South Africa’s white rhinoceros recovered from near-extinction thanks to intense conservation efforts. Credit: Kanya D’Almeida/IPS

By Stella Paul
PYEONGCHANG, Republic of Korea, Oct 13 2014 (IPS)

For over five years, 33-year-old Maheshwar Basumatary, a member of the indigenous Bodo community, made a living by killing wild animals in the protected forests of the Manas National Park, a tiger reserve, elephant sanctuary and UNESCO World Heritage Site that lies on the India-Bhutan border.

Then one morning in 2005, Basumatary walked into a police check-post and surrendered his gun. Since then, the young man has been spending his time taking care of abandoned and orphaned rhino and leopard cubs.

Employed by a local conservation organisation called the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), part of the Wildlife Trust of India, Basumatary is today a symbol of wildlife conservation.

Engaging locals like Basumatary into wildlife protection and conservation is an effective way to curb wildlife crimes such as poaching, smuggling and the illegal sale of animal parts, according to Maheshwar Dhakal, an ecologist with Nepal’s ministry of environment and soil conservation.

“[Law enforcement personnel] must have proper arms. They must also have tools to collect evidence, and records. They need transportation and mobile communication to act quickly and aptly. Without this, despite arrests, there will be no convictions because of a lack of evidence." -- Maheshwar Dhakal, an ecologist with Nepal’s ministry of environment and soil conservation
On the sidelines of the ongoing 12^th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (COP 12) in Pyeongchang, South Korea, Dhakal told IPS that poverty and the prospect of higher earnings often drive locals to commit or abet wildlife crime.

Thus efforts should be made to combine conservation with income generation, so locals can be gainfully employed in efforts to protect and preserve biodiversity.

“Conservation efforts must also create livelihood opportunities within the local community,” he added.

“Everyone wants to earn more and live well. If you just tell people, ‘Go save the animals’, it’s not going to work. But if you find a way to incentivize protecting [of] wildlife, they will certainly join the force,” said Dhakal, adding that his own country is moving rapidly towards a ‘zero poaching’ status.

Poaching – a global problem

Poaching and the illegal wildlife trade are a universal menace that has been causing severe threats including possible extinction of species, economic losses, as well as loss of livelihood across the world.

According to the recently released Global Biodiversity Outlook 4 (GBO-4), the latest progress report of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the current annual illegal wildlife trade stands at some 200 billion dollars annually.

The illicit enterprise is also thriving in Asia, touching some 19 billion dollars per year according to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)’s Wildlife Enforcement Network.

Law enforcements agencies regularly confiscate smuggled products and consignments of skins and other body parts of animals including crocodiles, snakes, tigers, elephants and rhinos. The killing of tigers and rhinos is a specific concern in the region, with both creatures facing the impending risk of extinction.

One of the biggest killing fields for poachers is the Kaziranga National Park (KNP) in India’s northeastern Assam state, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and home to two-thirds of the world’s remaining Great One-horned Rhinoceroses. In addition, the park boasts the highest density of tigers globally, and was officially designated as a tiger reserve in 2006.

The 185-square-mile park had 2,553 rhinos in 2013. However, 126 rhinos have been killed here in the past 13 years, with 21 slaughtered in 2013 alone, according to the state’s Environment and Forest Minister Rakibul Hussain.

Illegal trade spawns conflict, disease

There is also a direct link between the illegal wildlife trade and political conflicts across the world, says a joint report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and INTERPOL, which puts the exact volume of the illegal trade at 213 billion dollars annually.

Much of this money “is helping finance criminal, militia and terrorist groups and threatening the security and sustainable development of many nations,” the report states.

According to the report, several militia groups in central and western Africa are involved in the illegal trade of animals and timber. These groups profit hugely from the trade, including through the sale of ivory, making between four and 12.2 million dollars each year.

Another report published this past February by Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs in UK, also pointed to the example of the extremist Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), which has been reported to harvest tusks from elephants in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and barter with Sudanese soldiers or poachers for guns and ammunition.

But the trouble does not end there.

Maadjou Bah is part of a COP-12 delegation from the West African country of Guinea, where an Ebola outbreak in December 2013 has since spread to the neighbouring countries of Liberia and Sierra Leone, killing at least 4,300 people to date.

Bah told IPS that illegal hunting and trade in wildlife species increases the possibility of the Ebola virus spreading to other countries. Though the government of Guinea has designated 30 percent of its forests as ‘protected’, the borders are porous, with trafficking and trade posing a continuous threat.

Besides primates, fruit bats are known to be natural carriers of the Ebola virus, and since trade in bats forms part of the illegal global chain of wildlife trade, it is possible that Ebola could travel outside the borders where it is current wreaking havoc, according to Anne-Helene Prieur Richard, executive director of the Paris-based biodiversity research institute ‘Diversitas’.

“We don’t know this for sure since there is a knowledge gap. But certainly the risk is there,” she told IPS.

Using the law

Continued poaching is largely the result of slow law enforcement, according to Braullio Ferreira de Souza Dias, executive secretary of the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity.

“Enforcement has to be a priority for government[s],” he told IPS.

This can be accomplished by, among other methods, providing law enforcement personnel with the skills and equipment they need to crack down on illegal activity. Forest guards, for instance, should be properly equipped – technically and financially – to prevent crime.”

“There is a need for capacity building in the law enforcement units,” Dhakal explained. “But that doesn’t just mean attending workshops and trainings. It means weapons, tools and technologies.

“They must have proper arms. They must also have tools to collect evidence, and records. They need transportation and mobile communication to act quickly and aptly. Without this, despite arrests, there will be no convictions because of a lack of evidence,” he said.

This is especially crucial in trans-boundary forests, where a lack of proper fencing allows poachers to move freely between countries.

Sometimes, the solutions are simpler.

“For example,” Dias stated, “Nepal has forged partnerships between the government and local communities. But what motivated the [people] to go out [of their way] to find time to prevent poaching? It’s that 50 percent of all earnings in Nepal’s national parks are directed towards local communities. [Officials] convinced them that if the poaching doesn’t stop then it would mean fewer visitors and lesser earnings,” he asserted.

A look at the country’s recent increase in the number of tigers and rhinos are proof of its successful conservation efforts: in the 1970s, Nepal had only a hundred tigers left in the wild. Today there are 200 and the country is aiming to double the number by 2020.

Similarly, the number of rhinos, which was a paltry 100 in the 1960s, is now 535. “We have recruited local youths as intelligence units who collect information on the movement of poachers. It works,” reveals Dhakal.

Experts say that ending demand globally is crucial to halting poaching and illegal trade. For this, collective action at the international level must be given top priority.

Dhakal, who is also the main spokesperson for the South Asian Wildlife Enforcement Network (SAWEN), told IPS that the network has roped in several governments in the region, along with organisations like the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and INTERPOL.

Gaurav Gogoi, a member of the Indian parliament, says that governments can also cooperate at a bilateral level. “In the markets of Vietnam a single gram of rhino horn powder fetches up to [approximately 3,000 dollars],” he explained, adding that he is involved in lobbying events to push Vietnam to ban all products made of rhino horns in order to curb poaching elsewhere, including the Indian state of Assam.

“If you have poaching, it’s because there is someone out there who wants to buy those products. We have to address that,” Dias said.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

A poached elephant carcass in Bouba Ndjida National Park in Cameroon. Credit: U.S. Fish and Wildlife/cc by 2.0

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Nov 14 2013 (IPS)

The United States has become the first developed country to destroy its stock of seized ivory, a move being widely lauded by conservation groups pushing for an outright ban on domestic ivory sales.

“Efforts like this are motivated by social change, and through this destruction the U.S. government is saying that ivory has no value – that it is a shameful product,” Jeff Flocken, North American regional director for the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), told IPS from the sidelines of the ivory crush.“As long as ivory can be openly purchased, there will be an opportunity for illegal ivory to be laundered." -- Jeff Flocken

“In order for any lasting change to take place, we need to see consumer demand go away, and making ivory products be seen as shameful is the way to address this problem.”

On Thursday, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service crushed some six tonnes of African and Asian elephant ivory, the result of seizures that have taken place mostly over the past 25 years. Importing commercial or private ivory of any kind is a criminal act under U.S. law, unless the item has been certified by an international group, although its domestic sale remains legal.

The government says the destroyed ivory, which includes both full tusks and carved items, likely represented “a couple thousand” dead elephants, and notes this figure could be far higher.

“We want to send a clear message that the United States will not tolerate ivory trafficking and the toll it is taking on elephant populations, particularly in Africa,” the Fish & Wildlife Service notes in a factsheet released ahead of Thursday’s ivory crush.

“Destroying this ivory tells criminals who engage in poaching and trafficking that the United States will take all available measures to disrupt and prosecute those who prey on and profit from the deaths of these magnificent animals.”

The ivory destruction comes just a day after the U.S. State Department announced its first-ever reward – a million dollars – for information leading to the dismantling of an alleged wildlife trafficking syndicate called the Xaysavang Network. On Wednesday, Secretary of State John Kerry noted that the group, based in Laos but with affiliates in Africa, Southeast Asia and China, “facilitates the killing of endangered elephants, rhinos, and other species for products such as ivory”.

Elephant poaching is currently at its worst point in a decade, with an estimated 95 elephants being killed every day, particularly in Africa. Activists say a two-decade-old international anti-trafficking regime, known as CITES, is unable to withstand new pressures increasingly brought by militant groups slaughtering elephants and rhinoceroses as a money-making enterprise.

Consumer demand is also spiking in Asia, particularly in China. According to a U.N. report released earlier this year, large seizures of ivory bound for Asia have more than doubled since 2009.

“We’re hoping the government’s destruction of this ivory sends a strong message that wildlife poaching will not be tolerated and that ivory shouldn’t be considered an investment commodity,” Lisa Handy, a senior policy advisory with the Environmental Investigation Agency, a global watchdog group, told IPS from the ivory crush.

“We’re also hoping this will send a signal to – and we call on – other CITES parties to take similar actions. Currently some other CITES countries are still seeking a legal sale of their stockpiled ivory, while others are stockpiling it for its value.”

Shaming consumers

Under current international agreement, seized ivory cannot be resold.

Yet with this action, the United States joins just three other countries to have destroyed state ivory stockpiles. The Philippines did so in June, while both Kenya and Gabon have also destroyed seized ivory in the past two years.

Both of the latter countries have large elephant populations and have faced significant poaching problems. Like the United States, on the other hand, the Philippines is a major destination country for ivory, and thus these actions could potentially impact on the critical consumer demand that continues to create a value for ivory, legal or illegal.

Currently, the United States remains second only to China as the primary destination country for ivory. While applauding the U.S. administration’s new moves on the issue of trafficking, Flocken and others are now pushing for legislative action.

“We’re hoping the U.S. Congress will now introduce a bill to ban the sale of ivory in the United States, or a moratorium for 10 or 15 years until it can be shown to be effective,” he says.

“As long as ivory can be openly purchased, there will be an opportunity for illegal ivory to be laundered. Currently the U.S. laws on ivory are so riddled with loopholes that they are almost impossible to enforce. A clear-cut ban, on the other hand, would remove the U.S. as a major demand country.”

Legal versus illegal ivory, Flocken notes, is almost impossible to differentiate.

Closing loopholes

According to the White House, worldwide wildlife trafficking could be bringing in upwards of 10 billion dollars a year. In Africa, environmentalists point to such high-profile groups as Al Shabaab in Somalia and Boko Haram in Nigeria as increasingly turning to this relatively easy and lucrative illegal trade.

This confluence, and the illicit funding it enables, has clearly caught the attention of U.S. officials. Over the past year the administration of President Barack Obama has significantly stepped up its engagement on the issue of global wildlife trafficking, and today the issue is receiving higher priority than ever seen at the upper echelons of U.S. government.

In July, President Obama issued an executive order that made available millions of dollars for new coordination and training, including 10 million dollars earmarked for Africa. In September, the White House announced the formation of a high-level advisory council on wildlife trafficking, which is now tasked with coordinating federal government agencies on anti-poaching efforts both domestically and internationally.

Also at that time, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell announced the government’s plan to destroy its ivory stocks, depicted as the first of a series of related actions in coming months. The department is now reportedly preparing to propose multiple changes to close loopholes in U.S. law and regulation that currently facilitate the smuggling of ivory and other wildlife products.

“The United States is part of the problem, because much of the world’s trade in wild animal and plant species – both legal and illegal – is driven by U.S. consumers or passes through our ports on the way to other nations,” U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe says. “We have to be part of the solution.”