Brutal Elephant Slaughter Funds African Conflicts

Great piece translated from Spiegel in German, by Horand Knaup and Jan Puhl

DPA

The eight game wardens from the Kenya Wildlife Service spent hours lying in wait between bushes and tree trunks. An informant had given them a tip that poachers would show up at this particular spot sometime in the afternoon.

When the poachers did indeed appear, a wild gunfight broke out that lasted some 40 minutes and left one Somali poacher dead next to his military-grade, fully automatic assault rifle. The five others, some of them injured, were able to slip away into the bushes, and another normal day's work for the game wardens of Tsavo East National Park drew to a close.In fact, this day two weeks ago was one of the better ones. The wardens themselves suffered no losses in the skirmish and they got there in time, instead of finding an elephant carcass with its tusks cut off, as is so often the case.
Around 500,000 elephants still live in Africa, but poachers kill several tens of thousands of them each year, and that number is on the rise. Customs officials seized over 23 tons of smuggled elephant tusks in 2011, the highest amount in 20 years.
New players have entered the bloody business of African ivory, and they are even more brutal than average poachers. These are militia members and rebels who mow down the animals with heavy arms to finance their wars. Groups such as the militant Islamist al-Shabab in Somalia, the Janjaweed of Sudan and the notorious Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda are turning the savannahs of central Africa into a Killing Fields for elephants.
As diamonds once did in Sierra Leone, ivory is now "fueling conflicts across the continent," The New York Times wrote earlier this month. At a US Senate hearing this May, expert on illegal trade Tom Cardamone testified: "In recent years, organized crime syndicates, militias, and even terrorist elements have taken notice of the profits that can be made in the illegal trafficking of wildlife, generating an alarming up-tick in the scale of the industry and posing serious national security concerns for the United States and our partners." Experts in Africa are already talking of "blood ivory," an allusion to the "blood diamonds" that warlords in Sierra Leone once used to pay for their ammunition.
'Kill Them Too'
Julius Kipng'etich, who heads a team of 3,500 Kenyan wardens, refuses to be intimidated by guerrilla leaders. "We're going to make life as difficult as possible for the poachers," he says. Seven of his wardens have been killed in gunfights with poachers just this year, so Kipng'etich issued his men a new order some days ago: "Shoot to kill." They should no longer fire warning shots, but instead aim immediately for the heart or head. "These people are hard as nails," he says. "They want to kill as many of us as possible and eradicate our elephants. It is a bullet for a bullet. Kill them too."
Kipng'etich has outfitted his troops with helicopters, all-terrain vehicles and laboratory equipment. "Near the Somali border, we operate like an army," he explains. This is where al-Shabab warlords send raiding parties into Kenya with increasing frequency to hunt elephants. Sometimes they hire young Kenyans for the job, paying them the equivalent of €90 ($70) for a pair of tusks.
Al-Shabab, which is fighting against the interim government in Somalia, has little difficulty shipping this stolen ivory to Asian markets, since the terrorist group controls the port city of Kismayo, also an important hub for weapons and drugs.
Nearly 90 percent of the ivory that is traded globally goes to China and Thailand, where economic success has fueled demand. Ivory knickknacks are a status symbol for China's newly rich, and it is a custom among Japanese businesspeople to seal contracts with ornately carved ivory stamps.
China also has other ways of getting ivory. Beijing has several hundred thousand workers and engineers in Africa, building streets, railway lines and governmental buildings. "And everywhere they go, elephants are dying. It's something the Chinese embassy doesn't like to hear, but it's true," Kipng'etich says.
Easy Money
In the area around Gulu, in northern Uganda, elephants are now extinct, many of them massacred by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) terrorist group. Joseph Okot, now 25, was a child soldier with the LRA and was forced to hunt in Murchison Falls National Park. "We shot everything that crossed our path," Okot says. The meat was for soldiers' cooking pots, and the commanders took the tusks.
The group is running riot in the triangle where the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan and the Central African Republic converge, a region no government controls. "The LRA rules the area, and ivory is one of its most important sources of income," says Michael Wamithi, a Kenyan elephant expert and government advisor.
Deserters have repeatedly reported that they were ordered personally by Joseph Kony, the notorious head of the LRA, to poach elephants. This April, Congolese wardens in Garamba National Park stole back a few elephant tusks from a group of LRA fighters. In June the wardens caught another group red-handed -- then had to flee as the well-trained guerrillas opened fire on them as if in battle.
One kilogram (2.2 pounds) of ivory can earn up to $2,000 on the black market, and a single tusk weighs 10 to 60 kilograms (20 to 130 pounds). In other words, a single dead elephant bull can bring in up to $120,000. That's a lot of money in Africa, and easy to earn as well -- rather than violently forcing hundreds of workers to labor in diamond mines, all it takes to gain access to this valuable resource is a few gunshots and several swings of a machete.
The LRA maintains excellent connections to Omdurman, Sudan's largest city, where middlemen trade elephant tusks for weapons and ammunition. But it's also possible to transport ivory through Uganda, Kenya or the Congo, where customs officials are often poorly paid and easy to bribe.
Only One Solution
The war over elephants began with a political mistake, complains Wamithi, the elephant expert in Kenya. In 1989, with the African elephant in danger of extinction, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora banned the trade in ivory around the globe. The convention served its purpose, and the elephant population recovered.
But as a result, countless tusks began piling up in the storerooms of African game wardens, for example those of animals that had died a natural death -- and that aroused greed. In 2008, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Namibia and Botswana obtained special permission allowing their governments to sell 108 tons of ivory, and traders from China and Japan paid millions. But like alcoholic in relapse after a long period of abstinence, the appetite for more returned immediately. "That fueled demand," Wamithi says, "and the slaughter began again."
Earlier this year, the killing reached a brutal peak, when in just a few weeks poachers shot 350 out of around 1,500 elephants living in the Bouba Ndjida National Park in Cameroon. The four game wardens who oversee the park, which covers an area nearly as large as the German federal state of Saarland (2,600 square kilometers), didn't stand a chance. All they could do was look on as strange warriors on horseback, Kalashnikovs strapped to their chests, poured into the park.

The poachers cut pieces from the ears of the elephants they killed, an indication that they most likely came from Sudan, over a thousand kilometers (600 miles) away, where it's traditional to take such trophies.None of the poachers were captured, but the wardens believe they were members of the Janjaweed, mounted warriors who have killed thousands of civilians in the Darfur region of Sudan. The millions of dollars their poaching raid must have brought in will allow them to replenish their weapons stores.
Michael Wamithi and most other elephant conservationists believe there is only one way to save these animals in the long term: The strict trade ban established in 1989 must urgently be reintroduced. "As long as there's a market for it," says Wamithi, "the killing will continue."

Translated from the German by Ella Ornstein

Two-Thirds of All Forest Elephants Killed in Last 10 Years

Guardian

There are about 100,000 forest elephants remaining in the forests of central Africa, compared with about 400,000 of the slightly larger savannah elephants. Photograph: Courtesy of TEAM Network/Conservation International

The forest elephants of Africa have lost almost two-thirds of their number in the past decade due to poaching for ivory, a landmark new study revealed on Tuesday. The research was released at an international wildlife summit in Bangkok where the eight key ivory-trading nations, including the host nation Thailand and biggest market China, have been put on notice of sweeping trade sanctions if they fail to crack down on the trade.

"The analysis confirms what conservationists have feared: the rapid trend towards extinction – potentially within the next decade – of the forest elephant," said Samantha Strindberg of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), one of 60 scientists on the research team.

There are about 100,000 forest elephants remaining in the forests of central Africa, compared with about 400,000 of the slightly larger savannah elephants. The total elephant population was over 1 million 30 years ago, but has been devastated by poaching driven by the rising demand for ivory ornaments in Asia.

Prof Lee White, head of the National Parks Service in Gabon, once home to the largest forest elephant population, said: "A rainforest without elephants is a barren place. They bring it to life, they create the trails and keep open the forest clearings other animals use; they disperse the seeds of many of the rainforest trees – elephants are forest gardeners at a vast scale."

Forest elephants have suffered particularly badly because they range across central Africa, which has been left lawless in large areas by war, and where poachers have ready access to guns. Furthermore, the tusks of forest elephants are longer, straighter and harder than savannah elephants, making them particularly sought after. "A lot of carvers prefer forest elephant tusks," said WCS's vice president, Elizabeth Bennett.

Although deforestation is taking place, loss of habitat is not the principal problem for the elephants, according to another of the scientific team, John Hart of the Lukuru Foundation. "Historically, elephants ranged right across the forests of this vast region of over 2m sq km, but they now cower in just a quarter of that area. Although the forest cover remains, it is empty of elephants, demonstrating that this is not a habitat degradation issue. This is almost entirely due to poaching."

The new study, published in the journal Plos One, took nine years to complete and the team spent over 90,000 person-days in the field, walking over 13,000 km and taking 11,000 samples. They found the population fell by 62% between 2002 and 2011 and was now less than 10% of its potential size.

Last month, Gabon announced the death of about 11,000 forest elephantsin the Minkébé national park between 2004 and 2012. Gabon's president, Ali Bongo Ondimba, says: "Our elephants are under siege because of an illegal international market that has driven ivory prices in the region up significantly. I call upon the international community to join us in this fight. If we do not reverse the tide fast the African elephant will be exterminated."

The 178-nation summit of the Convention on the Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) began in Bangkok on Monday and has already seen the eight countries identified as key to the ivory trade threatened with trade sanctions if they do not tackle failures in protection against poaching in Africa and failures in seizing illegal ivory along trade routes to China. The nations, including the states which most ivory passes through – Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Malaysia, Philippines and Vietnam – and where most ivory is bought – China and Thailand - must come up with concrete action plans or face a ban on millions of dollars of trade in animals and plants, including crocodile skins and orchids.

The Thai prime minister opened the Cites summit by pledging to outlaw Thailand's domestic ivory trade which is currently legal. But she was criticised for failing to set a deadline.

Proposals to the Cites summit supporting and opposing more "one-off" sales of ivory will not succeed, the Guardian has been told. A previous "one-off" sale in 2008 was criticised by some as driving up demand, but defended by others as providing funds for elephant protection.

Cutting the demand for ivory, as well as fighting poaching, is seen as crucial, with African elephant deaths running at 25,000 a year. Bennett said better education programmes in China would be a vital part of the action plans: "A lot of people don't actually know that you have to kill elephants to get ivory."

Why Elephants Matter

Great piece by Richard Ruggiero for Nat Geo

Wildlife trafficking will receive overdue world attention this week at the United Nations General Assembly and by the Clinton Global Initiative and other elite platforms.

The ongoing slaughter of African elephants will be in particular focus, as African states and their partners seek to craft consensus on how best to save the largest land mammal from extinction.

There are ecological and moral considerations related to the survival of species, but with so many people throughout the world suffering from war and privation, it is fair to ask why we should care about elephants.

The reason: There is a tangible connection between wildlife trafficking and human security.

Countries that do not value and cannot protect their natural heritage tend to be less stable, less secure, and less bound by global norms, with attendant risks to us all.

The issue is much bigger than localized tensions between communities and wildlife that are known to farmers and ranchers the world over.

Increasingly, criminal and violent extremist organizations operate in sophisticated, multi-national networks.

These networks aggressively target weak spots in the global system to gain money and power, either because that is their sole aim or in order to further ideological ends.

Illicit trafficking across borders of guns, gems, drugs, wildlife—and humans—is their source of money and power.

Ivory Enables Criminal Networks

The criminal syndicates know what makes cash: Ivory is more profitable than heroin or raw diamonds. A kilogram of ivory can fetch up to $3,000 in final markets but only costs between $100 and $300 to acquire in range states.

It is no surprise that these groups seize what they see as a profit center to massacre the last herds of elephants.

Weak states are weak for complex reasons.  Wildlife crimes are not the sole driver of conflict but they erode rule of law and can inflame conflict.

The threat to states metastasizes like cancer. It takes a gun to bring down an elephant. When the elephants are killed off, followed by other wildlife, men who make their living by the gun turn to other illicit activities, menacing civilian populations and government authorities that get in their way.

In East Africa, the multibillion dollar tourist economies, decades in the making, are at risk. Tanzania’s elephant herd is being slaughtered, with an estimated 50 percent of the population killed in the last six years.  As Tanzanian President Kikwete recently put it, “We are under attack.”

For the United States and its partners, these conflicts are no longer local.

Seized tusks awaiting registration and eventual destruction in Libreville, Gabon, 2012. copyright: R.G. Ruggiero

Spillover Risks

When extremists destabilize states, inevitably the security risks proliferate beyond their borders.

No longer anecdotal, the evidence that violent extremist organizations use ivory as one of many sources of funding is clear.

Earlier this year, elephant tusks were found in a camp of the Lord’s Resistance Army in eastern Central African Republic.

Shiftas, the term for Somali bandits who were responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of elephants and untold numbers of people in Kenya in the 1970s and 1980s, still kill elephants in Kenya’s national parks and engage the Kenya Wildlife Service in deadly firefights.

The ivory moving northward into Somalia is believed to be a funding source for Al-Shabab, a group affiliated with al-Qaeda that claimed responsibility for last Saturday’s shopping mall killings in Nairobi.

Multinational criminal networks know that wildlife crimes carry lower risk and higher reward than other crimes, as wildlife protection is often not seen as a national security issue and receives far fewer resources than counter-narcotic or counter-terror efforts.

Stopping the Criminals

To stop them, we must recognize that the threats are comingled, and we must develop a network of committed, capable partners who can prevent wildlife crime and ensuing violence and lawlessness in the hinterland from taking root.

The good news is there are great opportunities for partnership because wildlife brings together a unique combination of interests: conservation, security governance, and the private sector.

Wildlife managers are often fully integrated with local communities and can team with security entities and commercial firms in ways that are far more cost-effective than permitting local conflict to go global.

An Effective Partnership

In the central African state of Gabon, the United States advises and supports the government as it shores up its interdiction capacity, strengthens its legal regimes and institutions, works with communities to raise awareness of the country’s heritage and external threats, develops the country’s first natural resource conservation graduate program, and develops its tourism sector.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service partners with the Gabonese National Parks Agency and funds the Wildlife Conservation Society and the World Wildlife Fund as they attempt to help Gabon improve conservation strategies and law enforcement data collection, storage and analysis, and bolster the institutional capacity of Gabon’s parks and wildlife professionals.

At the same time, through the U.S. Africa Command, the U.S. has sent marines and naval personnel to train a combined unit of Gabonese park rangers and gendarmes (police under military command) in small unit patrol, field navigation, and riverine tactics to assist with border security and the interdiction of illicit trafficking.

On the regional level, Gabon works with its neighbors and a range of multilateral and international institutions in the Congo Basin Forest Partnership to propose solutions to complex cross-border policy issues.

Finally, following the issuance of President Obama’s July 2013 Executive Order—Combating Wildlife Trafficking—the U.S. assigned a task force to create a strategy to support anti-poaching efforts among partners like Gabon through law enforcement, the dismantling of trafficking networks, and the enforcement of international trade rules.

Gabon’s long stability in a rough neighborhood makes it an excellent partner for the U.S. on regional security.

President Bongo Ondimba made conservation and tourism centerpieces of his efforts to diversify the Gabonese economy from over-reliance on hydrocarbons.

Two bulls joust in the Dzanga Bai, Central African Republic, 2011. Copyright: R.G. Ruggiero

Gabon is home to the last great reserves of forest elephants in the world, supporting over 50 percent of survivors in just 10 percent of Africa’s rain forest.

Time is fleeting, however. Armed and organized networks moving through the continent have killed as many as 20,000 forest elephants in Gabon during the past eight years alone.

But the government of Gabon is responding, and the U.S. is supporting its efforts.

Elephants matter not only because of their ecological importance, their aesthetic beauty and power, and their value to developing economies but because their very existence symbolizes stability, security, and the triumph of good governance and the rule of law.

Dr. Richard Ruggiero is the Chief of the Africa Branch of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Division of International Conservation. Dr. J. Michael Fay is a National Geographic Explore-in-Residence and Senior Conservationist with the Wildlife Conservation Society. Dr. Lee White is the Director of Gabon’s National Parks Agency.