Green Earth Africa

It has been a bad year for rhinos in South Africa. Many more got killed than in 2010, the 333 toll of which was described with words like “shocking” and “outrageous”. Most thought it couldn’t get worse.

It’s got much worse. The tally for 2011 is at least 433. It could end up being higher, for even as the year drew to a close, reports kept coming in of more dead rhinos found with gruesome wounds or just stumps left where their horns had been.

• Friday, December 2 – two white rhinos found shot in a private park in a mountainous region north of Johannesburg;

• Saturday, December 3 – a black rhino found shot in the far north of South Africa near the border crossing into Zimbabwe;

 • Wednesday, December 7 – four white rhinos found killed in private reserves just outside the western boundary of South Africa’s flagship Kruger National Park, with the one victim’s calf so badly injured that it had to be put down;

• Friday, December 9 – the carcasses of five rhinos are found inside Kruger National Park, not far from one of its southern gates;

 • Monday, December 12 – a report appears on the front page of newspapers on a gruesome mutilation of a rhino bull and cow in a private reserve in the far south of South Africa. They were darted and had their horns hacked off with a machete. Both could be revived by having antidotes administered, but the cow had to have her unborn calf aborted. The owner told of how he found one of his female staff members crying and hugging the debilitated cow where she lay crumpled under a bush. The use of the specialized drug, called M99, or etorphine, to incapacitate the animals, has once more raised suspicions about the possible involvement of veterinarians or people connected to the service.

• Tuesday, December 13 – a suspected poacher was arrested after he got wounded in a fire-fight in Kruger National Park with park rangers and soldiers. Two other suspects escaped across the border into Mozambique. Four fresh rhino horns were recovered.

 The rising toll confirms a trend that is all the more alarming when considering that only 13 rhinos got poached in 2007. The 2011 spike in killings happened despite a multi-pronged strategy devised last year, involving park rangers, the police and the defense force, the prosecuting authorities and even revenue and customs services.

 In Kruger National Park, a special unit of soldiers was deployed in the beginning of the year to patrol the park’s 250-mile (400 km) border with Mozambique, which has become the main springboard for poaching sorties across the South African border.

 Despite the increased security presence, 244 rhinos were killed in Kruger National Park, which is home to about 10,000 to 12,000 white rhinos and about 500 black rhinos.

 Ken Maggs, head of the park’s anti-poaching unit, says 21 poachers were killed in skirmishes with park rangers and the soldiers, and 78 were arrested.

 “Unfortunately, the fatalities are a by-product of the value being put on rhino horn. The poachers come into the park armed with hunting rifles and assault weapons. We operate under the legal prescription of arrest, not to shoot to kill, but the poachers come prepared to fight. They switch tactics, such as coming in by night rather than by day. And in the dark, you need to make split-second decisions, or risk leaving your family without a father,” Maggs explained.

 He says he is an optimist and is sure the situation will be turned round. But, he adds, it cannot be a single-tool solution. It has to be a whole toolbox, and the bigger the better.

 Maggs was appointed head of the National Wildlife Crime Reaction Unit that was set up last year as an umbrella body to co-ordinate efforts between various state bodies and private reserve owners in the fight against the rhino killings.

 The poaching and rhino-horn smuggling, he explains, are operated at several levels, and each requires different types of expertise. It is a complex network which, tragically, even extends into wildlife-protection organizations and veterinary circles. 

 At the ground level there are the poachers who mostly come from nearby communities and who have the local knowledge about where their targets are and how best to get to them. It is the field operatives, the rangers and police and soldiers, who have to deal with them.

 At the next level are the recruiters, who find the poachers and pay them. This second and also the third level ensure that the booty gets moved as quickly as possible to the smuggling rings, which at the next level see that the horns reach the market countries, mostly China and Vietnam.

 While each category presents its own challenges, requiring particular sets of expertise to deal with, there is also a fifth category of intervention needed. This is at the highest political and diplomatic level to ensure that the support structures and legal framework are in place also to deal with the problem both in the neighboring countries from which the assaults are made and the far-away countries in which the rhino horns end up.

 “Unfortunately, there are still too many people who think of the target as just a rhino and therefore of such killings as simply another wildlife crime. It should in fact be seen as organized crime and get treated in the same way as gun-running, armed robbery, heists and hijacking. It is not surprising that, considering the odds of getting caught or killed when committing those other crimes, more and more criminals are getting into the rhino-poaching business,” says Maggs.

 Already there is close co-operation between South Africa’s parks authorities, the police, the military and the prosecuting authorities. But Maggs believes the situation can only be properly addressed if the co-operation gets extended to Mozambique’s police and military. That, however, requires intervention at government level.

 Dr David Mabunda, chief executive of South African National Parks, indicated that the next big step in the unfolding strategy may well be to get such co-operation going between the security forces of the two countries. He suggested South African Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe and the national minister of environmental affairs, Edna Molewa, were due to have talks with the Mozambican government.

 “In 95 percent of the cases – no, even more – Mozambicans are involved in the poaching. Many return in body bags. We don’t boast about killing people. Our purpose is to arrest them, also to gather information. They should know the risk by now, but still they keep coming and the gangs keep multiplying.

 “The answer should come through joint operations between the South African and Mozambican security forces. Their Limpopo National Park (which forms part of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park with Kruger National Park) is supposed to serve as a buffer. It isn’t, and we need to talk to them about it,” he said.

 As for the market-end of the brutal trade, he said South Africa’s Presidency and the country’s department of international relations were discussing the rhino question with China and Vietnam and he believed progress was being made.

 WWF’s African Rhino Program co-ordinator, Dr Joseph Okori, has also called for more coordinated international efforts. He said last month:  “Vietnam should follow South Africa’s example and start sending poachers, traders, smugglers and sellers to jail. In order to save rhinos from extinction, the criminal syndicates operating between South Africa and Vietnam must be uncovered and shut down for good.”

Bushmeat hunting is one of the major threats to mammals in sub-Saharan Africa. Although widely discussed and recognized as an issues in Central and West Africa, a new study in mongabay.com’s open access journalTropical Conservation Sciencedescribes a pattern of bushmeat hunting that is also occurring in southern Africa. Interviewing 114 locals living adjacent to Gonarezhou National Park in Zimbabwe, Edson Gandiwa with Wageningen University found that the primary drivers of illegal hunting in the park were bushmeat and personal consumption (68 percent).

“Although law enforcement patrols attempt to control illegal hunting, the expected economic benefits from the sale of bushmeat, derived from wild animals, are far greater than the costs associated with a low probability of arrest and punitive fines; thus illegal hunting is a persistent, widespread problem for animal species conservation,” writes the author.

A quarter of all respondents had seen bushmeat or wild animal parts being sold in their village in the last six months. Most stated that bushmeat was hunted “as a source of protein to alleviate poverty.”

Wire snares confiscated in Zimbabwe. Photo by: Patience Gandwina.

Hunting was most often conducted with snares, while the use of dogs and bows-and-arrows came in second and third, respectively. Poisoning of big predators has also become a major issue.

“Poisoning, mostly using herbicides and pesticides, was reportedly used in revenge killings of large carnivores such as spotted hyenas and lions as a way to reduce livestock-carnivore conflicts,” the author writes, nothing that in one of the four villages surveyed, 38 percent of respondents listed poisoning as a hunting method. Overall 24 percent of respondents listed poisoning as a known method for hunting. S

Impala (Aepyceros melampus), kudu (Tragelaphus strepsiceros), Burchell’s zebra (Equus quagga), and African buffalo (Syncerus caffer) were the most popular targets of hunters. But 10 percent of respondents also reported the hunting of spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta), leopards (Panthera pardus), and lions (Panthera leo).

In order to stem illegal hunting the author recommends more law enforcement with follow-through on punishments, environmental education and awareness, and better methods to reduce revenge killing of carnivores, including considering supplying “bushmeat from legal sources to affected communities.”

Read more:http://news.mongabay.com/2011/1211-hance_tcs_bushmeat_zim.html#ixzz1gPxQwC56

Gram for gram, rhino horn is worth more than gold.

So it is little surprise the animal is being hunted to extinction, which is why conservationists are pushing to create rhino-horn farms in a bid to save the creature.

Currently, horn sells for about US$60,000 (Dh220,392) a kilogram – gold is trading a shade below that at about $57,000 for the same measure – making it a prize very much worth chasing.

South Africa National Parks has lost a record 340 rhino this year, despite doubling its anti-poaching patrols.

In the past, poached rhino horns ended up in Yemen, where they were turned into traditional daggers called jambiyas. But over the past decade, demand has shifted to Asia, where they are prized as a tonic in traditional medicine.

In the past year alone Africa’s Western black rhino, and Vietnam’s Javan rhino have been hunted to oblivion. It is a trend that is set to accelerate unless the failed tactic of banning trade in rhino products is replaced, say conservationists.

“I do believe that conservationists need to investigate a legal trade in rhino horn as the current approach [trade ban] is not working, and appears unlikely to work in the foreseeable future,” says Michael ‘t Sas-Rolfes, a conservation economist based in Johannesburg.

“The key to the rhino’s survival is to make the animal more valuable alive than dead to the people who control its destiny,” he says.

The idea is now being cautiously investigated by the South African government, and enjoys widespread backing among local conservationists, wildlife farmers and economists.

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, an international body that regulates wildlife trade, is circulating a paper that discusses the idea.

Wildlife authorities are coming to realise that banning the sale of horn has failed. As rhinos decrease in number, horn becomes more valuable, and the incentive to poach increases.

A single horn can earn a poor Mozambican labourer 200,000 rand (Dh86,815) – as much as he can hope to earn in 10 years.

Poaching is also becoming more sophisticated. Thai, Vietnamese and Chinese syndicates frequently hire professional hunters to do the killing. Using helicopters, night-vision goggles and high-power rifles fitted with silencers, they outgun underfunded national park rangers.

“The demand is for around 900 horns a year, which we could easily supply without harming an animal,” says Michael Eustace, an investment manager and wildlife economist.

Cropping of horns, which does not cause the animal any pain, and those harvested from animals that die naturally, together with existing stockpiles held by national parks, would provide the supply.

“It’s not a biological issue – it’s a market issue of supply and demand,” says Mr Eustace.

Trade could be managed through a central selling organisation (CSO) such as the one operated by De Beers that for years controlled the flow of diamonds on to the market. A CSO would only trade in legally acquired horns, and sell to registered buyers, such as Chinese state pharmaceutical companies.

Horn sales could earn southern African wildlife conservation almost 800 million rand a year, according to Mr Eustace.

The CSO would supply companies directly, cutting out middlemen and ensuring only horn from legitimate supplies were sold.

“SA alone could easily supply 400 horns a year from natural deaths, 400 from stocks and 600 from farmers cropping half their horn”, says Mr Eustace. “Based on current prices for horn, this could raise 784m rand a year for parks and wildlife.”

But it will be an uphill struggle to convince international wildlife organisations, such as the WWF, that depend on wealthy European and US donors who are less likely to support such an idea. Critics say current examples of farmed animals to serve the Asian market, such as bears and tigers, are rife with abuse and cruelty.

“If you consider the plight of tigers at the moment, which are extensively ‘farmed’ in China, there appears to be no advantage for conservation of the species,” says Francesca Shapland of the UK’s Save the Rhino foundation.

Mr Eustace dismisses the comparison. “Rhinos are not harmed in harvesting horn, which grows back. There’s no need to injure or kill the animal.”

As the killing continues, the drive to legitimise the selling of their horns is likely to gain momentum.

A forest elephant in Gabon. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler . 

Warfare and poaching have decimated forest elephant populations across their range with even elephants in remote protected areas cut down finds a new study inPLoS ONE. Surveying forest elephant populations in the Okapi Faunal Reserve in the Democratic Republic of Congo, researchers have found that the population has fallen by half—from 6,439 to 3,288—over the past decade in the park.

“Having protected areas is not enough to save elephants in times of conflict,” says lead author Rene Beyers, a postdoctoral fellow at UBC’s Department of Zoology. “The war in the Democratic Republic of Congo had a large impact on elephant populations, including those in parks and reserves.”

The study found that forest elephant faced the steepest declines on the park’s edges and in areas where human infiltrated, and “after the war, elephant densities were relatively higher in the center of the park where they were better protected, suggesting that this area may have acted as a refuge,” the authors write.

Even though the civil was has passed, conflict persists in some places. In addition, forest elephants are still targeted for the black market ivory trade and bushmeat.

“We’ve found that two factors in conservation efforts were particularly effective: a continued presence by a highly committed government field staff and continued support by international organizations—such as the Wildlife Conservation Society, Gilman International Conservation and UNESCO—made a difference for their survival,” explains Beyers. The authors estimate that forest elephant populations in eastern Congo have fallen from 22,000 prior to the civil war in the mid-90s to around just 6,000 today.

Forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis), those inhabiting the Congo basin, have long been considered a subspecies of Africa’s more well-known savannah elephant, however a number of recent studies have argued that forest elephants are in fact a distinct species. A recent DNA study found that forest elephants were as distinct from savannah elephants as Asian elephants are from the extinct mammoth.

“The divergence of the two species took place around the time of the divergence of the Asian elephant and woolly mammoths. The split between African savanna and forest elephants is almost as old as the split between humans and chimpanzees. This result amazed us all,” co-author Michi Hofreiter, who specializes in the study of ancient DNA in the Department of Biology at York, said at the time.

Forest elephants are generally smaller than their savannah cousins, and possess straighter tusks. Research has found that these species are vital seed dispersers for the forests of the Congo, playing an ecological role in the forest that no other species may be able to fill.

A wildlife inventory team came across this elephant poachers’ camp in the forest where an ear of elephant was left on a drying rack. Photo by: John Hart.

CITATION: Beyers RL, Hart JA, Sinclair ARE, Grossmann F, Klinkenberg B, et al. (2011) Resource Wars and Conflict Ivory: The Impact of Civil Conflict on Elephants in the Democratic Republic of Congo – The Case of the Okapi Reserve. PLoS ONE 6(11): e27129. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0027129

Read more:http://news.mongabay.com/2011/1114-hance_forestelephants.html#ixzz1dqdf7wRT

Conservationists have poured cold water on the National Prosecuting Authority’s claim that it has broken the back of rhino poaching syndicates. Yet another white male rhino was killed in Limpopo on Friday night. Today scores marched against rhino poaching.
Six-year-old Phila was shot nine times in two poaching attacks. She is a black female Rhino on the red list of endangered species. Phila was brought to the Johannesburg Zoo to recover and dehorne for her own safety.

“We were really quite scared that she would not be able to hear or smell that well and those are the 2 main senses of Rhino,” says Louise Gordon from the Johannesburg Zoo.

Today, conservationists were protesting to safeguard rhinos like Phila. They say there should be harsher sentences for poachers. Some say they cannot standby and allow it to happen to allow few people to be greedy and rich.

It’s estimated that between 9 and 11 000 white rhino are left in South Africa, and just under 2 000 black rhino

The numbers are fast dwindling. In 2007 seven were poached. Two year’s later the number more than doubled. Last year there was dramatic spike and the 2011 figure already exceeding that figure.
“The species is in a negative population growth now and at the rate we seeing poaching occur it is going to accelerate so within 4 or 5 years we would be in an utterly desperate situation,” says Peter Milton, from the Strategic Protection of Threatened Species.

At the current rate of poaching a rhino is killed every 21-hours. Conservationists believe in some instances game farms execute their rhino to cashing in on insurance claims.

“With money to be made, poaching will not stop. We don’t believe the National Prosecuting Authority has broken any syndicate backs per say, and to even track those syndicates is incredibly complex and difficult,” added Milton.

Two Thai Nationals and two game farmers face a litany of charges for their part in a poaching syndicate. The cases resume in January.

Poachers in Zimbabwe have poisoned waterholes in five game reserves to kill animals, say wildlife officials.

Officials say it is the first time poachers have poisoned waterholes to kill the animals

Nine elephants were found dead with their tusks removed from the carcasses.

Five lions also died but officials said their skins were not taken, suggesting they were accidental victims of the poisoning.

The incidents are the first of their type on record and tests are being carried out to determine the nature of the chemicals used.

A spokeswoman for the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority, Caroline Washaya Moyo, said two buffalo were also killed, as were vultures that had eaten the dead animals.

Ms Washaya Moyo said the parks authority had deployed teams in the affected game reserves to investigate the poisoning.

Zimbabwe has been battling to curb poaching, which has mainly targeted rhinoceros and elephants for their horns and tusks.

Ten rhinos have been killed in Zimbabwe by poachers so far this year.

The crime is driven by booming demand for rhino horn in Asia, where it is believed to have medicinal properties, despite ample scientific evidence to the contrary.

Conservationists have warned that rhino populations are facing their worst poaching crisis for decades, especially in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Kenya.

In May, authorities in Kenya seized more than one tonne of ivory at Nairobi’s international airport.

About 115 elephant tusks were found inside metal containers by sniffer dogs.

Officials believe Kenya has become a transit point for international ivory smuggling, largely to Asia.

In the past few weeks, vandals have stripped off over 20km of protective boundary fencing bordering Zimbabwe’s largest black rhino conservancy in the Midlands, leaving the endangered species vulnerable to poachers.

Sebakwe black rhino conservancy vice-chairperson Silas Chaduka told NewsDay most of the game including the endangered black rhino, were now exposed to poaching following the removal of the shielding boundary fencing.

“Game is now wandering out of the conservancy unchecked owing to the missing boundary fence which is being stolen nearly on a daily basis. Once the game moves out of the conservancy, it is at the mercy of poachers because it is difficult for us to protect it against them,” said Chaduka.

In the past few weeks, vandals stole about 5km of wire from the Belmtree side of the conservancy, 10km from Mahamara and 5km from Morina while some areas dotted around the 100 000-square-kilometre conservancy, which used to be a top foreign currency earner through tourist trophy hunting, are also without fencing.

Chaduka said there were attempts to revive the fortunes of Sebakwe conservancy which had suffered a serious dip since the farm invasions a decade ago. 

Conservancy officials refused to reveal information on the game population at Sebakwe allegedly for security reasons, but confirmed the black rhino numbers had dropped and trophy hunting was at its lowest owing to migration and poaching of game.

Officials said the black rhino herd had been seriously reduced due to poaching and fears were high that the conservancy herd could be wiped out. 

Chaduka said there was need to restock after replacing all missing lengths in the boundary fence.

“We have a serious challenge with poaching, but we are now educating communities resettled around the conservancy of the advantages derived from trophy hunting unlike poaching or killing for the pot. For instance, a leopard is valued at 
$3 000 while a lion is $7 000, but when you kill for the pot you get no funds for development,” he said.

Wildlife officials in Nepal Tuesday began a three week count of the country’s greater one-horned rhinoceroses. WWF staff members are part of a group conducting the census from atop captive Asian elephants.

Greater one-horned rhinos (Rhinoceros unicornis) are found in three Nepalese national parks and in northern India. The last census of greater one-horned rhinos in Nepal conducted in 2008 recorded 435 animals. Of that total, 408 were living in Chitwan National Park. 

The census is expected to show growth in rhino numbers as a result of better protection and habitat improvements.

“With increased WWF investments into anti-poaching, through a campaign codenamed “Stop the Bleeding” in the Terai Arc of Nepal, we hope to find evidence of an increasing rhino population,” says Dr. Christy Williams, WWF’s Asian Rhino and Elephant Action Strategy coordinator.

Since the last census, 28 rhinos have been killed by poachers in Chitwan, while another 32 died of natural causes, officials say. Rhino horn is prized as an ingredient in traditional Asian medicine, despite lack of scientific support for the curative claims attributed to it. 

While conducting the rhino survey, officials will also install camera traps and examine habitat quality, including determining the pervasiveness of a damaging invasive plant.

In Nepal, WWF works to protect rhinos from poachers and expand rhino range by translocating animals to new habitats.