Baraza

Category: Ivory, elephants, enforcement, poaching, wildlife trade | Date: Nov 18 2008 | By: Maina

A coordinated swoop on illegal ivory traders and poachers across 5 African countries yielded one ton of poached ivory and 57 illegal dealers this weekend. The swoop, coordinated by INTERPOL and involving more than 300 personnel from the Lusaka Agreement Task Force (LATF) local police, wildlife authorities and intelligence agencies in the 5 countries, is being described as the biggest crackdown on illegal wildlife trade in the world.

The operation - a result of 4 months of intensive intelligence work which started in June 2008 - was conducted in Kenya, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Uganda and Zambia. In Kenya alone, forces consisting of INTERPOL, the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), LATF, the National Security Intelligence Services and local police bagged 36 suspects and seized 113 pieces of ivory items weighing 358-kilograms. The Kenya Police and KWS are still tracking four suspects who slipped through the highly coordinated dragnet.

The huge Kenyan operation is summarized thus by the KWS:

A total of 10 KWS field units in areas most prone to illegal ivory trade and trafficking in Kenya participated in the operation. The Kenya Police, Lusaka Agreement Task force, National Security Intelligence Service, Customs Department, the Judiciary and the INTERPOL supported KWS. The operation was conducted in Nairobi, Amboseli, Tsavo East, Mombasa, Isiolo, Marsabit, Narok, Maralal, Nakuru and Aberdares.

The law enforcement agencies in all 5 countries had decided to synchronize the operation in each country so that any suspect who tried to cross borders would be sniffed out and stung at the airports or other crossing points. The approach seems to have worked.

According to the INTERPOL Secretary General Ronald K. Noble, Operation Baba is the first in a series of operations of this nature being planned worldwide.

“International co-operation is key to law enforcement today. With the ‘globalisation’ of criminal syndicates, people who abide by the law have no alternative than to confront those syndicates in the international arena,” said Mr. Noble. “This is where INTERPOL’s core function of operational police support services, which can facilitate co-operation between law enforcement agencies in multiple countries, proves its worth.”

I commend all the law enforcement agencies that were involved in this operation and all those who supported the operations either financially, tactically or otherwise. I think with more of these kind of operations in the future, we are finally headed somewhere in the fight against elephant poaching.

Quick Facts:
Operation Baba was so named in honor of Ranger Gilbert Baba, a Ghanaian ranger who was shot and killed by poachers in the line of duty some 10 years ago

The Lusaka Agreement Task Force was created in 1994 by governments in this region as a mechanism for regional co-operation to fight illegal trade in wild animals and plants.

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Tags: elephant, INTERPOL, Ivory, KWS, Lusaka Agreement Task Force, poaching, wildlife trade

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Category: Forests, bushmeat, poaching, wildlife trade | Date: Nov 17 2008 | By: Maina

A US geneticist from the University of Arizona is planning to use DNA testing to study the roaring bushmeat trade in west Africa with a view of identifying “species that can be harvested sustainably”.

According to a report on KTar.com, the geneticist, Hans-Werner Herrmann, will analyze the bushmeat at village markets, track how it got there and study how the information could be used to better manage affected wildlife populations. He hopes that finding species that can be hunted sustainably will curtail poaching and halt wildlife decimation particularly in African forests.

According to Herrmann, rural Africans are driven into bushmeat hunting and trade by extreme poverty and he cannot just say it is bad to hunt without answering the poverty question.

Roughly 1 million tonnes of bushmeat are harvested in the badly ravaged African forests. a CIFOR report that Dr Richard Leakey felt had erred in its recommendations says that 80% of proteins and fats in rural Africans’ diets come from bushmeat. This is a big problem and solutions to bushmeat hunting need to be found before all wildlife becomes extinct.

The study will involve African researchers in Cameroon taking DNA samples from bushmeat in the markets, and sending it to Arizona for analysis and identification. They will then track how the meat got to the market and study how the information can be used to help in management of the affected wildlife populations.

How useful this study will be is subject to debate. Particularly, when they find wildlife species that they perceive to be “bushmeat viable”, does it mean that they will recommend legalization of bushmeat hunting? Perhaps we need this research to prove that there is no way bushmeat can be harvested sustainably.

There are three things that make sustainable hunting virtualy impossible: one, there is not enough wildlife, two, there are too many humans on the planet, and three, our African governments have problems implementing anti-poaching legislation. To me, these are the fundamental questions: not whether wildlife can be harvested sustainably.

Perhaps the researchers - who by the way have applied for a $1-million from the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) for the study - should use these funds to find out how we can prevent the malignant human population growth from overrunning the planet and all wild things that live in it. Better still, these funds could be used to find alternatives sources of protein and income (poverty reduction) for the rural poor in Africa. Alternatives that are not bushmeat.

For wildlife populations to recover, and to avoid imminent mass extinctions, all manner of wildlife trade needs to be stopped - at the very least, as a precaution. We don’t really understand wildlife population dynamics that well to sustainably use it. We haven’t yet fathomed the complex interaction between humans and wildlife to say that we are in control of hunting and trade.

We know a few things though. One, bushmeat hunting has already resulted in the empty forest syndrome, where the forest vegetation is relatively intact but no wild animals live there. Two, governments have good legislation intended to control bushmeat poaching but implementation is weak. Three, losing our wildlife is not good for the planet.

With these truths in mind, perhaps what we need is to stop all human-centric arguments that perpetuate eating of wildlife and start focusing on finding ways to improve wildlife’s welfare.

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Tags: Africa, bushmeat, CIFOR, DNA, extinction, forest, hunting, richard leakey, UNEP, University of Arizona, wildlife, wildlife trade

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Category: Somalia, poaching, wildlife trade | Date: Nov 11 2008 | By: Maina

Yes, it’s hard to believe, but two websites are reporting that military helicopters are leaving the battleships anchored off the Somalia coast to combat Somali pirates, and getting into the mainland to hunt wildlife illegally .

According to a report published today in one of the websites (Garoweonline.com), foreign choppers, which the the local Somali elders have not properly identified, arrived in three separate days and left with live specimens of ostrich and deer. The choppers were later seen landing in warships offshore. Although the elders have not been able to infallibly identify whose warships these are, one was seen to be flying the American flag.

In the other site (Mareeq.com), a reporter, Abdi Guled - despite writing in very bad English - almost certainly believes that the choppers bear the American banner. According to Guled’s report, the local authorities in the pirate infested central Somalia region are colluding with the purported hunters. Apparently, the local chiefs have signed contracts with foreign agencies to transact this illegal business.

The report on Garoweonline says that a local elder in the Maduq region of central Somalia, Mr Mohamed Hussein Warsame, has been interviewed by reporters from the BBC Somali Service about the trade. I have searched for the report on BBC website but I have not yet found it. AllAfrica.com, an aggregator of African news has also carried the report from Garoweonline.

While these might be outrageous allegations, we cannot rule out the possibility of this happening. We have seen foreign military and work forces getting involved in illegal activities in their outposts before. We have all heard the Chinese workforce in Africa being blamed for the escalation of ivory poaching in DRC, Zimbabwe and other states with dysfunctional governments.

If indeed this is happening, then it would be quite a shame. I hope the alleged BBC reporters who have the story can publish it so we can quote from a source perceived to be less biased. A source with a global voice. I hope other independent or big media house journalist can do an independent investigation into that matter. As long as they don’t get kidnapped by Somalia gunmen.

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Tags: battleships, DRC, hunting, Madug, pirates, poaching, Somalia, US troops, wildlife, wildlife trade, Zimbabwe

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Category: China, Ivory, Zimbabwe, elephants, wildlife trade | Date: Nov 10 2008 | By: Maina

Our fears that the one-off ivory auction by four southern Africa states to China and Japan was not going to end well may come true. Not that that is any cause for us to wear a smirk and say “we told you so”, but a time for us to ask CITES to open their eyes.

There are reports in a Zimbabwean newspaper saying that Robert Mugabe’s government - cash strapped and hungry for foreign exchange to pay for imports - is planning to have the Chinese government pay for the ivory with guns Mugabe’s people ordered just before this year’s Zimbabwean presidential run-off. Apparently, Mugabe was facing an imminent end to his three-decade grip on power and decided to buy guns to wage war against the opposition should he loose the elections. The best place to buy these guns was from China since they are not participating in the arms embargo by western nations on Zimbabwe.

The report, published in the Zim Daily, indicate that part of the $480,000 Zimbabwe raised when they auctioned 3.5 tons of ivory last week is earmarked as payment for a cache of military hardware set to be flown into the capital Harare soon. The reports also indicate that in the run up to the ivory auction, “substantial quantities of high caliber weapons” had disappeared from the armory of Zimbabwe’s department of parks and wildlife near State House, Harare. During the same period, 200 elephants are reported to have been killed in the Zambezi Valley bordering Zambia. The Zimbabwe government blames this carnage on foreign animal rights groups which “want to thwart Mugabe’s bid to have CITES relax its trade rules”.

These reports have put the “fear of Mugabe” in conservationists who are now worried that Zimbabwe’s claim of being protector of the elephant is just a sham. Official Zimbabwe reports indicate that the country has 70,000 elephants in the wild, but experts think this is just window dressing by the government to get CITES to approve their proposal to sell all their alleged 20 tons of ivory stockpiles. The head of the wildlife department, Brigadier Albert Kanunga, a retired army officer, had lobbied CITES to allow them to sell 10 tons of ivory but only 3.5 tons were approved.

It is alleged that the ivory auctioned by Zimbabwe was flown out of Harare Airport on Thursday 6 November. If, then, the ivory for guns scam is true, the Chinese will bring Mugabe the guns sooner than latter. Apparently, an earlier shipping of Chinese military equipment bound for Harare had been turned away in the South African port of Durban. That could be the reason why China will fly in the new cache of arms.

Eight years ago in July 2000, a Nairobi based German wildlife conservation organization, ECOTERRA had revealed that Mugabe had sold 8 tons of ivory to China in exchange for firearms. According to the report on BNet website, the ivory had been flown out of Zimbabwe through Libya.

With such a record, it would be feasible to believe that last weeks CITES-backed auction will indeed be used to pay for more guns and ammo some of which - given the mysterious disappearance of arms from the wildlife department’s armory and consequent upsurge of elephant poaching- could be used in “harvesting” more ivory for Mugabe’s government. Which then negates the CITES claim that one-off sales will help elephant protection by reducing the attractiveness of poaching and investing the funds into conservation.

Moreover, Zambian and Senegalese middlemen operating in Zimbabwe organize underground deals through the “close-knit Chinese community” in South Africa to service the high demand for illegal ivory in China. This would imply that even South Africa, the allegorical “Big Brother” of Africa, is not fully in control of the ivory situation. In as much as Big Brother may have a tab of it’s own ivory stockpiles, they cannot rule out being used as a conduit for illegal ivory from tattered Zimbabwe. In short, the entire African continent is not ready for these - in Dr Richard Leakey’s words - ill advised one-off auctions.

In the end, what will save the elephant, in my view, is not how cheap ivory becomes - a la CITES - but how well we convince ordinary Chinese, Japanese and other Asian communities that they can practice their cultural beliefs without Ivory. Remove the demand for ivory and let the elephant roam the sunny grasslands of Africa without fear - like they did for millennia gone by. Legally selling government-held stockpiles will not kill demand.

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Tags: China, CITES, elephant, guns, Ivory, ivory auctions, Japan, Mugabe, poaching, richard leakey, wildlife trade, Zimbabwe

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Category: China, Ivory, Trade, elephants, wildlife trade | Date: Oct 28 2008 | By: Maina

Today, 28 October 2008, Namibia opened bidding for the 9 tonnes of ivory stockpiles it wants to auction in the controversial CITES backed one-off sale. The media has been shut out of this auction. According to a report appearing in the Namibian, a national paper, The Ministry of Environment and Tourism (MET) never made an official announcement about the international auction. Most people would wonder if the government is ashamed or it’s trying to hide something.

Tonnes of applications and requests by international and national media houses piled into the Ministry’s in boxes but nobody was going to bother. When asked on Monday, the Deputy Environment and Tourism Minister Leon Jooste told media representatives that “It is too late to change the Ministry’s strategy with regard to the ivory auction.”

Local and regional conservation NGOs will also not be let into the auction. A request by the southern Africa office of the International Association for Animal Welfare (IFAW) to be allowed observer status was curtly rejected some two weeks ago. “The [MET] official just flatly denied us the possibility,” Christina Pretorius, Programme Manager of IFAW Southern Africa, is quoted as having told The Namibian on Monday.

Botswana will sell it’s 44 tonnes on Friday 30 October while South Africa, with the largest sale of 51 tonnes, and ZIMBABWE, 4 tonnes, will follow suit on 2 and 5 November respectively. In total, a whooping 108 tonnes of ivory will enter the market. The effect of this massive influx of ivory in the Chinese and Japanese markets, according to most conservationists, will be a corresponding increase in poaching to affect the rest of Africa. Traffic, the trade monitoring body under CITES however maintains that there is no evidence to support these allegations. Whatever happened to taking precautions?

The southern Africa states participating in this one off sale of ivory stockpiles first approved - in principle - by CITES in 2002, made $ 5-million in the last one off sale some 9 years ago in 1999. This year, according to the BBC, they expect to make $ 30-million - quite an increase occasioned just by the entry of China into the fray. They say this money will go towards elephant conservation. Traffic says that the ivory will not leave China and Japan into other markets. The two governments have promised to ensure that that does not happen but that is another story. There is evidence - overwhelming evidence - that illegal ivory trade is still alive and far outsells the legal trade.

The wisdom of this sale is quite questionable. If elephants are still endangered in most African states, then there is no logic really to let the sale of ivory - with the potential of fanning poaching - to anyone. Inasmuch as the data that Traffic presented does not show any increase in illegal trade, the fact remains that illegal trade will not go away just because the stockpiles have been sold and $30-million is injected into conservation (and this - if the money does indeed end up in conservation - will be in states where elephant populations are already growing).

Moreover, reports from Zimbabwe indicate that a large percentage of the wildlife has been eaten by desperate country folk or hunted illegally by unscrupulous safari hunting companies as the country’s governance sunk into an abyss. How can anyone justify allowing Zimbabwe to sell ivory? Besides, who knows when South Africa, Namibia and Botswana would end up with a dysfunctional government resulting in massive poaching and - perhaps - eventual extinction of elephants?

The insertion that selling these stockpiles will help conservation is myopic. This sale will only keep demand for ivory alive. And when the southern states have no more ivory to sell, who will feed China’s growing hunger for ivory? Is it not the rest of Africa where elephants are not properly protected? Is it not poaching?

One Kevin C from Taipei commenting on the BBC article puts things rather candidly:

Sounds like It is also a very good idea to sell drug stockpiles in police office. It will reduce the market value and make it less profitable to smuggle and produce it underground.

You are always welcome to have your say. This is a matter that needs all your input. Tell us what you think.

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Tags: auction, China, CITES, hunting, Ivory, ivory stockpiles, Japan, Namibia, poaching, southern Africa, wildlife trade, Zimbabwe

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Category: Climate change, wildlife trade | Date: Oct 11 2008 | By: Maina

In a previous post in this blog, Paula reminded us that destroying the environment is far worse than the collapse of banking and other financial services that we are witnessing worldwide. But climate change, accelerated by the same factors that are contributing to loss of biodiversity, has an uglier face that could lead to further economic disasters.

A report produced by a team from the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Global Health Program and presented at the ongoing IUCN World Conservation Congress in Barcelona, Spain shows that climate change is not just a problem of rising sea level and melting ice-caps. Climate change, according to the report, will also bring with it the plague of emerging infectious diseases such as Lyme disease, yellow fever, plague, avian influenza, Ebola, cholera, and tuberculosis which have crippling economic consequences.

Reportedly, these diseases, which can be transmitted from wildlife to humans, could reach cataclysmic levels as climate change continues to ravage this planet. The WCS has selected 12 out of the 600 ailments that are shared between humans and animals and labeled them the Deadly Dozen because of their immense human health risk. There are 14,000 recorded ailments but the 600 are known to infect both humans and wildlife.

As climate change affects temperature and precipitation patterns and levels, wildlife is being forced to change their migratory patterns, their habitat ranges and other population behaviors. Pathogen carriers, such as ticks and mosquitoes, are also expanding their ranges to areas where the resident animals and humans have not evolved any defense mechanisms against the pathogens attacks. In short, diseases are coming into areas where no one is prepared to deal with them.

Wildlife, in their resident ecosystems, have evolved with their pathogens and therefore have mechanisms to limit disease prevalence such that there are hardly any epidemics. Where the hand of climate change has played havoc to the ecosystem, there may be new pathogens or the old pathogens may be favored by - say - warmer temperatures thus becoming more successful. This could lead to epidemics.

The health experts at WCS believe that programmes to monitor the health of wildlife could act as early warning systems that can help prevent the outbreaks of epidemics among humans. An example is the Global Avian Influenza Network for Surveillance (GAINS) programme which monitors the movement of bird flu through wild bird populations around the world. Congresswoman Rosa L. DeLauro (D-CT3), a champion for the GAINS Program, is quoted in the WCS website saying that “Emerging infectious diseases are a major threat to the health and economic stability of the world.” She adds that “What we’ve learned from WCS and the GAINS Program is that monitoring wildlife populations for potential health threats is essential in our preparedness and prevention strategy and expanding monitoring beyond bird flu to other deadly diseases must be our immediate next step.”

Monitoring wildlife thus becomes important. But to monitor wildlife, such wildlife must exist. An article posted at the National Geographic website by Christine Dell’Amore quotes William Karesh, co-author of the report and vice president of Global Health Programs at the New York-based WCS saying “Without the presence of wildlife, we would be clueless about what’s going on in the environment.”

Wildlife, and its role in the propagation of infectious diseases is already aided by nasty unnatural factors such as poaching and illegal wildlife trade supported by the large wildlife products market in Asia. China’s appetite for Civet-meat for instance, according to Dell’Amore’s article, led to a sudden outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) which reached epidemic levels in 2002.

Dr Richard Leakey, in his statement against proposals to legalize bushmeat, cited the spread of these dangerous diseases as a good reason not to allow the killing and eating of wild animals. It is now even more imperative not to allow bushmeat hunting and trade given that climate change, a much more complex problem, has reared its ugly head into an already deteriorating situation.

This is a two pronged problem now. When bushmeat and climate change combine forces, then woe betide planet earth. Estimates of how much these disease outbreaks can cost have already been done, and it is pretty obvious that they are costlier than the credit crunch and collapsing banks. For instance, WCS says that “avian influenza and several other livestock diseases that have reemerged since the mid-1990s have caused an estimated $100 billion in losses to the global economy.”

Three things come to my mind right now: one, we have to adopt sustainable living as humans to reduce the severity of climate change and its effects; two, now more than ever, we have to safeguard our wildlife for they are our early warning systems against outbreaks of these deadly diseases; and three, bushmeat trade has to come to an end - and there is no question of whether it is legal or illegal.

What is your take on this matter?

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Tags: bushmeat, Climate change, disease, Dr. Richard Leakey, health, IUCN Congress, National Geographic, WCS, wildlife

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Category: wildlife trade | Date: Oct 08 2008 | By: baraza

After going through the IUCN reports yesterday I was shocked to read Glaucia’s latest blog post from Brazil about 225 MORE baby parrots seized - this was in addition to the 400 parrots seized earlier. Parrots, are among the most intelligent birds. Their popularity stems mostly from their ability to mimic human voices. This site tries to match your needs with the characteristics of differn parrot types - criteria include ‘noise level”, “talking ability”, and “cuddliness”. According to the site, the Amazon  Blue fronted and it’s relatives all score high on these criteria - and all will live to at least 50 years of age (African Grey parrots go up to 60). They are popular because like dogs they bond with indivduals.

Because of these factors, and perhaps the declining sociability of people, the popularity of keeping parrots as pets is growing and as a result they are subjected to more exploitation than any other group of birds.  A study done in Tanzania a few years ago revealed that only 1 in 100 taken from the wild actually makes it to a pet store!

Why would anyone get into such business? Money of course. Amazon parrots sell for $600 while African Greys go for 900 according to this website . Even if the poacher in Africa only gets 1/100th of the price for each parrot, it’s worth it - afterall, most people survive on less than 1$ per day. I believe that it is these prices that drive the illegal trade.

While working for the KWS I discovered  that thousands of parrots are held illegally in Kenya - most are caught by children in neighbouring countries, transported by dealers and arrive over the borders quietly in bags and tubes. They are purchased and kept clandestinely by wealthy people, some get exported. Everyone knows it’s illegal so to avoid detection by the authorities many are kept in small cages in back rooms… resulting in serious maltreatment and are sometimes kept in deplorable conditions. Talking to the owners I realised that these were not bad people, they loved the parrots, they felt that they had ‘rescued’ the bird from certain death…..they didn’t  understand why they were being victimized. They had also bonded very strongly with these charismatic birds and considered them a member of the family.

If the person  left Kenya they could not take the parrot as it did not have ‘papers’ so they would leave it with a well wisher …and so the cycle continued.

When I met I met Jane Goodall she told me about her experiences with African Greys. She believes that they don’t just mimic, that they are intelligent enough to actually ‘talk’. She told me this story  which is apparently related in this book  “Of Parrots and People: The Sometimes Funny, Always Fascinating, and Often Catastrophic Collisions of Two Intelligent Species.”..in a review of the book in the Los Angeles Times state “Jane Goodall learned of one such New York parrot and scheduled a visit. In advance of her arrival, the “parront” (a parrot’s human “parent”) showed the parrot pictures of the primatologist with chimpanzees and explained her work. When Goodall arrived, the parrot looked at her and asked, “Got a chimp?”

Ie. they say things for a purpose. Dr Goodall is not alone in this thinking. Though there are many skeptics out there, I agree with the view that parrots are special and intelligent. This story of a lost parrot that told the police it’s name and address convinces me.

KWS rules were to conduct an all out seizure of all these thousands of illegal parrots but we knew that nobody had the means to look after them if they were seized. So we turned a blind eye.  After I met Jane I decided to take her advice and began planning to offer an amnesty to those who came clean - to enable parrot keepers to get papers which would allow them to take care of these special birds more openly, get veterinary support, and start a parrot owners association that would set standards, advise, and provide networks for parrot lovers, plus provide the much needed register of birds and owners to prevent them from returning into trade illegally. I also wanted to build a huge aviary so that any owners who wanted to let go of their parrot could do so and create an environment for the parrots to live in a flock.  Once big enough a flock could be returned to a suitable safe place in the wild.

My colleagues at the KWS however didn’t agree with me - they felt that an amnesty would drive further illegal trade further and lead to even more poaching. I could see that but if the only solution was to arrest and charge anyone with a parrot - the trade would remained underground and parrots would continue to suffer, and we’d never get information on the scale of the trade.

After I left the Wildlife Service the status quo remained.  I think about the parrots situation all the time and wonder whether the amnesty would have helped. I wonder what we should have done.

If you had the power to decide… what would you do?

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Tags: African grey parrots, blue fronted parrot, illegal trade, Parrots

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Category: Rhinoceros, wildlife, wildlife trade | Date: Oct 08 2008 | By: Maina

As the world was busy watching for the outcome of the US financial bailout plan, another bailout plan had come to fruition in Kenya. This second bailout was geared not at rescuing the people from the rising cost of living or the high cost of food but at saving the black rhino, one of the most critically endangered animals in the planet.

For the first time in 25 years, some 15 rhinos were released from captivity after successful breeding in Kenya’s Ngulia Rhino Sanctuary at the heart of Tsavo West National Park. This is a great achievement that follows a long breeding project that begun with the hope of bringing back Kenya’s black rhinos from the brink of extinction. Kenya had, in two decades, seen its black rhino population plummet from an estimated 20,000 rhinos to paltry 350 animals.

This was during the poaching crisis of the 1980s when rhinos were poached en masse for their horn. This poaching inferno was fanned by the demand for rhino horn in Asia and the Middle east for use in traditional medicine and for artifacts. When Dr Richard Leakey spearheaded the formation of the Kenya Wildlife Service in the 80s, the remaining rhinos were put into sanctuaries and accorded 24 hour armed protection inside the fenced-in sanctuaries. Ngulia is the prime government rhino sanctuary in Kenya.

The rhino population has been improving steadily since then and now some 500 black rhinos are estimated to live in Kenya. This release into the open wild is therefore an attempt to have the rhinos breed naturally again in the land - in the greater Tsavo - that they once roamed free and in abundance. Should the release be successful, the project partnership composed of the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) hope they can replicate it in Tanzania and Uganda.

Quite a significant population of rhinos - in Kenyan measure - have been successfully breeding in private sanctuaries. In January 2007, for instance, the most important rhino sanctuaries in northern Kenya, Ol Pejeta Conservancy, Ol Jogi and Solio ranches, conducted the largest rhino translocation in human history when they moved around - as part of a gene and population improvement project - some 34 rhinos. In this translocation exercise, Ol Pejeta got 26 rhinos from Solio and 4 from Ol Jogi. Ol Jogi then got 4 rhinos from Solio to improve the gene pool among their rhinos. This translocation in 2007 was helped a lot by the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy.

Rhino conservation in Kenya is becoming a model of how active species management can actually pull back a species from the very jaws of extinction. I commend the KWS and the ZSL for this achievement.

You can watch clips of the release of the rhinos at the BBC
You can also read the October 3rd news item at ZSL

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Category: wildlife trade | Date: Aug 16 2008 | By: baraza

Congratulations to the ICCN for busting up an ape trafficking ring.

While it’s such a relief that the baby chimpanzeeTonga was rescued, it’s depressing that chimp and gorilla trading seems to be the order of the day in some parts of the Congo.

This particular chimp was in captivity for over three months before this operation took place! We’ve been receiving tips on and off for a while now. We have heard that there are some south Africans in Goma with chimps in their garden, and we also reported an observation of a chimp or possibly gorilla baby being trafficked by boat across lake Kivu to Goma by 4 Americans! The baby was carried away in a vehicle belonging to a reputable ape conservation group! It probably ended up being flown out of Goma airport.

Seeing the look on baby Tonga’s face, and receiving further reports of how openly this trade is happening it’s heart wrenching. I trust that with Emmanuel at the helm, these two  incidents will be investigated and the culprits brought to book.

Incidentally, it’s not just DR Congo where ape trade seems to be in the hands of the military - we have reports of similar behaviour by officials in southern Sudan.

Emmanuel, Pierre, and everyone else involved, please be carerful - the Congolese military sounds like a bit of a shambles if this kind of thing is happening.

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Tags: chimpanzee trafficking, DR Congo, ICCN, illegal trade in apes

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Category: China, Ivory, Trade, elephants, wildlife trade | Date: Jul 30 2008 | By: Maina

In an earlier post, I reported that the US is second only to China in the size of the ivory blackmarket. Well, although most American buyers were said to be unaware of the legality of their ivory purchases, it turns out that there are glaring legal loopholes that traders are exploiting to fan the blackmarket.

Acclaimed wildlife trade investigators, Dr Esmond Bradley Martin and Daniel Stiles, spent several months in the US visiting 16 of America’s main towns and cities where ivory is sold between 2006 and 2007. Their report, Ivory Markets in the USA, has just been published. The report shows that even though the US is far ahead in its control of illegal ivory trade compared to Africa and Asia (US only comparable to Europe), its large population and vast buying power renders stringent control of ivory trade critical.

And there are controls. The US Endangered Species Act (ESA) and various other legislation conform with CITES stipulations but there is leeway that can be exploited. Antique worked ivory (at least 100 years old), for example, can legally be imported and sold (according to both CITES and US laws). This leaves the market wide open for fake antiques (fabricated using smoke, dyes and exposure to heat and acidity). Trophy tusks can also be imported legally from the southern African countries that allow hunting but the raw ivory cannot be used commercially. This opens shady alleys where ivory from anywhere can easily find its way into the market with fake documents of origin. The same law allows sale of trophy tusks imported before July 1975, when CITES came into force, which again makes it that much easier to sell all and any purported trophy.

Twenty-two states have integrated federal wildlife laws into state laws and there is generally good cooperation between state and federal agencies. When wildlife specimens originate outside the US, however, law enforcement agencies find it hard to deal with and ivory is no exception. “Once ivory enters the US, it can move free of inspection within the 50 states. Neither state nor federal agencies regularly inspect shops or antiques fairs for wildlife products.” say Martin and Stiles in an article published in Swara magazine.

In a country where 24,000 worked ivory items on sale in 657 outlets were recorded by this particular investigation, it is no wonder that the market should be second only to China’s statistics. Of the 16 cities investigated, New York had by far the most ivory for sale: a minimum of 11,376 ivory items in 124 outlets, which is almost 5 times higher than the second highest, San Fransisco Bay Area with 2,777 items in 49 outlets. Greater LA records a close 2,605 items although in more outlets (170) closing the top three. Ivory workers are however difficult to find since they mostly work from home and are widely scattered throughout the 50 state colossus.

Interestingly, most of the recent imports of ivory into the US came from China! Since the US has never conducted any census on ivory and maintains no stockpile, it is difficult to know how much ivory is out there.

Granted, the US authorities hold the record for the highest number of ivory seizures in the world. But they also seize large quantities of illegal drugs but that does not mean that they are winning the war on drugs. Illegal ivory, like these drugs, still gets in.

The problem is that although CITES resolutions have called for various actions to control ivory trade, the US has implemented none of them. Particularly, according to the article by Martin and Stiles in Swara magazine, the US should pay attention to these actions:
1) Prohibit the unregulated domestic sale of ivory. the owner of the ivory should prove lawful possession
2) Register or license all importers, wholesalers, and retailers dealing in ivory items
3) Establish nationwide procedure, especially in retail outlets, informing tourists and other non-nationals not to purchase ivory in cases where it is illegal for them to import it into their own home countries
4) Introduce recording and inspection procedures to enable government agencies to monitor the flow of ivory within the country

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Tags: CITES, elephants, Ivory, US, wildlife trade

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