Category: Poaching

Is CITES a Rich Man’s Treaty?

Is CITES a Rich Man’s Treaty?

by Arusha ♥ 1 Comment

Must we choose between elephants and less traffic congestion?
The southern African countries are meeting today in Malawi to decide whether to withdraw from the CITES convention. They almost convinced me to support them, and then, they blew it.

The withdrawal from CITES (Convention on the Trade in Endangered Species) by part of the world where half the elephants live would throw the treaty into turmoil, even though that might not immediately threaten elephants.

I find myself slowly moving into the southern African camp after a life-time of supporting the East Africans. I have little doubt that relaxing the ban on ivory sales will increase poaching, and that will unequivocally negatively impact tourism in East Africa.

But I’ve seen more and more the destruction that elephants are doing, and the pitiful response of NGOs and governments alike to assist with the human sacrifice. More and more, CITES is looking like a Rich Man’s Treaty.

Yes, CITES protects Kenyan tourism. But what does that mean? Is it protecting revenue to develop the country and sustain its environment, or is it more just giving us rich westerners a better vacation?

The withdrawal from CITES was proposed by Botswana. The 15 nations in the trading and tourism organization Botswana is petitioning would be directed to urge their governments to take official action to withdraw, which will take a long time. But if that ultimately happened, CITES would be thrown into turmoil.

I doubt anything except hot air will come out of the convocation, but it makes us realize once again that just protecting elephant without protecting people begs fairness. Elephant protectors argue that the healthier environment and proper management of these jumbo forms of wildlife actually contributes to economic stability. Politicians, farmers and the poor feel significantly otherwise.

With as much coincidence and political adroitness as the Goldman Sachs hearing before a successful Democratic vote to move forward bank regulation in the U.S. Congress, Botswana and Zambian media last week were incessant in reporting about a family of elephant near Sesheke destroying crops and threatening farmers and villagers.

Sesheke is in the triangular border of Namibia, Botswana and Zambia just outside the famous Chobe National Park, which earns more tourism revenue for Botswana than any of its other protected wildernesses. Botswana argues that the human suffering in the area is simply not worth the tourism revenue, or that the tourism revenue won’t suffer that much if elephants are protected less, or both.

Botswana claims that it could earn up to $7 million annually by selling ivory that was simply harvested from naturally dead animals if it withdraws from CITES. Meanwhile, it spends $1 million annually just to manage the stockpile of collected ivory it can’t sell. These are significant amounts for a poor country.

But alas, the southern Africans aren’t doing their cause much justice this time around. The whole meeting grew farcical yesterday when it elected the Zimbabwean Ministry for Tourism its chairman. There hasn’t been any significant tourism in Zimbabwe for years, and nearly everything Zimbabwe does these days destroys tourism and its own development!

So the serious intellectual argument dissolves in farce. My wrenched little conscience starts laughing hysterically.

Ultimately, I just feel that the Africans have the preeminent position in determining not just the morality but the economy of this contentious debate, and I’m ready to give them the benefit of the doubt.

But if they make their spokesman and point man someone from a country with as destitute morality and economy as Zimbabwe, how on earth can I embrace their arguments?

Eles for Bluefins

Eles for Bluefins

by Arusha ♥ 1 Comment

Bluefin reception eats last tuna.
The whole damned world is becoming politicized. It isn’t just us, and it’s not good for animals.

The quintessential world treaty, CITES, which has done so much good since its inception in the 1980s to protect endangered species became totally politicized at the March meeting in Doha.

Horse trading ruled the day. Sorry, elephant trading.

The convention resoundingly defeated any attempt to relax elephants’ listings as endangered. There will not even be any one-off sales of stockpiled ivory, as requested by Tanzania and Zambia and supported by most of the southern African countries.

Elephants won, but at the expense of bluefin tuna; many corals; hammerhead, oceanic whitetip and spiny dogfish sharks; and polar bears. The scientific reports tabled at the convention overwhelmingly supported at least some restrictions on these rapidly dwindling species.

But while in the past science ruled mitigated by a harsh but important consideration for local economies, this convention was ruled by politics.

And it was crass.

After eles won, the big fight was over bluefin tuna. There is wide consensus that the population is in catastrophic decline but also wide recognition of its economic importance, not just in Japan, but also in Europe. There is even an organization created by world powers just to regulate this single species: the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT).

It’s a very practical commission: the mandate – unlike CITES – is not to protect the biodiversity of planet earth, but its economies. Economists recognized that without regulation the bluefin will disappear, so that regulation that prolongs the species’ existence is a good economic move.

But ICCAT was politicized last year when the European Union made an end-run on the commission’s authority by claiming that Europe as a whole – rather than just the European countries’ that consume bluefin – must be regulated.

By the formulaic process that economists – as opposed to environmentalists – work, that allowed France, Portugal, Spain and Britain to harvest a disproportionate amount of bluefin compared to the population of Japan, since their consumption was numerically diminished by nonconsuming eastern European nations.

So it left Japan out in the cold … sorry, out in the sea.

Japan responded at CITES by flying in the trade and fishery ministers of more than two dozen African countries where Japan is the champion of free-world non-military foreign aid. These senior government officials trumped the scientists which used to be the sole delegates and voters at the convention.

Then, to celebrate before victory, Japan hosted a huge reception where it served blue-fin tuna. Martha Stewart would call that Bad Form.

And the polar bear trading didn’t stop there. Why did Senegal, who supported the ban on elephants, vote against listing polar bears? Supposedly because there was an Inuit delegation that successfully argued it was their livelihood (even though CITES could clearly not regulate indigenous hunting of species). I think rather it was tit for tat. Sorry, eles for bears.

What does it all mean, that the natural history of earth is now being won or lost by the best politicians?

What does it mean that national health is being won or lost by the best politicians?

The complex answer is the same. It means that science and practical sense loses to forces more immediate: and that usually means the pocket-books of the rich and powerful. Sorry, rich is powerful. (And vv.)

I wrote earlier about the slow response America had to all of this. Well, to some extent, America came through at the last moment. The Kenyans take credit for probably instructing the Americans on what was happening, and in all the battles, the Americans came out on the side of a green earth.

But it took them a while, and they had no good response to the blue-fin tuna dinner. There’s so much on the table at the moment for America’s new administration, that I guess they just didn’t see the fish.

Bipartisan with China, against Eles

Bipartisan with China, against Eles

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Destined for a chess board in Shanghai.
Destined for a chess board in Shanghai.
Two weeks from Sunday the Obama administration will finally let the world know what they think about elephant conservation. So far, they haven’t.

The silence is deafening. I’m afraid the whales and elephants are being negotiated away for sanctions against Iran.

This will be Obama’s first world forum on conservation. The last CITES convention held in Santiago under the Bush administration was a terrible embarrassment to all Americans. (See my blog.)

We were all hopeful that a very public and forceful presence by the new Obama administration this time would do much to recoup the deficit of trust in America that last conference produced.

But so far, nothing from Ken Salazar’s office. I called his press assistant, Tamara Ward, yesterday and she has not replied.

Many items are on the table, and the Obama administration has announced their position on some of the less controversial ones.

But the main act is a huge fight among African countries as to whether elephants should be downlisted from “endangered” to sort of “endangered” or “protected.” Any downlisting would then allow certain countries to sell stockpiles of ivory.

Zambia and Tanzania are leading the march this time to downlist the elephant, while Kenya and 26 other African countries are mounting the defense.

Zambia and Tanzania have huge stockpiles of ivory. This is collected from naturally dead elephants and confiscated from poachers.

Kenya, too, has stockpiles, but it knows that allowing any sales of ivory will stimulate the trade and motivate poachers. And Kenya has the foresight to know that a healthy elephant population will bring in much more revenue from tourism in the long term than one-off sales of tusks do in the short-term.

The scientific argument as to whether the elephant population is currently healthy enough to withstand increased poaching, or whether increased poaching could actually lead to extinction, is more arcane.

Like everything, today, the countries are actually inspired by money, not science.

It was hoped that the Obama administration would join the European Union in trying to bring some light to the scientific argument, which heavily suggests that increased poaching cannot be withstood.

The silence is deafening.

The conference opens March 13 in Doha, Qatar.

Led and founded by the United States and Kenya, among a few other concerned countries, CITES mirrors the U.S.’ own truly august Endangered Species Act (which preceded the international convention by more than a decade), and is a worldwide agreement on what forms of life can be passed through international borders.

By listing certain species from threatened to endangered into five different categories, the countries signing the convention agree to various regulations that are placed on their trade.

This could be as little as enhanced scrutiny, to as is currently the case with elephants, an outright ban on trade.

Scientists generally agree that prior to the corporate poaching of elephants which began in the late 1970s, that there were as many as 1.3 million. Today, there are 470,000.

But at the nadir of the long history of elephants, the population probably dipped to around 200,000 by the mid 1980s.

When the first CITES convention met to specifically deal with elephants and banned their trade, the black market price of a kilogram of ivory declined from $300 to $3 in one year. Poaching dried up.

By 1988, Kenya’s population of elephants had declined from 167,000 fifteen years earlier, to only 16,000. (Today it is around 30,000.)

As the situation improved throughout the continent, the irritated southern African countries (where poaching had always been better controlled) insisted they be allowed to sell legally harvested ivory.

The first sale after the treaty banned all sales in 1989 was allowed in 1999; 50 tons were exported to Japan. Poaching immediately started up, again. In June, 2002, the largest shipment of illegal ivory since the 1989 ban was seized by Singapore authorities. DNA analysis showed the ivory originated in Zambia. The cargo was destined for Japan and comprised 532 elephant tusks and more than 40,000 already cut pieces of ivory weighing more than 6.5 tons.

Nevertheless, the trend continued to allow more selling, in part because of the Bush administration’s tacit approval.

In November 2002 at a CITES convention, it was agreed that Botswana, Namibia and South Africa could export 60 tons of ivory.

Then, a second CITES-negotiated sale occurred in 2008. Zimbabwe sold108 tons to Japan and China. Predictions that this sale in particular would fuel an increasing appetite for ivory among the rapidly growing Chinese middle classes proved true.

In 2009 China opened 37 new government “ivory” stores.

Today, a kilo of ivory sells for $1500 in the Far East. In Kenya a poacher gets about $40, but even a small pair of 20-kilo tusks brings a poacher the equivalent of $800, just below the average amount a Kenyan worker earns per year.

It seems, though, that the Obama administration wants to be as namby-pamby with regards to conservation as it is to health care.

The U.S. delegation is supporting a handful of “listings” including a nearly extinct cockatoo in Indonesia and the very popular polar bear which impacts Eskimos and few others. Inuit are not party to trade agreements.

And, of course, “bipartisanism” with China is as important as with Republicans on health care.

We know where that got us.

Ivory Jubilee!

Ivory Jubilee!

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Officials from CITES were in Dar last week to inventory the ivory stockpile that Tanzania wants to sell. It looks more and more likely that Tanzania will prevail in Doha next month.

The only hope that the momentum for the sale will be derailed is with Tanzania’s tourism minister, Ms. Sharmsa Mwangung.

It’s not that Ms. Mwangung is against the sale, quite to the contrary. But her recent remarks to local journalists might just reveal Tanzania’s true reason for wanting the sale, and it isn’t a nice one.

In one of the most remarkably ridiculous arguments any conservation official could make for selling confiscated ivory Ms. Mwangung, told the East African, that Kenya’s argument that a one-off sale of Tanzania’s stockpile of ivory would increase poaching “does not hold water, because the number of elephants in the country has increased.”

That mind twister defies gravity.. There it goes!

Now being generous and retrieving that argument from the stratosphere before it finds a black hole, it could be that what she means is that poaching is OK for Tanzania, because they’ve got more elephants than they need. So that it doesn’t really matter if poaching increases, because the elephant population is growing fast enough to sustain the illegal culling.

Well… let’s try to tackle that one.

First, she’s right about the numbers. The elephant population has increased considerably in East Africa over the last decade. It’s still below what it was before the rampant poaching of the 1970s, but most would agree it’s pretty healthy. That doesn’t mean it’s too many, though.

But second, she’s wrong about the conclusion. Doing anything to encourage poaching – of anything, not just elephants – is madness. You’re basically telling criminals to get on with it! Support your country! Get us more ivory, there’s plenty of elephants!

Third, she’s ignoring the region as a whole for the selfish interests of Tanzania. That’s bad but understandable, (since it’s what South Africa does practically every day, anyway). Kenya is seriously going to suffer major increased poaching if Tanzania encourages the market.

This is mainly because Kenya shares a 500-mile long porous border with Somali and Ethiopia, easy conduits for the market of illegal ivory.

If Tanzania truly felt it had too many elephants, then like South Africa, Tanzania would officially cull elephants and argue for the sale of that specifically culled stockpiled ivory, not the sale of criminals’ successes!

But unfortunately perhaps, I doubt Ms. Mwangung is really that mercenary. It’s really probably much simpler.

Tanzania’s tourism minister has absolutely no idea what does or doesn’t cause poaching, and similarly, she probably has only one idea of why they should sell ivory: to get money.

And we can take it pretty easily from there. To get money for what? Whether it is gold in Mwanza or unnecessary radar equipment for the capital or unused trash trucks in Dar, large blocks of money tend to never show up in Tanzania where they’re supposed to.

So if we can just have Ms. Mwangung giving a few more press conferences, there’s hope!

Ivory Sink Hole

Ivory Sink Hole

by Arusha ♥ 1 Comment

Tanzania conservation authorities have plunged into quicksand and the sink hole could take all of East Africa with it.

This weekend Tanzania confirmed that it was aggressively trying to convince the 175 members of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to approve the sale of elephant ivory.

All the surrounding countries except Zambia strongly condemned the announcement by Director of Wildlife Erasmus Tarimo.

Kenya pointed out this was Tanzania’s worst year for elephant poaching in more than two decades. The announcement also followed a sad report Thursday that 12 rhinos had been poached in what had been considered the poaching-free park of Kruger in South Africa.

The United States has yet to take sides. This is a very troubling matter. The convention opens next month.

The irony is that one of the reasons Tanzania wants sales to be allowed is because it has confiscated so much illegal ivory just this year. Tarimo says the country is warehousing more than 90 tonnes of elephant tusks.

Based on the last such auctioned sale, that could be worth $20 million.

But the cycle of irony is self-perpetuating. If Tanzania gets to sell its ivory, there is likely to be more poaching as the market for ivory widens. Tanzania will confiscate more illegal ivory. Tanzania is discovering a mafia-like way to reap the rewards from what it claims is wrong.

”They (Cites) will track down our record in the past ten years to see history of elephants in the country,” Tarimo said, noting that the species have been increasing over the last ten years.

And you can be certain the Kenyans will highlight the horrible “history of elephant poaching in Tanzania” just this year alone.

All the countries in Africa with elephants hold large stockpiles of ivory, including Kenya. The southern African countries, which have historically managed anti-poaching infinitely better than the rest of the continent, have continually argued for controlled auctioned sales of ivory.

CITES has allowed three such sales, but never from the East African market.

Sinister Tail Clippers

Sinister Tail Clippers

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Poaching increases during tough economic times but is usually limited to elephants and rhino. Looks like giraffe are now being taken, too.

Wildlife officials at Arusha National Park (which is locally fondly called “giraffic park”) reported this weekend that a growing number of giraffe are being seen without tails!

Years ago when I first worked in Africa elephant hair bracelets were all the rage. I even bought them myself in the early 1970s, before elephant poaching had achieved such an insidious level. Later when we began to realize elephant were really threatened, the market turned briefly in the 1980s to giraffe hair bracelets.

I remember thinking at the time that the elephant hair was a poor man’s byproduct of the elephant hunt, but I also remember wondering if giraffe were really hunted, too. Farside cartoon material, of course: “Twili’s Twiga Barbershop”.

At the time there was only one market for giraffe hair bracelets: tourists. And there will always be a small market of tourists insensitive to the horror involved in bringing that hair to market.

Giraffe are fairly tame creatures in national parks, and especially so in Arusha. Around the Momela Gate – where the tailless giraffe are said to live – tourists have reported actually touching young giraffe. The young, especially, would be easy prey for getting their tails snipped off.

But would it really be worth it to the errant poacher? A giraffe kick – even from a youngster – is lethal.

A number of wildlife and health department officials working in the West Kilimanjaro region – the corridor between Kenya’s Amboseli national park and Tanzania’s Arusha national park – have reported whole giraffes being poached… to cure AIDS.

Apparently clever hair-tonic like salesmen are traveling in the more rural areas with concoctions of giraffe bone marrow that has achieved the reputation of being able to cure AIDS.

Tough economic times bring out the worst and the most creatively worst in all of us. So it’s likely that young giraffe aren’t having their tails snipped off – they’re being killed completely.

And so tourists blithely purchasing a giraffe hair bracelet on the streets of Arusha are supporting a much more onerous syndicate than weird tail clippers.

1% of Rhino Population Poached

1% of Rhino Population Poached

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KWS officials at their news conference yesterday. Photo courtesy of FM Capital Radio.
KWS officials at their news conference yesterday.
Photo courtesy of FM Capital Radio.

A major KWS nab of rhino poachers in Laikipia, yesterday, reveals new and terrible sophistication in rhino poaching.

Recently a friend chastised me for writing so negatively in my blogs, remarking specifically about the number of blogs about poaching. She’s right, of course. My blogs about poaching have increased substantially. Poaching always increases in an economic downturn, but this time Tanzanian and Ugandan wildlife management policies are even making it worse.

Tanzania and Uganda are substantially increasing their hunting and Tanzania has revoked its support to keep elephants on the CITES most endangered list.

Add to these wrong government moves, an increasingly bad approach being taken by international wildlife organizations, and we are creating the perfect storm for successful poaching.

I’m referring in particular to the incredibly stupid move just before Christmas by Fauna and Flora International (FFI) to import into Kenya’s Laikipia four of the remaining eight northern subspecies of black rhino in existence. (See my blog of December 26.)

Yesterday, a cell of poachers nabbed in Laikipia revealed a level of sophistication obviously much higher than the idiotic organization that dumped these precious rhino into the criminals’ lair.

A cell of twelve highly sophisticated “businessmen” – an organized corporate cell not just errant individuals – were arrested by the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) in possession of two recently poached rhino horns valued at $300,000.

Yes, you read correctly. The value of a rhino horn on Kenya’s black market is now around $150,000 per horn. It’s estimated that Fauna and Flora raised a quarter million dollars to transport the four rhino from Europe to the Ol Pejeta reserve in Kenya in December. Each of those rhino has two horns. The ROI for the bad guys, delivered right into their hands by supposedly good guys as their investment, is a neat 500%.

Try that on some Laikipia community based tourism project.

Baby born yesterday in the Ziwa Reserve, Uganda. Photo by Angie Genade.
Born yesterday in Uganda's Ziwa Reserve. Photo by Angie Genade.

According to KWS Director Julius Kipng’etich, the suspects took down a 10-year-old female rhino at the Mugie rhino sanctuary. This is one of the best patrolled sanctuaries in Laikipia, owned by the author, Kuki Gallmann, and it lies oh about a two hour’s easy drive from Ol Pejeta, which is not as well patrolled a reserve, where four of the most precious life forms on existence now are up for target practice!

The “cell” included two poachers with a marvelously new Landrover and new weapons, six professionals running the feed-through front at the Luonyek trading center near Baringo, and four other accomplices.

According to terrific reporting by Catherine Karong’o of Nairobi’s Capital FM Radio, 18 rhinos were poached in Kenya last year, 13 of which were on private reserves like Mugie and Ol Pejeta.

This would be the first time since 1984 in the heyday of animal slaughter that 1% of Kenya’s existing rhino population was killed in one year.

“For us in Kenya,” Kipng’etich explained, “even the loss of just one [rhino] means a lot to us.” Kenya’s has the third largest population of rhino of any country in the world. South Africa has the most in well protected reserves, and the U.S. has the second… in zoos.

According to the KWS Director, the Kenya black rhino population now stands at 600, while the white rhinos are 240. Globally, it is estimated that there are 4,200 black rhinos left, and 17,500 white rhinos.

And 4 (that is FOUR) of the remaining precious subspecies of northern black rhino (the only rhino immune to tse-tse born diseases) has been plopped into the poacher’s den with specious conservation applause to the idiots who funded the project. Including a Vice President of Goldman Sachs. (Oh, sorry, didn’t they make some other mistakes, recently?)

I could go on and on, but let me stop with this: no charity, no NGO, no private donation can succeed as well as government-to-government action and the swift, scientific aplomb of well-run government agencies. Kenya is beset by a myriad of problems, but the KWS works well. And the KWS’ work is now made much harder by Fauna and Flora International. FFI is an old and respected private conservation foundation, which has done a lot of good work. This time, what it did in December was DEAD wrong.

Rhinowash

Rhinowash

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This week’s arrival in Kenya of one of the most endangered animals left on earth was not the cute Christmas present the world media reported.

In fact, the relocation of 4 of the remaining 8 northern white rhino in existence, into a country where poaching is becoming epidemic, may be one of the most stupid moves the conservation world has ever engineered.

The four northern white rhino (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) came from a zoo in the Czech Republic. The only other place that this subspecies of rhino survives is in the San Diego Wild Animal Park. There are none in the wild.

Eight life forms is statistically impossible to propagate. What is hoped is that some of the genes of this subspecies will get preserved if the four animals breed with other rhino subspecies. It is known, for example, that this highly endangered animal is immune to tse-tse fly transmitted diseases, whereas its less endangered cousins in Africa are not.

“It makes no sense to move them at this point .. It’s way too little, too late,” said Randy Rieches, curator of mammals for the San Diego Wild Animal Park, which has two northern whites.

Rieches and a host of other scientists have been fighting this move for months. Lately the argument has been a financial one, with proponents claiming that the quarter million dollar cost of the move is insignificant compared to the chance they might breed, and critics claiming the cost of the move is being grossly underestimated and is diverting resources from other much needed conservation efforts.

Funds were raised from just a handful of individuals, including the vice chairman of Goldman Sachs of Australia and Berry White, a controversial animal activist nicknamed the “rhino whisperer.” The effort was coordinated by Rob Brett, the director of Fauna and Flora International.

This is stupid.

There has been some reluctance to embrace Rieches’ many astute and scientific criticisms for fear this is not a scientific but a PR question, and that San Diego lost out to the Czech zoo. This is rhinowash.

The four animals transported to Kenya haven’t bred in 30 years. While they are being transported into a private reserve (Ol Pejeta) which has a good record of captive rhino maintenance, it is still in Kenya, and even better reserves near Ol Pejeta like Solio have had poaching incidents.

As I’ve often written poaching isn’t just a Darth Vader pastime. It increases in times of economic stress, and need we be reminded of the current times?

Rhino are one of the easiest animals on the African veld to poach. And the horn is worth more than its weight in gold.

So I consider the risk ridiculous. And as for preserving the gene pool of this subspecies, there are more conservative ways that are much less expensive, such as DNA deep-freeze. There is little research on cloning rhino, but the chances (the “statistical” chance) of one day cloning a rhino from its preserved DNA is astronomically greater than hoping these four animals will breed into existing populations.

In fact zoos are one of the best places to breed rhinos, not a private tourist game ranch.

And much more DNA research needs to be done on rhinos, to move towards a genome that will specifically show the differences between the 8 world subspecies which are now mostly presumed from taxonomical differences. I fear that money is directing research, here, as individuals who probably spent less time reading the monographs on the controversy wrote checks to get their names emblazoned round the world as animal rescuers.

We just don’t seem to have the attention to read very far down the page. If there is some real value to saving these rhinos’ gene pool, flying them to Kenya is absolutely not the way to do it.

More Poaching Evidence

More Poaching Evidence

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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).

Ivory Crisis Continues

Ivory Crisis Continues

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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.

POACHING WAR?

POACHING WAR?

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The Tanzanian military is poised to enter game parks in anti-poaching capacities. Poaching is probably on the rise in this economic downturn, but this just doesn’t bode well.

Two weeks go, Tanzania’s Tourism Minister, Shamsa Mwangunga, announced that Tanzania’s military is being trained to enter the national park to deal with “sophisticated poaching syndicates and networks with international links [that] are swelling and imposing a serious threat to our helpless-wild-animals.”

In a truly laughable incident, the Minister reported conviscating zebra meat and hides that he said were headed to a “Pakistani niche.” I’m not sure what the “niche” is, but Pakistan is about as far from Tanzania as Disneyland in Paris.

There’s something more going on, here. I’ve written before how poaching always increases during economic downturns, and I’ve also written about how the breakdown of the CITES convention banning ivory sales has also contributed to increased poaching. But something just doesn’t sound right, here.

The Tanzanian military may be among East Africa’s best – after all, it was they who ousted Idi Amin. But they are still a rowdy bunch compared to the heavily trained and educated park ranger. I, for one, wouldn’t want them in my wilderness.

The end of April there was a huge explosion at a military ammunition depot in Dar-es-Salaam that has still not been explained. The BBC reported on May 20 that eight Tanzanian soldiers in Dar-es-Salaam beat a traffic policeman senseless; the man was only saved by a crowd of on-lookers who started shouting at the soldiers. And perhaps most noteworthy, a recently released transcript from a court case in Arusha last February named former Tanzania Peoples’ Defense Forces officer, (read: “soldier”), Nathaniel Kiure, guilty of illegal possession of giraffe meat and hides.

Hmmm.

People need to eat. Soldiers are people, and as reported by the Arusha Times Tanzanian soldiers’ pay is falling behind. Like many places in the world, recruits to the military often come from industrious if ambitious lads who have hit a brick wall in their search for a regular job. They’re already mad. Now, if they’re not being paid, and maybe not being fed very well, what are they to do?

Elephant Dilemma

Elephant Dilemma

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Elephant encounters are one of the most exciting and memorable of all safari events. But they’re getting harder to manage, and maybe, dangerous.

I’m certain that elephant poaching has begun, again. Last week in the Serengeti my heart dropped when unexpectedly I watched two families of around 20 elephant run for high heaven away from us when we were noticed.

We were on the backside of the Moru Kopjes just before the Kusini road junction. It’s one of the most beautiful places in Africa because of the density of giant kopjes, massive granite outcroppings now radiantly green with the scrub bush and candelabra blooming with the rains. But for a giant tusker it must be somewhat confining, since the passageways between the kopjes are often narrow.

Years ago in the 1970s I remember that every time we encountered elephants in the Serengeti, they ran away from us, just like these did, their huge backsides swinging opposite their flopping tails like a fat circus lady can-can dancer. This time they stopped after 300 yards were placed between us. That’s different than in the old days, when they didn’t stop until they couldn’t be seen. So I guess we’re at a real decision point, right now.

Last October 7.2 tons of ivory were sold to two Chinese and two Japanese businessmen on the first allowed sale of ivory since 1999. (The 1999 sale was a single auction to a Japanese businessman and the first since the ban on ivory sales adopted worldwide ten years earlier.) Opponents of the sale warned at the time that it would spark new elephant poaching.

The sale was the culmination of years of wrangling between the southern and East African countries within the CITES convention. CITES (the UN Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) is the world’s most subscribed treaty: more than 200 countries bound together in the 1980s to end the decimation of elephants by banning the sale and transport of ivory.

The southern African countries are much more developed than East Africa. Their national parks and reserves have been well managed for nearly 100 years. Poaching was never the problem with them that it was in East Africa. In Kenya, 95% of its elephants had been wiped out by poaching; Tanzania had a nearly 80% loss.

So East Africa’s elephant fate was saved when the convention was adopted. By ending the trade in ivory, there was no value to poaching elephants.

And for the 15 years thereafter, southern African countries continued to stockpile ivory. Elephants die and throughout Africa, especially in East Africa, elephant hunting is allowed. In southern Africa especially, elephants are regularly culled to maintain what local scientists believe is a better natural balance in the protected reserves. Ivory built up in warehouses that cost a lot just to manage. But the ivory couldn’t be sold.

A large portion of the conservation efforts in southern Africa was lost when the ivory sale revenue was ended. In Zimbabwe, 95% of the ministries revenue for administering the national parks came from the sale of ivory.

The businessmen paid $1.3 million for the 7.2 tons, or about $75/pound. Today, most elephants carry tusks weighing about 70-100 pounds, valuing each animal at around $10,000-15,000. A senior park ranger in the Amboseli Game Reserve makes approximately $3,000 annually. A starting ranger can earn as little as $100/month.

The Amboseli Trust for Elephants now reports that poaching is definitely restarting in Kenya. As many as a dozen elephants have been killed recently in their area, their tusks removed.

China has been actively rebuilding Kenya’s roads. Most suspect this is because they soon will announce having found oil in Kenya. But recently the roadbuilding was suspended after the Kenyan government expelled several Chinese road building managers for having been discovered with new, raw ivory.

A happy elephant is relatively easy to approach. An angry elephant, or one that feels it is cornered, is incredibly dangerous. Must we now “back off” our elephant encounters on safari?