Baraza

Category: Emergencies, Zimbabwe, bushmeat, poaching | Date: Nov 25 2008 | By: Maina

I read Iregi Mwenja’s first installation in his two-part series called Painful Death and I was quite disturbed. Looking at the pictures of animals trapped and helpless, or dead and rotting, or - perhaps even worse - maimed, was very upsetting.

As if on cue, Rosemary Groom of Zimbabwe Wild Dogs finally gets a picture of a wild dog puppy that she has been told that it was moving around with a wire snare still tightly digging into the flesh of its neck and she posts a blog entry. I very well know that wire snares are the “weapons” of choice for many subsistence and small scale commercial poachers. But these nasty, stomach heaving photos jolt me to a stark reality that may have gone sublime in my mind. It just looks painful how these animals die.

I try to be rational and unemotional when discussing wildlife crime. I try to remain level headed but this method of harvesting bushmeat is simply barbaric. And it peels off my gentlemanly, unemotional, rational skin to expose the painful bare flesh that is my emotions. It is hard not to get emotional when you see this kind of death.

Iregi Mwenja says that statistics indicate 90% of the dead animals will go to waste as the poacher will either forget where he put his snares or he’ll never go back to check on them. The meat will just rot away. Granted, wild carnivores will eat some of the meat, but that also may well be contained in the 10% that is eventually utilized.

Then Iregi follows this with another installation in the second part of his series. This one is loaded with statistics. Suddenly, I am aware that a single David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust (DSWT) de-snaring team can remove an average of 450 wire snares in a month - working only two weeks a month. That there are several DSWT teams. That there are other organizations apart from the DSWT - such as Born Free Foundation - that are also carrying out some heavy de-snaring work. I suddenly am confronted with colossal numbers, and my heart threatens to stop. Iregi explains:

Just one de-snaring DSWT team lifts approximately 450 snares [per] month operating for a maximum of two weeks per month. One poacher can set at least 100 snares per day with a success rate of about 20% and about 15-20 poachers enter the park per day. With a success rate of about 20%, and assuming that one poacher sets about 100 snares a day, then 15 poachers have a probability of killing at least 300 animals per day. This figure may seems to be unrealistic. But the number of snares lifted per day and the number of animals found dead and those rescued by the de-snaring teams is a true testimony of the magnitude of the bushmeat crisis.

It is shocking, but it is the result of scientific research in one corner of Tsavo East National Park (where DSWT conducts most of its de-snaring operations). I am left wondering what the national, regional and global statistics are like. I wince.

Rosemary gives us a clue as to how much it would cost to get a wire snare out of a single wild dog pup’s neck in her blog post. Suddenly, there is money involved, and I shudder like someone forgotten inside the butcher’s cold room. She explains:

Unfortunately, until I have my wildlife immobilization license…we need to rely on someone else to come and do the darting, and he is not always available at short notice. There is also a considerable cost associated with calling him out and getting the pup immobilized (US$100 per day fee plus the cost of drugs and fuel and scout time), and the current prevalence of snaring is really eating into our budget. (Likewise, for me to do [an immobilization] course so I can immobilize the dogs myself, costs US$1500).

That is only part of the story. Organizations such as DWST, Born Free and the African Wildlife Conservation Fund (Zimbabwe Wild Dogs) invest thousands of dollars in de-snaring operations. The Zimbabwe Wild Dogs project is already groaning under the weight of snaring happening in Zimbabwe. And that is just one part of the once wildlife rich nation (hopefully there are still wildlife surviving the madness that is governance in Zimbabwe).

These are deadly statistics - and painful pictures - of how dire the state of wildlife in Africa is. The Zimbabwe Wild Dog project has an appeal. They need your help on saving this little puppy, the rare species of which it belongs and other wildlife in Zimbabwe. Right now I ask you to urgently help them save this particular dog by donating through their blog. And continue to help them whenever you can in the future.

I read a book once, titled “Who Will Feed China?” and in the same fashion I will ask, who will save Africa’s wildlife?

Tags: African wildlife, Born Free Foundation, Bushmeat in Kenya, david sheldrick wildlife trust, Kenya, poaching, wire snare, Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe Wild Dogs

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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.

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

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