealed to school groups where children are able to actively participate.

The Heifer idea has few direct critics, mostly animal rights groups.  From my point of view, its basic idea is a sound one.

So what’s the problem?  As usual, it’s in the administration of the idea, rather than the idea.

Towards the end of the 1980s Heifer found itself in serious difficulty.  It began requesting upwards of $250 for a cow that then cost about $80.  The problem was with the Arkansas administration and it was remedied, more or less, fairly quickly.

One of the ways the organization remedied the “cost drift” was to start a second organization, the Heifer International Foundation (the “Foundation”).  By separating the actual project funds from the growing needs at administration, Heifer was able to maintain good ratings.

Today, Heifer gets 3 out of 4 stars from the reputable Charity Navigator, similar to the American Red Cross.  More precisely, Navigator rates Heifer at 55.25, the American Red Cross at 54.6.  This is pretty good on the slightly mediocre side.

But the Foundation is another matter.  Navigator rates that as only two stars, a numerical rating of 46.7.  Almost a third of all the funds going into the foundation are used for administrative expenses including salaries.  By then taking on some of the otherwise administrative expenses that would be required to run Heifer, the Foundation takes the hit and lets Heifer get another star.

This is clever, and deceptive.  It should be a warning to those who give that the organization is unable on its own merits to attain what it feels is an acceptable level of accreditation.

Heifer is a very secretive organization, held very tightly.  That’s probably one of the reasons that Forbes and the Gates Foundation like it.

On May 21 of this year, the CEO of Heifer resigned amid a scandal that even until today has not been revealed.  The details are still with a sealed grand jury in Arkansas.  The rumors are that then CEO Janet K. Ginn was forced out of her position by the Heifer board for some sort of plagiarism. That’s all we know as reported in Little Rock newspapers, and it remains an unsubstantiated rumor.  But the Heifer Board has refused to deny it and Ginn’s attorneys are refusing to let her say anything.

It could be something really unrelated to the mission or work of Heifer, but that we won’t know until it goes to trial.  And if Ginn settles, we might never know.

Personally, I come down very hard on attempted charities for Africa.  I have worked and lived there for too long to have come to any conclusion except that things are getting worse in Africa.  So whatever the world has been doing has not been right, or mattered.

What is “right” is a much more complicated issue, but it begins not with a small donation and a checkbook, but with government to government actions.

Governments, ultimately, are accountable.  Heifer seems to be trying to avoid accountability.

HeiferRatings

Obama is losing Kenya

Obama is losing Kenya

The tide of Obamian Mistrust is cresting in Kenya like the El-Nino floods.

Just as at home in the U.S., the lust for change that swept Obama into office is coming to a head in Kenya.  But in Kenya the ramifications are much more immediate than in the U.S.

Last week the World Court at the Hague, in the person of UN Under Secretary Ocampo, announced that it would begin unilaterally to prosecute those responsible for the violence following the 2007 elections.

The Kenyan population was ecstatic. “What took them so damn long?!” shouted a letter writer in last Sunday’s Daily Nation newspaper in Nairobi.

What the letter writer meant was that the trials of those responsible were already to have begun – indeed, already ended!  This according to the agreement that Kenyan leaders signed in February, 2008.

What took them so long was the “diplomatic process.”  More than any other outside player, the U.S. has been actively trying to move Kenya’s leaders to implement the agreement which ended the trouble in December, 2007.

But it’s way too slow for Kenyans:  Just as at home in the U.S., where health care reform is morphing from the hopeful electricity in hundreds of thousands of American youth at rallies when Obama won, to the stuffy hyperbole of thick books about failed revolutions.

If the current political leaders in the U.S. and Kenya think that they can hide behind the umbra of “necessary time”, they are dead wrong and especially in Kenya.

Unlike the U.S. where the citizens are very polarized today — arguably the reason reform is being held up here — in Kenya citizens are united.  They hate their government, despise corruption and speak with unanimous condemnation.

There is not a single poll, single nongovernment group, old or young, which currently supports the government.  There are five Nairobi newspapers all shouting for instant reform.  Not even the old KTV television station — originally set up by the government — now supports the government.

But the U.S. and its institutionalized allies are moving Kenya at the same speed their governor is set at back home.  At home it means simply that reform won’t happen.  In Kenya it will cause massive destruction within the next few years.

Twenty months after an agreement was thrust on the despised Kenyan leadership by a reluctant U.S. and U.K. — which mandated a new constitution and prosecution of those responsible for the horrific violence — little has actually happened.

The U.S. has done everything within the realm of “established diplomacy” to move things along.  And that’s just the problem.  These are not times for established diplomacy.  Established diplomacy led to the Rwandan genocide and is the main reason there were 130,000 displaced persons in Kenya after the 2007 elections.

The U.S.’ most recent move, which I applauded in earlier blogs, was to bar 15 Kenyan leaders from visiting the U.S.  But Secretary Clinton refused to make the names public.

Here’s what Rob Jillo, of Nairobi’s popular Capital FM radio station said about that:

“To the US, I can only say to them that Kenyans feel that your travel bans are a mockery; they should make the name or names of banned individuals public so that Kenyans can hold them accountable and deal with them by naming and shaming them. They should also assist the country in repatriating monies held by these corrupt individuals and anti-reformists in overseas accounts.

“Mr Ranneberger [the U.S. ambassador to Kenya] and lately Mr Johnnie Carson’s [U.S. Under Secretary for Africa] source of irritation has always been the slow nature of reforms in the country. If we want to be in-charge of our destiny then speed up the reforms.”

This is not a time for politeness, in the U.S. or Kenya.  Playing by the old rules in the U.S. simply ensures the status quo and it will be at least a generation before genocide occurs on U.S. soil.  But in Kenya, the trigger is set: December, 2012.

If total and complete reforms are not in place by the next scheduled election, modern Kenya will end in a bloodbath.

Where Terror was Born

Where Terror was Born

As the situation in southern Sudan stabilizes, neighboring Congo-DRC grows more unstable than ever.
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There is a long and fragile road to travel before next year’s independent referendum in southern Sudan which is likely to create a new and more stable country, but for the time being it looks peaceful.

And so it seems that some of the troublemakers have moved west. Yesterday, the UN reported more than 7,000 refugees fleeing out of the DRC at its northwestern border into Congo-Brazzaville. There has rarely been trouble here, in this area much closer to the capital of Kinshasha than the troubled Kivu province far to the east.

The Congo-DRC, formerly Zaire, never achieved real stability after the CIA assassination of its first democratically elected president, Patrice Lumumba, in 1961. Literally every day since then for nearly a half century this second largest country in Africa has been without a unified government, unstable and at war.

If ever there has been a society whose grandfathers were soldiers for life with children who were soldiers for life with grandchildren who now seem to becoming soldiers for life, it’s the Congo-DRC.

The area of greatest turmoil has until now been the eastern Kivu Province which borders Zambia, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda and The Sudan. This is because it is so incredibly mineral rich, from precious tungsten to uranium.

These precious metals have come into your cell phone straight from this darkest spot in Africa, and your payments for minutes have bought AK47s, missile launchers and jeeps.

The longest stretch of this northeastern and eastern border is with The Sudan, mineral rich with oil. There’s really been no border here. This black hole on the continent has been the greatest den of iniquity Africa has ever seen.

During infrequent moments of peace in the 1980s when I guided tours through Kivu, I bought charter air flights from mercenary sanction busters flying usually from Israel with light military equipment aboard. Most of the pilots as I remember were from Denver. Most of the military equipment had stamps on them from Seattle.

This was the area where the Lords Resistance Army arose, where children were kidnaped and drugged then turned into killers.

It’s pretty far from Darfur, but in that whole long area northwest to Darfur it has been lawless and terrifying for three going on four generations.

Now that a generation of diplomatic efforts might be paying off in The Sudan, the Congo-DRC becomes the last haven for the African rebel with his assorted SAM missiles, refurbished Humvees and millions of rounds of ammunition.

The Congo is becoming a set for Bruce Willis, which is apt since this all started during the early days of the Cold War when America was worried that a democratic process in the Congo was turning communistic. Belgium gave the U.S. an important assist in crowning the terrifying dictator, Mobuto Sesi Seko, after assassinating the election victor, Tshombe, in 1961.

Mobuto held the republic together with terror, but never completely. As he was dying of cancer he was dethroned, and the so-called democracy which replaced him in 1997 has never taken root. Around the developed areas of Kinshasha it is fair to say a more reasonable society has emerged, but in the boondocks of this massive country all hell reigns supreme.

The Belgium parliament apologized a number of years ago and awarded sizable reparations. The U.S. never has apologized.

The moment’s current crisis shows that as peace progresses in The Sudan, the born African rebel is moving next door. And while destruction spreads west through the country like the cancer that eviscerated Mobutu, Kivu remains bloody, with 18,000 ineffective UN peacekeepers.

UN peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy said Sunday that the U.N. would immediately cease support of the Congolese army’s 213th Brigade in Kivu. Le Roy said the U.N. believed the unit had killed at least 62 civilians in the Lukweti area, some 50 miles northwest of the regional capital of Goma.

This is where I used to guide tours. It’s where there were mountain gorillas, millions if not billions of neon-colored butterflies flitting into beautiful jungles, pygmies and giant waterfalls. Today, a generation later, none of these exist.

Human Rights Watch describes an August attack in Kivu in which it said soldiers decapitated four men and cut off their arms. They then raped 16 women and girls, including a 12-year-old girl, later killing four of them. Researchers also found that many of the more than 500 victims were women, children and the elderly.

Africa was not like this before the white man showed up, despite racist attempts to paint early internecine tribal battles as “wars.” War came with machine guns, not machetes. Most of the world’s weapons in Africa today were manufactured in the U.S., sold through Russia and distributed by Israel.

This is where terror was born. And now we fight it in New York.