The hi-tech radio room that works with Google Earth maps at Lewa Wildlife Conservancy in northern Kenya where some of the 1,000 rangers of Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) trained in GPS use lead anti-poaching surveillance. Photo takes May 2016. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

By Manipadma Jena
NEW DELHI, Sep 19 2016 (IPS)

Every November, India’s Gahirmatha beach in the Indian Ocean region develops a brownish-grey rash for 60 to 80 days. Half-a-million female Olive Ridley turtles emerge out of the waves to lay their eggs, over a hundred each. For the sheer numbers, this arrival is hard to miss.

However, knowledge about this IUCN’s endangered species’ exact migration route across oceans has remained fragmentary for conservationists seeking to protect its globally declining population owing to destruction of habitat, global warming and trawl fishing.Migrating songbirds, beetles and dragonflies can soon be hooked up to space satellites helping to predict natural disasters and the spread of zoonoses - diseases that jump from animals to humans like swine flu and avian influenza.

As pressures from climate change, ecosystem loss and wild life crime threaten biodiversity and wildlife around the globe, scientists are responding by harnessing the power of sophisticated space technologies.

Migrating songbirds, beetles and dragonflies can soon be hooked up to space satellites helping to predict natural disasters and the spread of zoonoses – diseases that jump from animals to humans like swine flu and avian influenza. Radars will help locate poachers through infrared, detect through an elephant’s agitated movements, its imminent poaching. Cameras orbiting in space can capture the presence of crop diseases and invasive species in remote locations. The realm of science fiction has already stepped into the real world.

The International Cooperation for Animal Research Using Space (ICARUS) project, whose trial phase starts in 2017, is developing solar-powered sensors weighing 1 to 5 grammes which can be attached to migratory songbirds, even dragonflies, beetles. The transmitted data will inform not simply the geo-positions and movements but provide important clues about the body functions or senses of the animal, giving significant indicators about impending natural disasters.

By 2020, ICARUS sensors could be small enough to fit into locusts, possibly even to use the micro-sensors to control the locust flight path to divert the swarm from valuable crops, say its researchers at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Ornithology.

Scientists working on ICARUS say battery life is a major limiting factor for tracking small animals since the miniature batteries they can carry do not last long.

However, Russian space agency Roscosmos’s International Space Station, on which ICARUS hardware will be installed, is closer to the Earth than satellites, thus decreasing the amount of power required to upload data. Saving more battery life, the Station will wake the bird-mounted mini transmitter from its energy-saving mode only when it has visual contact to the in-flight bird. It’ll take only a few seconds to transmit all data back to the Station.

The urgency to go beyond manual patrolling to advanced space-based technology to combat poaching and illegal wildlife trade comes strongly from the World Wildlife Crime Report 2016.

The report builds on the data platform World WISE (The World Wildlife Seizures) that contains over 164,000 seizures related to wildlife crime involving 7,000 species from 120 countries spanning 2004 to 2015.

Trafficking of wildlife is now recognised as a specialised area of organised crime and a significant threat to many plant and animal species. The focus of the upcoming 17th Conference of Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) is set to be the illegal wildlife trade. According to a 2016 UN Environment Programme report, the wildlife trade is estimated at 7 to 23 billion dollars annually.

With poachers increasingly using more sophisticated technology, wildlife rangers need to be equipped too. When a poacher moves in for the kill, elephants and rhinos will often behave unusually. Animal sensors help detect such behavior and send alerts to law enforcement, giving them time to act.

Other high-resolution constellations (10 or more) of radar satellites, unlike optical Earth observation satellites, are powerful enough to penetrate dense forest canopies, clouds and cover of darkness that aid poachers from detection. Infrared sensors attached to drones controlled by Global Positioning Systems (GPS) can also be used to detect campfires or warm bodies hiding in African bush land, say researchers.

Sophisticated satellites are already monitoring the extent of illegal logging, rate of deforestation and even soil moisture. The launch of hyperspectral imaging satellites that record detailed images in hundreds of electromagnetic wavelengths can assess the extent of disaster, crop growth and diseases, availability of water in remote locations and glacier melts, besides general biodiversity.

Development experts say the role that space tools can play for achieving the SDGs is broad and diverse, specifically Goal 15 to protect, restore and promote sustainable management of ecosystems, forests, soil and biodiversity, monitor not just wildlife but assess whether management practices put in place are having the desired effect.

“There are many types of satellites flying in space,” said Werner Balogh, a programme officer at the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA). “But how are they being used, is there more that can be done? Can we find joint mechanisms to share this data? It’s an exciting field and there’s still lots that needs to be explored.”

There has emerged consistent demand from developing countries who host rich biodiversity that mutual partnerships, free technical assistance, knowledge transfer, adequate resources and capacity building in space-based technologies to developing countries will significantly help achieve the 2030 Agenda.

But the high cost of technology solutions and access to the latest science and knowledge remain major constraints for the global South.

“In India, we use radio-collars to track movement for large animals like tigers and elephants. However, permits costs and taxes add to the already high cost of obtaining wildlife collars; for example, satellite collars to be used on elephants are available for 2,500 dollars each, plus annual subscription costs of 500 dollars,” Shashank Srinivasan, spatial analysis coordinator of World Wildlife Fund, India, told IPS.

The South Asia region, with 40 percent forest cover in Bhutan and Nepal and precious biodiversity, is very vulnerable to illegal traffic and wildlife crimes mainly because there exist easier traffic routes to large markets like China.

“The international community must design low-cost space-based appliances for sharing with developing countries like the solar transmitter chips (ICARUS) Germany is developing. It would be of great conservation value if we could procure it for 50 to 100 dollars,” Saroj Koirala, geospatial technologies expert with the World Wildlife Fund, Nepal, told IPS.

“Even if international commercial companies can provide us with, for example, hyperspectral images as old as of year 2010, this would still help country research. The process to access these are conditional and time-consuming,” Koirala added.

Srinivasan said except for initiatives like wildlabs.net that allow for the sharing of conservation-relevant technology, he knew of no other national, regional or international technology sharing or funding.

Experts say awareness of the importance of space-based technologies needs to be created among law makers for need-of-the-hour policies and fund allocation. Koirala said since nature conservation is linked to livelihoods, people themselves will pressurise democratic governments to set aside funds for latest technologies.

Lions, Krugersdorp Game Reserve in South Africa. Credit: Derek Keats/cc by 2.0

By Dr. Rosie Cooney
GLAND, Switzerland, Jul 31 2015 (IPS)

Cecil the lion, a magnificent senior male, much loved and part of a long-term research project, was lured out of a safe haven in Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park last week and apparently illegally shot, to endure a protracted death.

As the global outrage pours out, consider for a moment that trophy hunting has now been banned across Africa. Trophy hunting is the limited “high value” end of hunting, where people (often the wealthy and mainly Westerners) pay top dollar to kill an animal. In southern Africa it takes place across an area close on twice the sum total of National Parks in the region.Hwange Park staff numbers have been radically cut, and there is little money for cars or equipment for protection. Bushmeat poaching is on the rise and the rangers are ill equipped to cope.

It arouses disgust and revulsion – animals are killed for sport – in some cases (such as lions) the meat not even eaten. Even the millions of weekend recreational hunters filling their freezers are uncertain about trophy hunting.

It seems to have little place in the modern world, where humanity is moving toward an ethical position that increasingly grants animals more of the moral rights that humanity grants (in principle at least) to each other.

So let us move now through the thought bubble where the EU and North America ban import of trophies, Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe and others ban trophy hunting, the airlines and shipping lines refuse to carry trophies, and the industry dies a slow (or fast) death, ridding the world of this toxic stain on our collective conscience.

We turn to survey southern Africa, proud of what we have achieved by our signing of online petitions, our lobbying of politicians, our Facebook shares and comments.

Did we save lions? Have we safeguarded wildlife areas? Have we dealt the death blow to trafficking of wildlife? Have we liberated local communities from imperialistic foreign hunters?

Let’s go back to Hwange National Park, the scene of Cecil’s demise. The Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority, responsible for managing this and other National Parks, is now in trouble.

It derived most of its income for protection, conservation and management of wildlife across the country from trophy hunting, with minimal revenue from central government (not well known for its good governance and transparent resource allocation).

Hwange Park staff numbers have been radically cut, and there is little money for cars or equipment for protection. Bushmeat poaching is on the rise and the rangers are ill equipped to cope. The commonly used wire snares are indiscriminate, and capture many lions and other predators who die agonising and pointless deaths.

In Namibia, more than half of the communal conservancies (covering 20 percent of the country) have collapsed, because the revenue from non-hunting sources (such as tourism) is not enough to keep them viable and they have not been able to find alternative sources of income.

Namibia’s communal conservancies are an innovation of the 1990s, and have been responsible for dramatic increases in a wide range of wildlife species outside of national parks including elephant, lion, and black rhino.  Income from trophy hunting and tourism has encouraged communities to turn their land over to conservation.

Communities retain 100 percent of benefits from sustainable use of wildlife, including hunting – almost 18 million Namibian dollars in 2013. This money was spent by communities on schools, healthcare, roads, training, and the employment of 530 game guards to protect their wildlife.

Almost two million high protein meals a year were a by-product of the hunting. Now this is all gone. A few conservancies managed to find wealthy philanthropic donors to prevent them going under – but they cross their fingers that the generosity will continue to flow for decades to come.

Game guards are unemployed, unable to feed their families, looking for any opportunity to obtain some income. Communities are angry – they were never asked by the world what they thought about this. Few journalists or social media activists ever reflected their side of the story. Conservation authorities and communities are again becoming enemies.

Where the conservancies have collapsed, the wildlife is largely wiped out. The bad old days pre-reform have returned, and wildlife is worth more dead than alive.

Hungry bellies are fed with poached bushmeat and the armed poaching gangs have moved in – communities are no longer interested in feeding information to police to help protect wildlife, game guard programmes have collapsed for lack of funds, and rhino horns, lion bone, and ivory are being shipped out illicitly to East Asia.

In South Africa, trophy hunting has stopped, including the small proportion that was “canned”. On the private game ranches that covered some 20 million hectares of the country, though, revenues from wildlife have effectively collapsed.

Those properties with scenic landscapes that are close to major tourist routes or attractions and have good tourism infrastructure are surviving on revenues from phototourism, but gone are the days of expanding their wildlife asset base by buying land and restocking this with additional wildlife. Most of the other landowners have returned to cattle, goats and crop farming in order to educate their children, run a car, pay their mortgages.

Wildlife on these lands has largely gone along with its habitat – back to the degraded agriculture landscapes that prevailed before the 1970s when wildlife use by landholders (including hunting) became legal here.

Lions that were on these farmlands are long gone, and the few that remain in national parks are shot as problem animals as soon as they leave the park. The great conservation success story of South Africa is rapidly unravelling.

Speculative? Yes, but a reasonable prediction, because this has happened before. Bans on trophy hunting in Tanzania 1973-1978, Kenya in 1977 and in Zambia from 2000-2003 accelerated a rapid loss of wildlife due to the removal of incentives for conservation. Early anecdotal reports suggest similar patterns are already happening in Botswana, which banned all hunting last year.

Let us mourn Cecil, but be careful what we wish for.

*Note: these views are the writer’s and do not necessarily represent those of IUCN.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

Mother and young rhinoceros killed for their horns. The poaching of elephants and rhinos is becoming “increasingly militarized." Credit: Hein waschefort/cc by 3.0

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 1 2015 (IPS)

The ongoing military conflicts in the Middle East and Africa continue to be fuelled by the proliferation of small arms and light weapons (SALW), primarily assault rifles, sub machine guns, hand grenades, portable anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns, rockets and self-loading pistols.

But the latest Small Arms Survey 2015, released Monday, says some of these weapons are also being used to destroy wild life and help misappropriate the earth’s mineral riches."Poor law enforcement and corruption among government officials and security officers facilitate wildlife crime and trafficking." -- Paula Kahumbu of WildlifeDirect

The poaching of elephants and rhinos is becoming “increasingly militarized,” says the report, while the negative impact of climate change is triggering human interactions, including on underlying causes for armed conflicts, as well as on actual fighting.

Besides the killing of thousands of humans in current military conflicts, perhaps the next most devastating impact of small arms and light weapons is on the destruction of wildlife.

As the demand for ivory and rhino horn remains high, both poachers and anti-poaching forces are becoming increasingly militarised using military-style weapons and adopting more aggressive tactics.

In Africa, elephant populations are in decline, and the illicit killing of rhinos has escalated sharply over recent years, according to the survey.

“The actors involved in poaching these animals include armed militias, rogue military officers, commercial poachers and bush meat and subsistence hunters.”

The illegal rhino horn trade reportedly threatens all African species of rhino. But despite some successful efforts to re-introduce rhinos to protected areas in South Africa, which is home to 80 percent of all African rhinos, the rate of poaching continues to accelerate, according to the World Wildlife Fund International (WWF).

Paula Kahumbu, a leading conservationist and executive director of WildlifeDirect, says today’s wildlife crime threatens the survival of endangered and vulnerable species in many African countries.

She said evidence documented by her Kenya-based non-governmental organisation (NGO) shows that legal penalties designed to deter such crimes have had little impact on poachers and traffickers.

“Worse, poor law enforcement and corruption among government officials and security officers facilitate wildlife crime and trafficking,” she warns.

The survey also points out the role of climate change in present and possibly future conflicts.

In tropical war zones, fighting traditionally stops during the rainy season, only to resume when the soil hardens enough for vehicles to navigate unpaved roads.

And even battle tactics are determined and influenced by the state of terrain.

“In some parts of the world, rainy seasons are now shifting in time and intensity. As global warming alters temperature, rainfall and sea levels, as many expect it will, it is almost certain to affect armed violence and armed conflict in ways that for now are predictable,” according to the survey.

The proliferation of small arms is also responsible for the illegal extraction of natural resources, transforming remote outposts into urban hubs virtually overnight.

As a result, it spurs insecurity and violence as different groups compete over spoils and local communities protest perceived wrongs.

The extraction of oil, gas and precious minerals is accompanied by significant urbanisation of adjoining areas and the effort to control and secure resources can attract a variety of armed actors, including security forces and predatory groups.

The survey, produced annually with the support of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs and several other Western nations, also focuses on the small arms trade, floating armouries, the increasing number of private security firms, the Arms Trade Treaty and the U.N.’s Programme of Action to track the flow of illegal weapons.

According to the latest available U.N. statistics, the biggest exporters of small arms and light weapons include the United States, Italy, Germany, Brazil, Austria, South Korea, Russia, China, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Turkey, Norway and Japan.

With weapons continuing to all into the hands of armed groups, the survey says these groups “are better armed (today) than they were a decade ago”.

The arms in their possession include large calibre weapons. And “of particular concern is jihadist possession of man-portable air defence systems (MANPADS), although many of these may be inoperable.”

The weapons used by most insurgent groups consists largely of Cold War-era Soviet and Chinese arms and ammunition, ”but they also use more recently-produced materiel from Bulgaria and China, among other states.”

Focusing specifically on the politically volatile Middle East, the survey says parts of the Middle East and North Africa suffer from high levels of armed violence, armed conflict and political instability, as well as the risk of small arms misuse and diversion.

According to the survey, there is little evidence the “Arab Spring” has had a significant impact on the policies of major exporters of small arms to the region.

Libya is the only state affected by the uprisings to be subject to a U.N. arms embargo.

And efforts to impose such an embargo on Syria have failed, and the option has not been discussed with regard to Egypt.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

Rhinos in the Rietvlei Nature Reserve, Tshwane, Gauteng, South Africa. Credit: cc by 4.0

By Lisa Vives
NEW YORK, May 13 2015 (IPS)

Thefts, murders and mutilation of Africa’s wildlife, from white rhinos to elephants with their prized horns and tusks, are at an all-time high, say conservationists who are keeping track of the poaching of species by fortune-seeking hunters.

To save the animals from further decimation, the U.S.-based Exotic Wildlife Association (EWA) proposes moving about 1,000 of South Africa’s white rhinos to a comparable climate in the U.S.

Allan Warren of the EWA says the need is urgent as rhinos are being poached to near extinction in southern Africa, and there appears to be no effort to stop it.

“The rhino horn is worth about 90,000 U.S. dollars per kilogramme, and each horn weighs about four kilos so it is more valuable than gold,” Warren said.

Under EWA’s scheme, rhinos would relocate to individual ranches in Texas, with South African ranchers granted partial ownership of the rhinos’ offspring. “It is not about hunting, it’s about preserving, saving the species from certain annihilation in South Africa,” Warren said. “Most of the rhinos to be moved are these baby rhinos whose mothers are slaughtered by poachers who slice off their horns.”

According to an “Elephant Summit” in 2013 held in Gaborone, Botswana, run by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the majority of animal tusks wind up in Asia. The U.S., Great Britain, Belgium and the Netherlands are also cited to a lesser degree on the summit’s map.

In March of this year, world leaders met again in Kasane, Botswana to review progress since the 2014 London Conference on Illegal Wildlife Trade. According to this group, illegal sales of ivory are now a 19 billion dollar business, 1000 park rangers have been killed by poachers in the last decade, and a rhino is killed every 11 hours.

With Botswana having a tough policing policy that has sharply reduced poaching, South Africa earlier this year approved the transfer of about 100 rhinos to that country. In addition to providing more space, Botswana also has a harsh “shoot to kill” policy against the hunters. It’s controversial, but some wildlife conservationists believe it’s the only way to stem poaching.

A different solution was proposed by Rhinos Without Borders which, in partnership with Great Plains Conservation, as well as various government ministries and safari groups, hopes to move up to 100 rhinos (both black and white) from existing high density populations in South Africa, and release them into the wild in various parts of Botswana.

Meanwhile, the plan to move rhinos to Texas faces several challenges: it needs approval from the US Department of Agriculture, it must find enough ranchers in Texas who want to take the rhinos; and it must raise the funds to move the creatures, at an estimated cost of at least 50,000 dollars per rhinoceros.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Mother and baby rhinoceros in Tigertops Wildlife Sanctuary, Nepal. The unrestricted exploitation of wildlife has led to the disappearance of many animal species at an alarming rate, destroying earth's biological diversity and upsetting the ecological balance. Credit: UN Photo/John Isaac

By Steven Broad
CAMBRIDGE, UK, Mar 23 2015 (IPS)

On Feb. 13, 2014, heads of state and ministers from 41 countries met in London to inject a new level of political momentum into efforts to combat the growing global threat posed by illegal wildlife trade to species such as elephants, rhinos and tigers.

The UK government-hosted meeting adopted the 25-point London Declaration, with ambitious measures agreed to eradicate the market for illegal wildlife products; strengthen law enforcement efforts and ensure effective legal frameworks and deterrents are in place; and promote sustainable livelihoods through positive engagement with local communities.Most worrying is the significant increase in the frequency of large-scale ivory seizures—those of over 500 kg—which are a strong indication of the involvement of organised criminal networks.

More than a year on, representatives from these governments will gather again March 25 in Kasane, Botswana, to review progress on the implementation of that Declaration and, hopefully, commit to new and tangible actions to further strengthen their implementation.

The scale of the crisis governments in Kasane are facing is daunting: Africa-wide, almost 1,300 rhinos were lost to poaching in 2014, 1,215 of them in South Africa alone.

The situation with elephants remains dire—the most recent analysis of data from the TRAFFIC-managed Elephant Trade Information System (ETIS) clearly indicates high levels of illegal ivory trade continuing.

Most worrying is the significant increase in the frequency of large-scale ivory seizures—those of over 500 kg—which are a strong indication of the involvement of organised criminal networks. The 18 seizures made in 2013 collectively constitute the greatest quantity of ivory derived from large-scale seizures since 1989, when records began.

The crisis is not confined to Africa: in Asia, TRAFFIC’s tiger seizures database clearly indicates that illicit trafficking of tiger parts remains persistent. A minimum of 1,590 tigers were seized in tiger range countries between January 2000 and April 2014, an average of two per week and increasing numbers of seizures have been made by most range States.

With over 218,000 pangolins reported to have been seized by enforcement agencies between 2000 and 2012 world-wide, we must also remember that wildlife crime is an issue that goes well beyond elephants, rhinos and tigers.

While these figures paint a bleak picture of the illegal wildlife trade landscape, it would be wrong to conclude that countries will have little to report in terms of progress at Kasane. Although the ivory seizure figures do demonstrate high levels of trade, they also demonstrate higher levels of law enforcement action, especially in Africa, and we hope these countries remain vigilant.

High-level political attention to the issue continues to be significant, with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon earlier this month expressing concern over the environmental, economic and social consequences of wildlife crime and Premier Li Keqiang of China last May pledging financial support for African countries to combat poaching.

Some countries have made improvements to legislation, including Thailand, which probably had one of the largest unregulated ivory markets in the world but has recently taken steps to improve the legislation governing its domestic ivory market.

There is still a very long way to go for Thailand before its illegal ivory markets are shut down, but this was an important step in the right direction. China has recognised the importance of a more targeted approach to reducing demand for ivory and this January organised a workshop to discuss strategies for curbing illegal ivory trade—particularly targeted at the collection and art investment circles.

Countries in Africa are working together on a common African Strategy on combatting illegal wildlife trade that will be discussed at an African Union conference just a month after Kasane.

While these green shoots of progress are promising, there is little doubt that much more needs to be done and it is hoped that Kasane can be the turning point where the lofty declarations of London can be translated into tangible actions on the ground.

Wildlife criminals are responding to the actions of last year by changing their trade routes and methods, using new technologies and getting more organised. To keep up with these developments, new approaches need to be agreed at Kasane that make it significantly harder for criminals to operate, increasing the indirect and actual risks they face and reduce the rewards they reap.

New players will also need to be brought into the fray. For example, with traffickers typically using the same transportation means as legal importers, the transport sector is inadvertently becoming a critical link within illegal wildlife trade chains.

Much more outreach is needed to the private sector, to prevent criminals abusing other legitimate business services in the finance, insurance and retail sectors.

Meanwhile the power of local communities, who live with and adjacent to wildlife, needs to be harnessed for they are the eyes and ears, the very guardians of the wildlife within their realm.

Community-led approaches need to strengthen the role these communities can play in reducing illegal wildlife trade—while safeguarding their dependence on natural resources.

The world’s governments in London last year declared they were up to the challenge and committed to end the scourge of illegal wildlife trade. A year later, Kasane provides the venue for those governments, and others, to show that they are able and willing to turn those words into action.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

“The forest used to be for the Baka but not anymore. We would walk in the forest according to the seasons but now we’re afraid,” say the Baka of Cameroon. Credit: © Survival International

By Lyndal Rowlands
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 5 2015 (IPS)

Indigenous and wildlife conservationists have common goals and common adversaries, but seem to be struggling to find common ground in the fight for sustainable forests.

The forest lifestyle of the Baka people of Cameroon helps provide improved habitats for wild animals.“When wildlife trafficking and bush meat trade results in the decline in wildlife populations, the very first people to suffer are indigenous people who need those wildlife populations to survive.” -- James Deutsch

When the Baka clear a patch for a camp, the clearing later turns into secondary forest that gorillas prefer, Mike Hurran, Survival International Africa campaigner, told IPS.

“When they harvest wild yams that grow in the forest, they always leave part of the root intact and that spreads the pockets of wild yams through the forest that elephants and wild bush pigs like,” he said.

They have “sophisticated codes of conservation” and have lived sustainably for generations following the ‘ancestor’s path’.

But pressures on the Baka’s forest home are coming from many angles; logging, mining, and illegal poaching.

According to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), worldwide wildlife trafficking is now worth an estimated 23 billion dollars annually, threatening endangered species and ruining opportunities for sustainable development.

On the ground, tackling wildlife crime is becoming increasingly difficult. Poachers, backed by the same international crime syndicates that traffic in drugs and people, are employing increasingly sophisticated techniques.

At the same time, forests are under increased pressure from resource exploitation. Mining and logging destroy habitats and brings thousands of workers to the forest who themselves hunt, eat and trade wild animals.

“When wildlife trafficking and bush meat trade results in the decline in wildlife populations, the very first people to suffer are indigenous people who need those wildlife populations to survive,” James Deutsch, vice president, conservation strategy for the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), told IPS.

Deutsch said conservationists and indigenous people have common adversaries, in organised crime syndicates and the extractives industry.

However, Survival International is concerned that although conservationists have in recent years expressed a greater commitment to working with indigenous communities, this is not always reflected on the ground.

“What these anti-poaching squads are doing, and by extension the conservation agencies that fund them, is really just focusing on the least powerful people, who are really just hunting to feed their families as they have for generations,” Hurran said.

“Often the poaching squads [that] enforce wildlife law are maybe corrupt or they don’t have much respect for the human rights of tribal people, such as the Baka,” he said.

“The Baka have told us that even when they are hunting in their special zones, using techniques which are recognised as traditional and legal and hunting just for food and not for sale, sometimes their meat is confiscated, and they are being harassed or beaten by anti-poaching squads,” Hurran added.

Survival International has named specific international conservation organisations that they say provide funding to these anti-poaching squads, including World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in Cameroon.

In a statement provided to IPS, WWF said, “On the ground, advancing the status and rights of tribal communities while also protecting the resources vital to them and the global community is extraordinarily difficult… WWF agrees that parks need people, and models such as Community Based Natural Resource Management being pursued by WWF globally over many years have ensured that many parks have people.

“WWF is open to a collaborative approach to these issues.  WWF is standing by commitments to assist a Cameroon National Human Rights and Freedom Commission investigation of alleged human rights abuses by Ecoguards and military and is reviewing field experience and our activities in support of the Baka and forest protection in Cameroon.”

Deutsch also echoed WWF’s call for a collaborative approach, saying that a deeper partnership between the human rights community and the conservation community is needed to address complex conservation challenges. Survival International also says WCS funds similar anti-poaching squads in the Republic of Congo.

“The conservation community has to be committed to partnering with indigenous people, because that’s the only way that we’re both going to find a future for wildlife, but also do it in such a way that human rights are respected and traditional societies are respected,” Deutsch said.

Deutsch, who previously led WCS’s programmes in Africa for 11 years, said that solutions were not simple and required perseverance, working with local communities on the ground.

One area both sides agree on is shortfalls in national and international laws protecting indigenous people.

WWF’s statement said that complications included “lack of official recognition in law or in practice of customary rights (and) shortfalls in knowledge, commitment and infrastructure necessary to support international human rights agendas.”

Survival International also acknowledges that national and international laws need to provide more protection to tribal people, both on paper and in practice.

“The criteria that the Baka people need to meet in order to hunt legally is very strict and unrealistic, so often they are considered poachers, when they aren’t,” Hurran said.

Speaking at a United Nations event on World Wildlife Day on Tuesday, Nik Sekhran, director of the UNDP’s Sustainable Development Cluster, said, “For many communities and for indigenous people around the world, sustainable use of wildlife and sustainable use of flora for medicines for food … is really critical to their survival.”

The financial benefits of wildlife tourism are often cited as an important reason to support wildlife conservation in developing countries. However, tourism income does not always trickle down to the poorest communities in developing countries.

“It’s particularly a challenge with hunter-gatherer people,” Deutch said. “There are many cases where wildlife tourism has been created and the intention has been to benefit hunter-gatherer societies and yet in some cases it’s been difficult to make sure that the benefits go to those people because they are less able to deal with the scrum for resources that results.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

A carpenter organises a load of mahogany, precious wood seized by the authorities in Cuba's Ciénaga de Zapata wetlands. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 28 2014 (IPS)

A coalition of international organisations, led by INTERPOL and backed by the United Nations, is pursuing a growing new brand of criminals – primarily accused of serious environmental crimes – who have mostly escaped the long arm of the law.

Described as a worldwide operation, it is the first of its kind targeting individuals wanted for a wide range of crimes, including logging, poaching and trafficking in animals declared endangered species.

Widespread poaching, particularly in central Africa, has resulted in the loss of at least 60 percent of elephants in that region during the last decade.

Last week, INTERPOL, the world’s largest international police organisation, released photographs of nine fugitives charged with these crimes – and who are on the run.

The individuals targeted include, among others, Feisal Mohamed Ali, alleged to be the leader of an ivory smuggling ring in Kenya, according to the U.N. Daily News.

The international coalition is seeking help from the public for information that could help track down the nine suspects whose cases have been singled out for the initial phase of the investigations.

Rob Parry-Jones, manager of international policy at World Wildlife Fund (WWF), told IPS, “It sends a strong message that environmental crime is not merely an animal being illegally shot here or a tree illegally felled there. Environmental crime is highly organised crime and can have devastating impacts.”

He said INTERPOL’s response is something that WWF has wanted for some time. “It is also something that enforcement agencies have wanted for some time.”

The political platform and enabling environment for INTERPOL and other institutions to undertake the necessary research, and to be in a position to release such findings, is a welcome advance from a few years back when WWF and TRAFFIC first started their campaign to raise the political profile of wildlife crime, Parry-Jones said.

TRAFFIC (Trade Records Analysis of Flora and Fauna in Commerce) is a wildlife trade monitoring network supported by WWF.

Code-named INFRA-Terra (International Fugitive Round Up and Arrest), the global operation is supported by the International Consortium on Combating Wildlife Crime (ICCWC) – which is a collaborative effort of the Secretariat of the 1975 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), along with INTERPOL, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the World Bank and the World Customs Organisation.

In a press statement last week, Ben Janse van Rensburg, chief of enforcement support for CITES, said, “This first operation represents a big step forward against wildlife criminal networks.”

He said countries are increasingly treating wildlife crime as a serious offence, and “we will leave no stone unturned to locate and arrest these criminals to ensure they are brought to justice.”

Nathalie Frey, deputy political director at Greenpeace International, told IPS her organisation strongly supports the INTERPOL initiative to strengthen law enforcement against environmental crimes.

“Whilst INTERPOL has been looking more closely into environmental crimes for a number of years, this is the first time we have seen them reach out to the public appealing for further information and leads,” she said.

By giving environmental criminals a name and a face, she said, “it shows that law enforcement agencies are finally starting to take crimes such as illegal logging and fishing as seriously as murder or theft.”

WWF’s Parry-Jones told IPS that addressing environmental crimes effectively across international borders requires legal frameworks that can talk with each other.

Dual criminality where crimes of this scale are recognised in countries’ legal frameworks as serious crimes — a penalty of four-plus year’s imprisonment — brings the crimes within the scope of the U.N. Convention against Transnational Organised Crime (UNTOC), enabling international law enforcement cooperation and mutual legal assistance, he said.

The nature of the crimes illustrates the links with other forms of transnational crime, including people trafficking and arms smuggling, and reinforces the argument over the past few years, both by WWF and TRAFFIC, that environmental crime is a cross-sectoral issue and a serious crime, he added.

Greenpeace’s Frey told IPS environmental crime is “big business”, and at an estimated 70-213 billion dollars per year, the earnings are almost on a par with other criminal activities such as drugs and arms trafficking. That estimate includes logging, poaching and trafficking of a wide range of animals, illegal fisheries, illegal mining and dumping of toxic waste.

Behind these perpetrators, she pointed out, are large networks of criminal activities, with corruption often permeating the whole supply chain of valuable commodities such as timber or fish.

Illegal logging, for example, is rife in many timber-producing countries, and is one of the main culprits for wiping out vast areas of forest that are often home to endangered species.

“Consumer markets are still awash with illegal wood despite regulations to ban the trade,” Frey said.

This, she said, is reflected in the staggering figures released by INTERPOL that illegal logging accounts for 50-90 percent of forestry in key tropical producer countries.

“Whilst we strongly welcome INTERPOL’s initiative to track down offenders and crack down on corruption it is very important that CITES [the U.N. convention to regulate international trade in endangered species] takes much greater action to encourage its parties to step up enforcement and controls,” Frey said.

She singled out the example of Afrormosia, a valuable tropical hardwood found in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

This species is under threat and has been listed as requiring special trade regulation under CITES, yet a blind eye continues to be turned to many cases of illegal trade.

Industrial loggers have a free pass to harvest Afrormosia in the country, despite illegal logging estimated to be almost 90 percent, she said.

CITES is supposed to verify legality, yet hundreds of CITES permits were unaccounted for. Traceability in the country is also non-existent, Frey added.

By allowing the continued trade of species that have been illegally harvested, CITES fails to protect species from extinction, and its lack of controls and weaknesses only serve to fuel environmental crimes, she declared.

According to the U.N. Daily News, wildlife crime has become a serious threat to the security, political stability, economy, natural resources and cultural heritage of many countries.

The extent of the response required to effectively address the threat is often beyond the sole remit of environmental or wildlife law enforcement agencies, or even of one country or region alone, it said.

Last June, the joint U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP)-INTERPOL Environmental Crime Crisis report, pointed to an increased awareness of, and response to, the growing global threat.

It called for concerted action aimed at strengthening action against the organised criminal networks profiting from the trade.

According to the report, one terrorist group operating in East Africa is estimated to make between 38 and 56 million dollars per year from the illegal trade in charcoal.

“Wildlife and forest crime also play a serious role in threat finance to organized crime and non-State armed groups, including terrorist organizations,” it said.

Ivory provides income to militia groups in the DRC and the Central African Republic. And it also provides funds to gangs operating in Sudan, Chad and Niger.

Last week, Uganda complained the loss of about 3,000 pounds of ivory from the vaults of its state-run wildlife protection agency.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

Wildlife crime is not only threatening iconic species such as elephants and rhinos. But marine turtles are also a group of species under threat from criminals. Credit: Mauricio Ramos/IPS

By Bradnee Chambers
QUITO, Ecuador, Nov 8 2014 (IPS)

A surge in wildlife crime is fuelling criminal syndicates, perpetuating terrorism, and resulting in the loss of major revenues from tourism and industries dependent on iconic species while also endangering the livelihoods of the rural poor.

But this surge in wildlife crime is not only threatening iconic species, which include elephants, rhinos and tigers, but also lesser-known animals that are also on the brink of extinction.

Wildlife crime is estimated to be worth between seven and 23 billion dollars per year and is growing at a pace never seen in recent memory.

A great deal of attention has rightly been focused on the illegal trade of ivory from elephants and rhino horns, which has spiked out of control and is devastating these animals’ populations.

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

But what the public does not know is that crime is not just limited to these species — it is also affecting many others, driving some to the brink of extinction and is depleting a wide range of economically important natural resources.

Illegal trapping results in millions of birds being indiscriminately taken every migration to supply the voracious appetite in restaurants that offer local song-bird delicacies.

The illegal charcoal trade is having a major impact on the fragile ecosystems in East Africa and threatening the habitats of birds and terrestrial mammals that depend on these ecosystems for their survival.

The scale of habitat loss is alarming and it is emerging that Al Shabaab, the Somali terrorist group responsible for the West Gate Mall attack in Nairobi in 2013, is financing its activities with proceeds of illegal charcoal sales.

Illegal fishing is the second-largest type of environmental crime, accounting for between 11 and 30 billion dollars a year. It is increasingly becoming a widespread global phenomenon that requires sustained law enforcement, stricter regulation and improved public awareness of the impacts.

The criminal activities also include illegal shark finning, which feeds crime syndicates selling the fins to markets in East Asia. Shark populations have been decimated because of the demand for the animals’ fins and oil. Estimates have shown that fins of between 26 and  73 million sharks are being traded each year, a number which is three to four times higher than overall reported shark catches worldwide.

Marine turtles are another group of species under threat from criminals. Poaching of green and hawksbill turtles, which are endangered, is still widespread in the Coral Triangle of South East Asia and in the Western Pacific Ocean. Poachers use both the shell of the turtle for raw materials for luxury goods and souvenirs, and their meat and eggs — which are considered a rare delicacy.

In Central Asia the Snow Leopard, which is highly-endangered, is still poached for its fur pelt while its primary prey, the Argali mountain goat, is also poached for its horn. As a result there is double impact on the populations of Snow Leopard to the point where there are fewer than 2,500 left in the wild.

The live capture of cheetahs remains a major threat to their already endangered populations. Sought after as pets for the rich and wealthy, many cheetahs are captured and smuggled to private collectors throughout the world. Only one in six cheetahs survives this illegal trafficking.

These are but a few examples of the other species under threat and that demonstrate the magnitude of worldwide wildlife crime.

Quito, Ecuador is hosting a major conference for more than 120 states under the Convention for the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS), which will address these and other dimensions of wildlife crime that are not as readily understood globally.

Before the conference is a resolution proposed by Monaco and Ghana that is meant to broaden the fight against wildlife crime.

The resolution is also meant to bring into the spotlight other species of wildlife under threat as well as the increasing number of types of crime. These include some that take place inside countries such as markets for bushmeat and charcoal, and open bazaars that fuel the unsustainable demand for endangered species.

CMS is a convention which requires countries to either put in place conservation strategies to sustainably manage the populations or in the case of endangered species ensure there is no taking.

In this way, the Convention can be a very powerful vehicle for beefing up enforcement, increasing pressure for stronger legislation and working directly in countries to combat wildlife crime.

If adopted, the resolution will unleash the potential of this important convention to start to place international pressure on countries to address all dimensions of wildlife crime both within these countries and internationally where there animals move.

Edited by: Nalisha Adams

Excerpt:

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

South Sudan’s wildlife, including elephants, are being used to feed troops on both side of conflict between government and forces loyal to former deputy president Riek Machar. Pictured here is a South African elephant. Credit: Nalisha Adams/IPS

By Charlton Doki
JUBA, Jun 17 2014 (IPS)

While South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar agreed last week to end the country’s devastating six-month conflict by forming a transitional government within the next two months, it may come too late for this country’s wildlife as conservation officials accuse fighters on both sides of engaging in killing wild animals to feed their forces.  

Poaching has always been a common practice in South Sudan. But conservationists say that since the conflict between the government and forces loyal to Machar began in December 2013, there has been an upsurge in the killing and trafficking of wildlife by government and anti-government forces as well as armed civilians.

“Since the start of this conflict we have noticed that poaching has become terrible. Rebels are poaching and the government forces are also poaching because they are all fighting in rural areas and the only available food they can get is wild meat,” Lieutenant General Alfred Akuch Omoli, an advisor to South Sudan’s Ministry of Wildlife Conservation and Tourism, told IPS.

Officials say elephants are being killed for their meat and tusks while migratory animals that move in large numbers, especially the white-eared kob, the tiang (also known as the Senegal hartebeest) and reedbuck, are being killed specifically to provide bush meat.

“Our forces are also shooting wildlife animals for food. If you go from here between Mangala and Bor [just outside of the capital, Juba] you will see a lot of bush meat being sold along the road,” the director general for Wildlife in South Sudan, Philip Majak, told local radio.

The current conflict has also made it difficult for wildlife officers to stop both the government and rebel troops from poaching and is hindering their efforts to conduct routine patrols in national game parks and wildlife reserves.

“Wildlife officers have run away from their work stations, which means they can no longer conduct routine patrols to prevent poaching. So criminals and gangs can now easily kill animals in the bushes,” Omoli said.

“Things will only get better when peace is restored, fighters return to the barracks and the government disarms civilians carrying illegal guns,” he added.

Wildlife Conservation and Tourism Ministry officials say prior to the two-decade civil war between what was previously north and south Sudan, South Sudan had more than 100,000 elephants. But when the war ended in 2005, there were only 5,000 left.

Last year, the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), which is helping conserve wildlife in South Sudan, fitted 34 elephants with GPS satellite collars.

But between January and April WCS officials established that some of the collars were no longer visible on satellite.

“We have evidence that some of the elephants we collared have been killed. When the conflict escalated we established that one of the collars was behind rebel forces’ lines in Jonglei state. That means that elephant has most probably been killed by now,” Michael Lopidia, WCS’s deputy director for South Sudan, told IPS.

The increased availability of arms remains an issue here. Before South Sudan gained independence in 2011, it was estimated that there were between 1.9 and 3.2 million small arms in circulation in the country. Two-thirds of these small arms and light weapons were thought to be in the hands of civilians, according to a February 2012 report by Safer World titled “Civilian disarmament in South Sudan: A legacy of struggle.”

But this number is thought to have doubled or tripled in the last three years due in part to the number of rebel and militia groups that have sprung up in Jonglei and Upper Nile states in 2010 and 2011. There has also been an increased supply of small arms by traders from neighbouring countries.

“There is serious poaching here in South Sudan simply because there are a lot of guns in uncontrolled hands. Civilians who own guns just go into the forests and begin poaching without permission from the ministry,” Omoli explained.

Ethnic conflict has also played a role in hampering conservation efforts. During the 2013 war in Jonglei state’s Pibor County led by David Yau Yau of the Murle community, communities and wildlife rangers from the Boma National Park were displaced. This ultimately lead to a halt in wildlife conservation activities.

“The armed conflict between Yau Yau and the SPLA [South Sudan’s army] from February to May 2013 disrupted our efforts to conserve animals. WCS lost more than 5,000 dollars worth of property. All our infrastructure, including tents, were removed and looted,” Lopidia said.

But another concerning factor is that wildlife rangers lack the capacity to deal with South Sudan’s highly militarised poachers. According to both the South Sudan Wildlife Service and WCS officials, poachers here tend to be heavily armed.

“Once we went to fix a sign post. There were seven rangers and they saw more than 10 poachers carrying G3s [automatic rifles] while the rangers were carrying AK47s [select-fire assault rifles]. We had to come back because if the rangers had approached the poachers they would have been overpowered,” Lopidia explained.

There is also currently no specific law to deal with the issues of poaching and wildlife trafficking. Though wildlife officers have arrested poachers and wildlife traffickers, because of the lack of a clear law, “sometimes in the courts ask under what section are you charging this person,” Omoli said. Most often suspected poachers are set free.

“That’s why we want to speed up the laws so that they are put in place and implemented as soon as possible,” Omoli said.

South Sudan Wildlife Service officers also do not have powers to prosecute. Arrested poachers and wildlife traffickers are often handed over to the police for prosecution.

“The problem is that when these cases are taken to police they are sometimes not tried and the cases just die out. We would prefer to try these cases. But the cases end up pending and the suspects are sometimes released and they go back to what they have been doing — poaching,” Omoli explained.

Officials say that if South Sudan’s variety of wildlife, including elephants, giraffes, buffalos, white-eared-kobs, gazelles, tiang, antelopes, mongalla gazelles, reedbuck and lions, were sustainably managed, tourism for the country’s wildlife could contribute up to 10 percent of South Sudan’s GDP in 10 years time.

“We need proper planning and policies. We should identify what natural resources we have and prepare good policies guiding how they should be used for a long time to benefit the current and future generations. There should be a national plan to do that,” Dr. Leben Nelson Moro, a professor of development studies at Juba University, told IPS.

Ministry of Wildlife Conservation and Tourism officials are working with WCS to develop a legal framework that will govern how wildlife offences or violations are dealt with. The law will also guide the development of tourism.

But there will also have to be an education campaign for local communities as there is currently limited awareness among South Sudan’s communities on the importance of wildlife conservation.

At a local restaurant in Juba, 55-year-old Zachariai Lomude told IPS: “I love bush meat and have eaten it since I was a child. I will continue to eat it as long as I am alive regardless of whether killing wild animals is allowed or not.”

Carpenter Antonio Gutiérrez organises a load of mahogany, precious wood seized by the authorities in the Ciénaga de Zapata wetlands. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Ivet González
HAVANA, Apr 22 2014 (IPS)

The lack of markets to supply raw materials for Cuba’s new private sector, along with the poverty in isolated rural communities, is fuelling the poaching of endangered species of flora and fauna.

In 2010, the socialist government of Raúl Castro gave the green light to private enterprise in a limited number of activities, mainly in the services sector.

But without wholesale markets to supply the 455,000 “cuentapropistas” – officially registered self-employed people – unforeseen phenomena soon appeared, like the rise in poaching and illegal logging.

Forests, which cover just under 29 percent of the territory of this Caribbean island nation, are suffering the consequences.

“You can get a permit to work as a carpenter, but it’s hard to get the raw materials,” Antonio Gutiérrez, a carpenter who works at a sawmill in the Ciénaga de Zapata, the largest Caribbean island wetland, told Tierramérica. “You can also build more homes, or upgrade homes. People need boards, windows, everything…and to solve the problem they go into the bush and cut.”

Last year, the forest ranger corps levied 19,993 fines for a total of 125,000 dollars, and seized 2,274 metres of wood. Although there are no statistics on wood confiscated in previous years, the authorities say illegal logging is on the rise.

“That’s confiscated mahogany and oak,” said Gutiérrez, 48, pointing to a pile of thin tree trunks on the ground. “Those trees had a lot of growing to do to become real logs.”

He maintained that more wood should be sold to people in order to safeguard forests from illegal logging.

The Agriculture Ministry’s forestry director, Isabel Rusó, told the press in March that the law in effect since 1998 provides for fines that are not effective in dissuading illegal logging. She also said private businesses either have to face a sea of red tape to purchase wood from state-owned companies or buy wood on the black market.

A new forestry bill is to be introduced in parliament in 2015.

But the problems are not only limited to the country’s forests.

Last year, the authorities confiscated 1,696 boats and registered 2,959 cases of illegal fishing – up from 1,987 in 2011 and just 996 in 2012.

In the western province of Pinar del Río, which has rich nature reserves, over two tonnes of poached sea turtles were seized, most of which belonged to endangered or threatened species.

In addition, 219 simple fishing boats were confiscated, and fines were levied for the use of banned fishing techniques, the capture of protected or toxic species, and vandalism against state fishing companies, among other offences.

The capture of the loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta) “is indiscriminate because it is done at night and the females are often on their way to lay their eggs in the sand,”
Pedro Fernández, a 62-year-old bricklayer from Havana who has been a hobby fisherman for four decades, told Tierramérica.

“The turtles are killed and cleaned, and the waste is dumped at sea,” he added. “Because of the way things are done, it’s hard to control and assess the real magnitude of the problem,” said Fernández, who added that he had never fished illegally.

He said that to catch the turtles, the fishermen place net traps at the bottom of the sea for a month or more.

From May to September, loggerhead turtles, green sea turtles (Chelonia mydas) and hawksbill sea turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata) lay their eggs on Cuba’s beaches.

Many of the beaches are protected areas, such as the ones in the Jardines de la Reina archipelago, the San Felipe keys, the Largo del Sur key, the Isle of Youth (Cuba’s second-biggest island), and the Guanahacabibes peninsula in Pinar del Río.

But that doesn’t stop the poachers. Nor do the stiff penalties against poaching or the strict police controls.

The meat of different animals and fish and seafood sell for astronomical prices on the black market. One kilo of loggerhead sea turtle or crocodile meat fetches between five and seven dollars.

The average salary of a state employee – the government still employs roughly 80 percent of the workforce – is the equivalent of 19 dollars a month. But some Cubans have other sources of income, and can afford such forbidden luxuries.

In this business, however, not everyone is always lucky. A young man from Havana returned last month from a trip to Pinar del Río, 160 km west of Havana, with empty hands, after making the journey to buy loggerhead turtle steaks.

“No fisherman sold me anything,” the young man, who occasionally sells prohibited foods,” told IPS. “People buy up this soft, tasty protein-rich meat really quickly.”

Poaching and illegal logging are increasing along Cuba’s coasts and in its forests, mangroves, swamps and marshes – even in the country’s 103 protected areas.

The damage caused by poaching endangered species is the most visible face of the illegal hunting, fishing and logging in this country, which has 1,163 endangered species of animals and 848 endangered species of plants.

The shrinking populations of manatees, dolphins, crocodiles, caimans, green and loggerhead sea turtles, pirarucu, black coral, queen conch, parrots, and the multicoloured polymita land snail are all targeted by poachers.

Generally, poachers are men, although women take part in transporting and selling the products.

The authorities are beefing up oversight and inspection, to prevent international smuggling as well, while stepping up environmental education.

“But alternatives must be found to boost the development of populations that live near or inside the nature reserves,” Carlos Rojas, the manager of the Laguna Guanaroca-Gavilanes protected area, told Tierramérica.

In the nature reserve, located 11 km from city of Cienfuegos in southeast Cuba, which depends on both tourism and fishing, poaching has been reduced “due to fear of the law, but not because there’s environmental consciousness,” he said.

“Educational programmes help, but we see that people still feel like they have the right to fish. The bans cause conflicts when it comes to how they make a living,” Rojas added.

One positive step in his administration was to increase the number of people from neighbouring communities on the reserve’s payroll. But Rojas lamented that a project for sustainable fishing had never been implemented. And he said ecotourism would be another path to environmentally-friendly local livelihoods.

Demand is the main driver of poaching of fish and seafood in the reserve’s lagoon, he said. And there are newer, growing phenomena, like collectors, or the lack of markets providing supplies for the private sector, he added.

“Permits were issued for making crafts and selling food, but no one knows where some of the things that are sold came from,” he cautioned.

Two years ago, the non-governmental Cuban Association of Artists and Artisans adopted restrictive measures for those who sold crafts made with coral or shells from vulnerable species.

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

Elephants in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Credit: Malini Shankar/IPS

By Ramy Srour
WASHINGTON, Feb 10 2014 (IPS)

A group of international organisations fighting illicit wildlife trafficking has unveiled a new website aimed at assisting whistleblowers who want to aid in the fight against wildlife crimes.

WildLeaks, the first platform of its kind, is an online portal where its creators say whistleblowers can safely and anonymously reveal information on wildlife crimes. Globally, this illegal trade is thought to be worth over 17 billion dollars a year, some of which is thought to be helping finance terrorism, particularly in Africa.“We encourage whistleblowers to use the completely anonymous process, especially if they live in oppressive regimes." -- Andrea Crosta

Officially launched on Feb. 6, WildLeaks is funded by the U.S.-based Elephant Action League (EAL) and run by a group of former law enforcement officers, journalists and environmental NGOs across five continents.

“The goal of WildLeaks is to facilitate the arrest and the prosecution of traffickers, corrupt government individuals, and anyone behind wildlife and forest crime,” Andrea Crosta, EAL’s co-founder and the central figure behind the WildLeaks initiative, told IPS.

Any individual who witnesses a wildlife crime or possesses any type of related information – documents, files, images or videos – can use the website to transmit that information to WildLeaks, using either of two routes of varying strength encryption.

The completely anonymous encryption route makes use of ‘Tor’ technology – more commonly known as the ‘Dark Net’ – and does not disclose the sender’s IP address or any other information.

“We encourage whistleblowers to use the completely anonymous process,” Crosta said, “especially if they live in oppressive regimes where communication is not free and where local governments themselves may actually be engaging in wildlife crime.”

The name of the new initiative is meant to resemble that of WikiLeaks, the group that has drawn much public attention over the last few years by disclosing secret U.S. government documents. But the WildLeaks initiative is designed to be substantially different from its namesake.

“First of all, we’re not after government or military documents,” Crosta said. “And second, while WikiLeaks tends to share everything with the media right away, for us that’s only the last option.”

Once WildLeaks receives any leaked information, the individuals and organisations behind the project will first assess its accuracy and reliability. Thereafter, WildLeaks will try to forward the findings to law enforcement agencies such as Interpol or to trusted government authorities.

However, if governments will not cooperate, the last option would be a leak to the media.

“It’s important to underscore that our goal is to work side by side with law enforcement agencies across the globe,” Crosta said. “We want to create a bridge between the public and law enforcement.”

Initial response to the new project has been positive.

“We strongly encourage anyone with information about wildlife crimes to report them to the appropriate law enforcement agency,” a spokesperson with the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), the country’s largest animal protection organisation, told IPS when asked about the WildLeaks initiative.

Global momentum

The launch of WildLeaks comes only days before a major international anti-wildlife crime conference kicks off in London, on Feb. 11. Hosted by the British government, the conference will bring together key actors in the global wildlife community to craft a global response to the illicit killing and trading of wildlife and forests.

The movement against wildlife crimes has gathered a lot of momentum in recent months. Last week, the French government publicly crushed three tonnes of illegal ivory, the first European country to publicly destroy illegal ivory.

Last month, the Chinese government also publicly destroyed a large quantity of illegal ivory, and the U.S. government took a similar action last November.

Activists have generally welcomed the new global momentum.

Peter Knights, the executive director of WildAid, an advocacy group here, welcomed the Chinese government’s public crush.

“Every great journey starts with one small step. This is a very important first step from China and it should be encouraged,” Knights told IPS in an interview.

Today, the profits from illegal wildlife trafficking are widely believed to be larger than the trafficking of small arms, gold, diamonds and oil. The illegal trade of tiger skins and ivory tusks has led to the estimated death of over 50,000 elephants a year and to an estimated population of fewer than 3,500 wild tigers across Asia, the Environmental Investigation Agency reports.

Last month, the Washington-based Stimson Centre released a report in which it showed evidence of the strong links between wildlife poaching and the financing of international terrorism.

“There is very strong evidence today that groups in the Central African Republic, in Somalia, and in the DRC are heavily involved in poaching,” Varun Vira, an analyst with C4ADS, a security firm here, told reporters at the launch of the report last month.

Activists and analysts alike believe that one of the largest terrorist organisations on the African continent, Al Shabaab, funds much of its activity through the illegal trade of ivory.

The Obama administration, too, has taken some steps toward fighting illegal trafficking in wildlife products. In July 2013, the U.S. president signed the Executive Order on Combating Wildlife Trafficking, committing to assist “those governments in anti-wildlife trafficking activities when requested by foreign nations experiencing trafficking of protected wildlife.”

Obama has tasked several U.S. government agencies and departments with the enforcement of the new directive, including the Departments of Defence, Treasury, Homeland Security and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

A white rhino at a sanctuary in South Africa’s Limpopo Province. In 2011, poachers killed 668 rhinos in South Africa. Credit: Jennifer McKellar/IPS

By Ramy Srour
WASHINGTON, Jan 11 2014 (IPS)

Top diplomats and retired U.S. military officials are urging Western and African governments to step up the global fight against illegal wildlife poaching.

Adding new pressure ahead of a major February summit slated to take place in the United Kingdom on the subject, a growing body of evidence suggests that wildlife poaching is funding criminal and terrorist organisations in several parts of Africa. These groups include Al-Shabaab in Somalia, and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda and South Sudan, who have reportedly turned to the killing of wild rhinoceros, elephants and other protected species to sell their tusks."On one end, you have the poor local tribesman with no job who just needs the money. On the other, you have the organised criminal gangs." -- Andrea Crosta

Such trafficking is associated with a massively lucrative illicit trade.

“Although there’s been a lot of progress [against poaching], we still haven’t been able to stop this crime. We still haven’t achieved momentum,” Gen. Carter Ham, a recently retired U.S. Army general who headed the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) until April of last year, said Friday. “Now is the time.”

Ham suggested that an effective response to poaching in Africa could be to include a strong military component, possibly involving the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), more commonly known as drones.

“The use of drones is not only desirable, but is also likely to be very effective,” Gen. Ham said.

Peter Westmacott, the British ambassador to the United States, seconded the call for a greater security mentality in the fight against wildlife poaching and trafficking.

“The illegal wildlife trade is a tragedy for the natural world, but also for international security,” he said. An important next step, he said, would be the London Conference on Illegal Wildlife Trade, to be hosted by his government next month.

Also this week, the Washington-based Stimson Centre, a think tank, published a comprehensive report on the growing link between poaching and terrorism. That study, the result of research conducted last fall in Kenya, notes that “the spike in poaching and wildlife crime coincides with the increased involvement of sophisticate transnational organized criminals and terrorist organizations.”

“Although we don’t know the full extent of [this] relationship, we know that there is an important link between poaching and … security,” Jonah Bergenas, deputy director of the Managing Across Boundaries Initiative at the Stimson Centre and the report’s author, told IPS.

“We have to treat this issue not just as a conservation challenge but also as a security challenge that will require a holistic approach, one that entails the building of partnerships both within and outside government.”

Western and African governments, Bergenas says, should cooperate with local actors in order to provide a truly comprehensive solution.

Lucrative temptation

According to the report, wildlife poaching funds a 19-billion-dollar industry worldwide, extending from Africa to East Asia and Western countries. Much of this demand continues to be powered by China.

The impact on wildlife has been stark, and has grown significantly in recent years. In 2012 and 2013 alone, nearly 60,000 elephants and over 1,600 rhinos were illegally killed for their tusks.

The driving force behind this practice is clearly the significant money that can still be made from these products. According to expert estimates, a rhino horn is worth 50,000 dollars per pound on the black market, more than the value of gold or platinum.

This, activists say, makes poaching very hard to resist.

“Most people know that this is wrong, but you need to make a distinction between poacher and poacher,” Andrea Crosta, the executive director of Elephant Action League (EAL), a U.S.-based group that fights poaching and illegal trafficking, told IPS.

“On one end, you have the poor local tribesman with no job who just needs the money. On the other, you have the organised criminal gangs, with weapons and money, who are able to bribe rangers and get their information.”

Crosta says a pair of tusks can be worth a few years’ salary in many African countries.

“To someone with no job and a large family to feed, that’s a lot of money,” he says. “They know it’s wrong, but the temptation is just too strong.”

Together with a team of EAL members, Crosta spent much of 2010 to 2012 investigating poaching in East Africa. According to their findings, large quantities of ivory were getting into Somalia in a systematic, organised way.

Later, they discovered this process was being run by Al-Shabaab.

“We were undercover, pretending to be researchers and zoologists, and that way we were able to speak with small and big traders, poachers and middlemen,” Crosta, who is currently based in the Netherlands, told IPS.

His team was able to unveil an undercover trafficking system that saw between one and three tonnes of ivory getting into Somalia, facilitated by Al-Shabaab, every month.

Blood ivory

Diplomats and others are now calling on Western and African governments to pool resources in order to put an end to this illicit market.

“People need to understand that wildlife trade is no different than the well-known blood diamond issue,” Peter Knights, the executive director of WildAid, an advocacy group that seeks to end the illegal wildlife trade worldwide, told IPS.

Knights noted that a public awareness campaign, similar to the one aimed at delegitimising the “blood diamond” phenomenon, could be successful in stopping illegal poaching.

“One of the best ways to do this is to defund [poaching] from the demand side by educating consumers in Asia and other consuming countries, urging them not to buy these products,” he said.

“Consumers need to understand that these products are not from natural mortality and that their purchase is driving this activity, that poachers are being killed and that the proceeds are being used for the financing of illegal activities.”

Indeed, activists say the human aspect of poaching is often overlooked. Thousands of poachers are reportedly killed every year while hunting for elephants and rhinos, often leaving behind families with no income.

Meanwhile, this week the Chinese government for the first time publicly destroyed several tonnes of ivory (the United States took a similar action in November). The step was widely lauded, particularly given China’s outsized influence on the global wildlife trade.

“This was an important public gesture, but it’s definitely not enough,” EAL’s Crosta. “The Chinese government needs to be seriously pressured, including by the U.S., in order to cut down its internal demand.”

Tanzania's Operation Tokomeza, ostensibly aimed at poachers, was terminated following widespread charges of human rights abuses against the local population. Credit: Kizito Makoye/IPS

By Kizito Makoye
DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania , Jan 6 2014 (IPS)

Ali Nyenge, a resident of Iputi ward in Tanzania’s northern Ulanga District, woke up as anti-poaching security officers surrounded his home. He says they accused him of illegal hunting and in front of his 11-year-old son, made him take his clothes off, poured salt water on his body and whipped him with a cane.

“I had no choice than to obey their orders,” Nyenge told IPS by phone from Ulanga. “I sustained severe injuries. I could hardly sit down. I begged them for mercy but they kept on hitting me.”

The 38-year-old farmer, who has publically accused security forces of assault, claims the ordeal caused him severe physical and emotional torture. At one point, Nyenge said his captors forced him to draw a python on his thigh using a razor blade."The anti-poaching operation had good intentions, but the reported murders, rapes and brutality are totally unacceptable."

Nyenge’s story is one of many to emerge as the government investigates an anti-poaching campaign aimed at reducing the illegal ivory trade, but which has also brought allegations that security forces committed rape, murder, torture and extortion of locals. A parliamentary inquiry found 13 people were murdered and thousands of livestock – the livelihood of many – were maimed or killed.

In October 2013, President Jakaya Kikwete ordered more than 2,300 security personnel from Tanzania’s People’s Defence Force, local police and special anti-poaching militias, and wildlife rangers to step up enforcement of a ban on elephant and rhinoceros poaching, which has been growing in recent years. But in November, Kikwete was forced to end the campaign, dubbed Operation Tokomeza, under heavy criticism.

“The anti-poaching operation had good intentions, but the reported murders, rapes and brutality are totally unacceptable,” Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda told the parliament in December.

Pinda said wildlife poaching has reached alarming dimensions in the country’s national parks, especially Selous Game Reserve, whose elephant population has dwindled from 55,000 to 13,000.

During the final two months of last year, the government estimates 60 elephants were killed in the country, compared to only two in October, when the operation was in effect.

Neema Moses, also a resident of Ulanga, told a parliamentary committee formed to investigate human rights abuses that she was stripped naked, made to insert a bottle into her vagina and forced to have sex with her in-laws by security forces.

Presenting a report on the abuses in parliament, the chairman of the committee, James Lembeli, said his team proved beyond doubt that members of security forces spread terror and committed “untold” atrocities against innocent civilians.

“Honourable Speaker, some women claimed to have been raped and sodomised. In Matongo ward in Bariadi district, for instance, one woman alleged to have been raped by three soldiers at gunpoint.”

Lembeli said victims included local government leaders who were humiliated in makeshift interrogation camps in front of their constituents. He cited the case of Peter Samwel, councilor for Sakasaka ward in Meatu district, who complained he had his arms and legs tied with a rope and was hung upside-down for hours.

According to Lembeli, the raids forced some people to abandon their homes for fear of being harmed.

Eyewitness accounts say suspected poachers lost thousands of animals and other property, including cash, when they were seized or outright stolen by officers.

In Minziro village in Kagera region near Lake Victoria, residents recall a stunning blow they suffered on Oct. 13, when a group of soldiers invaded the village, beat up locals and set ablaze homes of people they suspected to be illegal immigrants.

Abraham Kafanobo, the deputy chairman of the village, told IPS that most residents had since fled and said they feared to return even after the operation had been suspended.

The scandal has led to the sacking of four government ministers – of tourism, defence, livestock development and home affairs – for failure to rein in the ministries they were leading.

Tourism minister Khamis Kagesheki said in October that poachers engaging in the ivory trade should killed “on the spot”.

Lawyer and human rights activist Issa Shivji criticised the military involvement in a civilian operation, saying the way the operation was implemented was a great shame on Tanzania.

Professor Shivji called for a swift investigation of the alleged abuses and said criminal charges should be brought against security personnel who took part in the operation irrespective of their rank.

“It’s not only the shame, it’s a big tragedy to the nation which requires a collective assessment of the people to ask ourselves, where are we going? What prompted security organs, which have the mandate to protect lives, dignity and respect of the people to act [so] irresponsibly?”

By Sudeshna Chowdhury
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 18 2013 (IPS)

In a recent report to the U.N. Security Council, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon acknowledged the possibility of poaching as a threat to not just wildlife or endangered species, but to the greater stability and peace in general.

Courtesy of Vanda Felbab-Brown

“Poaching and its potential linkages to other criminal, even terrorist, activities constitute a grave menace to sustainable peace and security in Central Africa,” he said in the report.

Early this month, U.S. President Barack Obama also announced new initiatives to tackle international poaching.

Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), the rebel group responsible for killing hundreds and displacing thousands in the Central African Republic (CAR) and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), is poaching elephants to buy weapons and ammunition, according to a report by the Enough Project.

From ivory in Africa to rhino horns in northeast India, the poaching nexus is extensive  and complicated.

Poaching statistics say it all.

A record 668 rhinos were reported killed in 2012, according to the “Illicit Trade Report” published by the World Customs Organization (WCO), an intergovernmental organisation.

According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), rhino poaching in South Africa increased 3000 percent between 2007 and 2011.

In an interview with IPS correspondent Sudeshna Chowdhury, Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow with the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence in the Foreign Policy programme at the Brookings Institution, a well-known think tank in the U.S., and an expert on international and internal conflicts, said, “Wildlife trafficking’s illicit economy is one of many lucrative illicit economies terrorists and other armed actors can tap into.” Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: What is the connection between poaching and terrorism?

A: Armed groups, including terrorist groups, tend to tax any economic activity in the area they control or where they have substantial influence. Wildlife trafficking can be extremely profitable. So, it’s a tempting target for armed groups to tax or directly participate in.

Their presence undermines park protection; and vice versa.

During an active armed conflict or insurgency, wildlife protection tends to be of least priority for security forces. Thus wildlife trafficking is both a highly lucrative illicit economy for armed groups and a relatively easy one to penetrate, particularly in remote areas.

At the same time, there is often a great deal of complicity on the part of park rangers and wildlife traffickers. Armed groups that have taxed or engaged in wildlife trafficking include the Maoists in Nepal during the civil war; the Taliban in Afghanistan; Janjaweed in Sudan; various parties to the Angola war and many more.

Q: Given that poaching and terrorism are two different issues, how do you tackle them?  

A: Restoring security is key. In the context of violent conflict, all kinds of illicit economies will thrive, including wildlife trafficking. However, focusing on the armed actors is not sufficient. Much poaching takes place in regions where there is no violent conflict. This is possible due to corruption among rangers.

Also, the local population may not be deriving sufficient economic benefits by conserving wildlife in their area.

Addressing the other aspects of wildlife trafficking is no less important than focusing on the violent armed actors. In fact, poaching is mostly being committed by actors who are not armed insurgents in regions where there are no violent conflicts.

Q: Which areas are the growing markets for wildlife products?

A: One of the most devastating and rapidly expanding markets is eastern Asia, particularly places like China, Thailand, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam. Indonesia is a major source country for wildlife products. It also has a growing internal market for various kinds of wildlife products.

But among East Asian populations in the United States and Europe there is demand for such products. Similarly, in Russia, the (ill)legal trade in exotic furs is booming. East Asia also has witnessed a long tradition of seeing wildlife and nature purely through a lens of consumption. For example, traditional Chinese medicine has been consumed for many centuries now.

In parts of Africa, such as Zambia or West Africa, there is also a long and deep history of consuming bush meat.

The slaughter of elephants, rhinos, and tigers attracts most attention because they are such iconic animals. But poachers also target a large number of sharks, snakes, turtles, pangolins, and various bird species.

Q: In this day and age, is a public-private partnership (PPP) the best way to deal with poaching?

A: Public-private partnership is just one aspect of the policy that could be fruitful. Some conservation efforts could perhaps be done even without a strong role of the state. In other domains, such as the enforcement of law, the role of the state is crucial and inescapable.

Q: What role does world bodies like the U.N. could play in combating terrorism? Could sanctions work?

A: The U.N. is a body that both promulgates international laws, norms, and regimes, and has the capacity to adopt shaming strategies and developing blacklists, as well as imposing a variety of other sanction.

But actual security operations whether against terrorist groups or wildlife poaching groups have to be undertaken by member states. They may well have a blessing of the U.N, which often attracts attention and can increase legitimacy.

Q: Is the problem of terrorism as a result of poaching proliferating?

A: No, terrorism is not proliferating because of poaching. Terrorism is driven by its own enabling factors, which are varied and complex. Poaching has nowhere is the world generated new terrorists.

However, the wildlife trafficking illicit economy is one of many lucrative illicit economies terrorists and other armed actors can tap into. But, it is equally crucial to acknowledge that much poaching – in Tanzania, Ethiopia, Kenya, South Africa – takes place in the absence of violent conflicts and are nor carried out by terrorists or other armed groups.

Excerpt:

Siamese crocodile found in Phnom Penh; poaching drove the species to the brink of extinction. Credit: Robert Carmichael/IPS

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Jul 2 2013 (IPS)

President Barack Obama on Monday announced a series of new initiatives to combat spiking levels of international poaching and draft a new national plan on wildlife trafficking, an industry that has grown so significantly in recent years that the president now calls it an “international crisis”.

According to an executive order issued by the president Monday, the United States will now make available millions of dollars for strengthened coordination and training of personnel in developing countries. Of this, 10 million dollars will be earmarked for Africa, where President Obama is currently on an eight-day tour.

Over the past few years, poachers have killed record numbers of elephants and rhinoceroses, particularly in Africa. Analysts and lawmakers are warning that this illicit industry has now been firmly taken over by international organised crime and militant groups armed with high-tech weapons and tools.

“Poaching operations have expanded beyond small-scale, opportunistic actions to coordinated slaughter commissioned by armed and organized criminal syndicates,” Obama said in the executive order.

“The survival of protected wildlife species … has beneficial economic, social, and environmental impacts that are important to all nations. Wildlife trafficking reduces those benefits while generating billions of dollars in illicit revenues each year, contributing to the illegal economy, fueling instability, and undermining security.”

Under Obama’s initiative, significant new focus will also be placed on regulations here in the United States, which is second only to China as the largest market for illegally trafficked wildlife products. The president has ordered the creation of an interagency task force and an external advisory council, both of which will now look into how pertinent U.S. regulations can be tightened and strengthened.

The president issued the new order while in Tanzania, widely considered one of the hotspots of the illicit ivory trade. According to figures offered Monday by White House officials, worldwide wildlife trafficking could be bringing in upwards of 10 billion dollars a year, while others have suggested that figure could be almost twice as much.

“This U.S. high-level attention will help raise the global profile of wildlife trafficking,” Allan Thornton, president of the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), an advocacy group, told IPS in a statement.

“The poaching epidemic across Africa threatens to wipe out rhinoceros and elephant populations, and we applaud President Obama’s decision to combat the unsustainable killing of and trade of elephants, rhinos and other threatened species.”

More valuable than gold

According to some estimates, wildlife trafficking is now the fourth-largest transnational crime in the world, yet has never been attacked with the focus or resources of other such crimes.

The task force, to be headed by the Interior, Justice and State Departments, will now draft a new national strategy on wildlife trafficking within the next six months, aimed at both “combating trafficking and curbing demand”. Obama has given specific instructions that it should look specifically at how to use U.S. anti-organised crime legislation in the fight.

“In the last few years, wildlife trafficking has really exploded in terms of scale and also in terms of the types of poachers and organised crime networks that are involved in this activity … particularly in Southern Africa and East Africa, it’s reaching epidemic proportions,” Grant Harris, the senior director for Africa for the U.S. National Security Council, told reporters Monday.

“The United States is the second-biggest market, lamentably, and so … [the] Presidential Task Force will be looking at this issue and developing a national strategy to make sure that, as the United States, we’re organised in the right way and that we’re being strategic about how to do this.”

Harris noted that smugglers are receiving some 30,000 dollars per pound for a rhinoceros horn – “literally more valuable than its weight in gold” – and that global rhino populations have dropped by more than 90 percent over the past half-century.

Likewise, some 30,000 elephants were killed in Africa last year alone, the highest number in two decades. The illicit trade in ivory is thought to have doubled just over the past six years, driven by new Internet-fuelled sales and growing market demand (and power) in rising economies, particularly China.

“These syndicates are robbing Africa of its wealth,” Carter Roberts, president of the U.S. office of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), said Monday.

“President Obama’s commitment to help stop the global crime wave that is emptying the continent’s forests and savannas is welcome news. It gives a critical boost for everyone involved in fighting wildlife trafficking – from rangers on the ground to local conservation groups to decision-makers around the globe.”

Security issue

The move comes just two months after the United Nations officially characterised international wildlife and timber trafficking as a serious organised crime.

That resolution was put forward by the United States and Peru, in line with what the National Security Agency’s Harris characterises as a new “massive diplomatic campaign” by Washington. This focus is driven in part by the security threats posed by wildlife trafficking.

“It’s a security issue. As we see criminal networks getting increasingly involved, you see poachers with night-vision goggles and high-powered rifles,” the Harris noted.

“You see also some rebel militias trading in ivory and rhinoceros horns as a source of currency and value, and so that’s fueling some of the problems and conflicts that we’re seeing.”

According to a new report from the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), militia groups in Somalia and Sudan are funding their operations in part by trading ivory for weapons. It also notes reports that militants aligned with Al-Qaeda have been similarly tapping into illegal wildlife trading through South and Southeast Asia.

IFAW suggests this lucrative trade has been made possible by ineffective national and international legislation and decades of indifference towards the issue by law enforcement.

“Compared to other transnational criminal activities, the low risk of detection, relatively small penalties, and minimal consequences for perpetrating wildlife crime are attractive incentives to participate in illegal trade in wildlife,” the report, released in June, states.

“Wildlife trade is considered a low-risk enterprise for the criminals involved, in large part because wildlife trafficking is treated as a low priority by many law enforcement agencies.”

On Monday, IFAW “applauded” President Obama’s new initiatives, with Jeffrey Flocken, IFAW North American regional director noting: “This action gives recognition to the threat the illicit trade poses not only to animals like elephants and rhinos, but also to people.”

It is not only Africa’s mineral wealth but its wildlife resources that are being misused. Elephants across the continent and being killed for their tusks and many are not even safe in national park. Credit: Nalisha Adams/IPS

By Bradnee Chambers
BONN, May 31 2013 (IPS)

More civil unrest in Africa, another coup d’état, more reports of child soldiers in the front line, involvement of foreign troops, the poorest of the poor losing what little they have – and all the while the proceeds of a country’s wealth are diverted from much-needed social and economic development to financing death and destruction. 

It is an all too familiar tale, a previous though somewhat different chapter of which was brought to the attention of a wider audience through Edward Zwick’s film “Blood Diamond”.

Zwick recounted the story of the civil war in Sierra Leone, where the conflict was financed through the illegal trafficking of precious stones. National Geographic and World Wide Fund for Nature have already likened this trade to recent developments.

Now, however, it is not Africa’s mineral wealth but its wildlife resources that are being misused – for “blood diamond” read “blood ivory”. And it is the blood of Africa’s fast-diminishing population of elephants that is being spilled.

In February 2012, around 200 elephants were killed in Cameroon’s Bouba N’Djida National Park. Outgunned by well-armed militiamen, the rangers were powerless to protect the animals, which were killed for their valuable tusks.

In January 2013 an entire family of elephants – 11 adults and a calf – was slaughtered in the worst single incident of its kind to have occurred in Kenya since the 1980s, an event described as “an unimaginable, heinous crime” by the Kenyan Wildlife Service.

Dr. Bradnee Chambers says the blood of Africa’s fast-diminishing population of elephants is being spilled. Courtesy: Francisco Rilla / CMS

Two months later 86 elephants were reported killed in the course of a single week in south-western Chad on their migration to the Central African Republic and Cameroon. The poachers were armed with AK47s and used hacksaws to remove the tusks.

The latest incident to reach the ears of the world’s media in April 2013 has seen at least 26 elephants killed at Dzanga Bai, a clearing in the forest which acts as a wildlife viewing site in Dzanga-Ndoki National Park in the Central African Republic (CAR).  The site is inscribed in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage List and is located near the borders with Cameroon and the Republic of the Congo.

Disaster fatigue is a real danger here. We cannot just shrug our shoulders and no longer be shocked by the human and environmental disasters unfolding before our very eyes.

A recent international conference organised by their Royal Highnesses Prince Charles, Prince of Wales and Prince William, Duke of Cambridge focussed world attention on the urgent need to win the battle against the illegal trade in wildlife to avoid “an irreversible tragedy”.

Wildlife crime, often perpetrated by the same shady networks that traffic arms, drugs and people, has become a serious threat to the security, political stability, economy, natural resources and cultural heritage of many countries. The response required to address this threat effectively is often beyond both the capacity and sole remit of environmental or wildlife law enforcement agencies, or even of one country or region alone.

For those instigating and perpetrating these acts, the phrases “sustainable use,” “harvesting” and “livelihoods for local communities” are not part of their vocabulary – these are totally alien concepts to their way of thinking.

Like the seafaring raiders of old, they pillage and burn, taking what they want, leaving behind devastation before moving on to the next place to plunder. Spurred on by the need to fund their political cause or just out for financial gain, they are encouraged in their wantonness by the high prices that ivory currently commands, fuelled by record levels of demand in emerging markets in Asia.

The Wildlife Conservation Society estimates that in the central African country of Gabon alone, some 11,000 elephants have been killed illegally since 2004 – but here at least, political leaders are showing the will to resist.

Stockpiles of confiscated ivory were torched on the orders of President Ali Bongo Ondimba, emulating a similar act in Kenya some years before. President Ondimba has now offered his country’s support to his counterpart in CAR, Michel Djotodia. The renowned conservationist Mike Fay has been despatched as head of a team to combat poaching and to make the Dzanga-Ndoki National Park safe enough for conservation work to carry on.

The international community can also act. The scene of the latest massacre is a National Park, which is part of a transboundary World Heritage Site shared by CAR, Cameroon and the Republic of the Congo.

Irina Bokova, the director-general of UNESCO, has already called on the three governments to collaborate in combating the growing threat of poaching in the region.

Parties to CITES, the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species, signalled at their conference in Bangkok earlier this year that they meant to get tough, placing eight countries – both supply and consumer states – on notice to get their house in order and take the requisite steps to eradicate the illegal trade in ivory products.

The Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) has a strong mandate to conserve endangered species such as elephants. Most of the Range States of the two species of African Elephant are parties to CMS and are therefore obliged to try to improve these animals’ conservation status, and maintain and restore their habitats.

If the population of African Elephants in this region were put on CMS Appendix I, it would commit parties and all Range State Parties to afford the species strict protection, including the prohibition of all taking. CMS is unique in having this nature of obligation to strictly protect species inside a country. CMS also has an agreement on West African Elephants that could act as a regional institutional framework for consolidating actions.

As a vehicle for fostering international cooperation within the framework of the U.N., CMS stands ready to answer our member governments’ call to act. It is still not too late. But it will be soon.

*Dr. Bradnee Chambers is executive secretary of Convention on Migratory Species.

A white rhino at a sanctuary in South Africa’s Limpopo Province. Last year, poachers killed 668 rhinos in South Africa. Credit: Jennifer McKellar/IPS

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Apr 29 2013 (IPS)

Environment groups are applauding a new United Nations decision to officially characterise international wildlife and timber trafficking as a serious organised crime, in a move that advocates say will finally give international law enforcement officials the tools necessary to counter spiking rates of poaching.

Crimes related to the trafficking of flora and fauna are today one of the most significant money-makers for criminal networks, amounting to some 17 billion dollars a year, according to some estimates. That would make this black market the fourth-largest transnational crime in the world, according to Global Financial Integrity, a Washington watchdog group."The most important element here is the potential deterrence of significant prison time.” -- WWF's Wendy Elliott

On Friday, a new resolution on the issue was adopted almost unanimously at the end of a summit of the U.N. Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (CCPCJ, often called the U.N. Crime Commission). The resolution, put forward by the United States and Peru, now urges member states to formally view the illicit trade in wild flora or fauna as a “serious crime”.

“It is commendable that the U.N. CCPCJ is now taking note of wildlife crime,” Peter Paul van Dijk, director of the tortoise and freshwater turtle conservation programme at Conservation International, an international network, told IPS.

“This demonstrates how wildlife crime is no longer perceived as a proportionally minor type of crime affecting specific species, but is now beginning to be understood as being symptomatic of underlying problems of natural resource security, governance and transparency, and ineffective international actions.”

He continues: “International wildlife crime can generate the funds to fuel insurgencies and instability, and warrants an equally coordinated and prioritised response from the international community, including the United Nations. “

Under U.N. rules, characterisation as a “serious crime” can require stiff sentences of four or more years in prison, and will also allow the United Nations office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to broaden its role in combating the trade. For years, environment-related crimes have recorded one of the world’s lowest conviction rates.

“This is a breakthrough resolution in terms of recognising the serious nature of wildlife crimes, encouraging governments to view this not just as an environmental issue but as a crime akin to human or arms trafficking,” Wendy Elliott, the leader of the wildlife crime campaign at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), a global conservation group, told IPS from Geneva.

“For so many years, poachers and wildlife traffickers have received fines and quickly been let back onto the streets. The most important element here is the potential deterrence of significant prison time.”

Development impact

Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in poaching, particularly in Africa. Many suggest this is being driven largely by the increasing force of consumer spending in Asia.

Over the past decade and a half, experts say, South Africa has seen a staggering 5,000 percent increase in the illegal hunting of rhinoceroses, while elephant poaching is also currently at record levels, at some 30,000 deaths each year. Meanwhile, nearly a third of all global timber today is thought to have been illegally logged.

While wildlife crime was first discussed by the U.N. General Assembly a dozen years ago, Elliott says the issue has never been as serious as it is today.

“Historically, poaching was a small-scale local activity, but the value of both the product and the demand is now seen at levels akin to other major illegal commodities,” she notes.

“In turn, that has attracted organised criminal syndicates, so the response needed is something completely different. That’s the shift we’re now starting to see, but we need to really ramp this up globally – wildlife crimes prey on a finite set of resources, after all, and the clock is ticking.”

Much of the new international interest in wildlife and timber trafficking can almost certainly be traced to the groups that have become involved, as well as the illicit funding they’ve been able to secure. According to a new brief put out by the WWF and other environment organisations ahead of the U.N. Crime Commission meetings, these groups include rebels in Somalia, Rwanda, Sudan and others.

“Illegal trade in wildlife alone amasses profits of about 10 billion dollars each year, [and] the illicit trade is intertwined with corruption, money laundering, and the trafficking of other commodities such as weapons and narcotics,” Brian A. Nichols, an assistant secretary in the U.S. Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, told the U.N. Crime Commission in introducing the resolution.

“It undermines security, stability and the rule of law. The criminals that illegally poach and trade in wildlife are part of integrated networks that span continents. They devastate local communities and have pushed more and more species toward extinction.”

Indeed, the impact of wildlife poaching on local economies and development efforts can be extremely significant.

“These crimes are not only putting the survival of endangered species in peril, but are also threatening security and sustainable economic development,” Elliott notes.

“In many African countries, wildlife continues to constitute a major source of family income and gross domestic product. So this is imperative from a development perspective, potentially endangering years of development advances.”

Supply, demand

Following the passage of the new U.N. resolution, much of the impetus will now fall to national governments to oversee a strengthening of their anti-poaching and customs systems. Next week, governments in Central Africa are slated to meet to discuss links between poachers and ongoing security concerns.

“The proof of commitment will be in not only how many governments ensure adequate penalties, but how many invest in initiatives to engage police and customs investigators in combating these crimes,” Debbie Banks, a senior campaigner with the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), a London-based watchdog, told IPS.

“Combating wildlife crime is not rocket science. The solutions and tools are widely available, but it’s a matter of how much governments are prepared to invest in them. We now have some great political commitments articulated in the new resolution, so it’s time for action.”

Importantly, the new resolution will apply equally to countries that have serious illicit export problems – for instance, in Central Africa – and to countries where demand tends to be highest, particularly in Asia.

“These increased penalties will need to affect not just those doing the supplying but also those creating the demand,” WWF’s Elliott says.

“To really reduce demand, it has become increasingly clear that we can’t just rely on awareness-raising campaigns – there has to be enforcement, as well. Unless the public feels real consequences for purchasing these items, demand reduction will be very hard to achieve.”

Kaziranga National Park in the northeastern Indian state of Assam, is home to the largest population of one-horned rhinos in the world. Credit: Ranjita Biswas/IPS

By Ranjita Biswas
GUWAHATI, India, Apr 21 2013 (IPS)

The year 2013 opened on a disastrous note for the one-horned rhinoceros of the northeastern Indian state of Assam. At the beginning of April, officials in the Kaziranga National Park (KNP), one of the last retreats left in South Asia for these endangered creatures, reported that 17 rhinos had been poached.

The ungulate is also found in other protected reserves throughout Assam, namely the Manas National Park in the foothills of the Himalayas on the border of Bhutan, Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary, not far from the Assamese capital Guwahati and Orang National Park, which sits on the northern banks of the Brahmaputra river, one of the largest in Asia.

But most of the killings happen in KNP, home to the largest population of one-horned rhinos in the world. The park’s resident tiger population, along with its tall grasses, marshlands and moist tropical forest areas that support a high density of biodiversity, earned it the title of a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1985.

“We sometimes find a rhino…still breathing, its horn cut and taken away…Once we found a mother killed and the baby helplessly circling around her.”
When the British colonialists declared Kaziranga a game sanctuary in 1916, there were an estimated 20 rhinos left in the park. Large-scale destruction of rhino habitat across the Indo-Gangetic Plain and rampant hunting had all but wiped out the animal, with the few remaining creatures confined to pockets in the northeast.

A period of relative calm between 1983 and 1989 saw the total number of rhinos killed reach 235. From that point onwards, officials reported only sporadic poaching.

Herculean efforts by wildlife conservationists has today brought the number of rhinos up to 2,329 according to the recently concluded wildlife census of India (2013). This number is a slight increase from the recorded population of 2,290 in 2012, Sanjib Kumar Bora, conservator of forests for KNP, told IPS.

Now, poaching seems to be making a comeback, with officials fretting over the number of corpses they find scattered throughout the park.

The word rhinoceros is derived from the Greek “rhinokerōs” meaning “horn-nosed”. This horn, which is a mass of agglutinated hair, is exactly what has marked this creature out as a target, since a single horn weighing 750 grammes fetches as much as six million rupees (111,000 dollars), according to reports last year.

This exorbitant price is justified by the aphrodisiacal properties ascribed to the horn, which is used in traditional Chinese medicine. Many Chinese hold the belief that emperors used powdered rhino horn to great effect in the harems of ancient China, though modern researchers and scientists have debunked this myth, and prescribe the horn only for certain life-threatening fevers and convulsions.

Numerous international campaigns have been unable to put a complete stop to the practice, and this latest killing spree has park officials worried.

As soon as rangers receive word that poachers are on the prowl, they rush to the scene. Often, they are too late. An official speaking under condition of anonymity told IPS, “We sometimes find a rhino…still breathing, its horn cut and taken away…Once we found a mother killed and the baby helplessly circling around her.”

KNP is currently divided into five ranges: Bagori, Kohora, Agoratoli, Burha Pahar and Northern Range. Plans to add two additional protected areas are in the works, making a total of seven. The sprawling layout of the 860-square-kilometre park is perhaps one of the reasons for the rise in poaching.

“We are running short of staff,” D. Mathur, additional principal chief conservator of forests in Assam, told IPS. “With the additional areas added to the original Kaziranga Park and the animal count rising, there are some bottlenecks in keeping vigil.”

Regular and casual forest guards now number roughly 700 in total, but Bora says even these are inadequate to effectively patrol the large reserve.

Poachers have worked out an efficient system that enables them to evade the watered-down park security force.

Locals from the surrounding area known as “spotters” connive with sharpshooters from neighbouring states like Nagaland, Bora said. These are professional snipers, who live in the park for up to three days at a stretch in pursuit of their quarry, striking in the early morning hours or at the onset of dusk, often using guns with silencers so as to remain undetected.

That it is a creature of habit makes the rhino easy prey – the animal always returns to the same spot to defecate, so a spotter simply has to find a pile of dung and lie in wait.

Poachers are emboldened by the “escalation of the price of the horn in the international market, especially in Vietnam”, Suresh Chand, principal chief conservator of forests for Assam, told IPS.

But money is not the primary form of exchange — sources say the horn is frequently bartered for arms and ammunition for separatist rebels in this insurgency-ridden region. Smugglers favour a route through the town of Moreh in Manipur state, or mountain passes in the surrounding hills.

The recent killings have made the central authorities sit up. According to Chand, “We now have a Forest Protection Force deploying a battalion of 535 personnel exclusively… in Kaziranga. They work with Home Guards (an official paramilitary force), who man the 157 outreach camps across the park.”

Home Guards usually carry .303 rifles but since the poachers now have access to weapons like AK-47s, the central government has agreed to provide arms and ammunition in the AK series and park rangers are now awaiting the delivery of the first batch.

In 2010, the Assam government set a trend by giving forest officials the licence to fire on poachers without fear of criminal proceedings.

For the first time, Bora said, sniffer dogs are being used to track down poachers in Kaziranga. Unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) are also being used to track movement of poachers, he added.

Conservationists say that the impending monsoon season (June to September) could spell disaster for the animals, as heavy rains will force rhinos to emerge from the marshlands into the open plains for safety, putting them directly in the poachers’ line of fire.

White Rhino at sanctuary in South Africa’s Limpopo Province. Last year, poachers killed 668 rhinos in South Africa. Credit: Jennifer McKellar/IPS

By Brendon Bosworth
CAPE TOWN, South Africa, Apr 18 2013 (IPS)

In the face of rampant rhino poaching in South Africa, some conservationists and private rhino farmers are lobbying for removal of the international ban on rhino horn trading and the creation of a legal market, to quell poaching.

“The trade ban is creating a situation where rhinos are being killed unnecessarily,” Duan Biggs, research fellow at the Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions at Australia’s University of Queensland, told IPS. “It’s taking resources away from other conservation efforts, and is leading to the situation where there’s a pseudo war taking place in the Kruger National Park.”

The South African government is exploring this option and could make a proposal at the 2016 Convention on Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) to allow it to open up rhino horn sales. That would require support from a two-thirds majority of the 178 member states.

Proposals to lift the ban, which has been in place since 1977, have sparked debate about whether a legal market would actually curb poaching. Opponents worry that it would stimulate the black market trade that exists in parts of Asia, where rhino horn sells for 65,000 dollars a kilogramme – more than gold or cocaine – and is touted as a cure for hangovers and an aphrodisiac in countries like Vietnam.

But advocates say it would be the solution to the poaching crisis.

Last year, poachers killed 668 rhinos in South Africa, mainly in the Kruger National Park, which houses the world’s largest population of white rhino.

In an Apr. 3 press statement, the government said that the number of rhinos killed since the start of 2013 totalled 203. Poaching has roughly doubled each year over the past five years in South Africa.

If poaching continues at the current rate, the Kruger National Park’s rhino population will start to decline from 2016, according to South African National Parks researchers. Worse, scientists estimate that if poaching accelerates, Africa’s rhino could be extinct in the wild in just 20 years.

A tightly-regulated market would offer a way to supply the persistent Asian demand, and, if properly administered, prove cheaper, safer and more reliable for buyers than purchasing from criminal cartels. This would draw buyers away from the illegal market, explains Biggs, who co-authored a paper in the March issue of the journal Science calling for the introduction of legal trade.

“The idea is to cut (illegal traders) out of the market,” Michael ‘t Sas-Rolfes, an independent conservation economist who researches the rhino horn trade, told IPS. “They are dealing in a lot of other products. If it becomes unattractive to them they’ll simply switch to something else.”

The legal trade in crocodile skins, which during the 1980s led to a shift toward sustainable crocodile ranching instead of the slaughter of wild crocodiles, is an example of how legal trade can drive conservation, says Biggs.

To be effective, advocates propose that an independent body – a central selling organisation – that reports to CITES would run the market and sell horns to registered buyers. Part of the revenue from sales would be channelled to conservation efforts and used to strengthen anti-poaching initiatives.

Rhino horn is made of keratin, found in human hair, and grows back after being cut. Sedating rhino and shaving off their horns carries “completely minimal risk” to the animals, says Biggs.

To stop poached horn from entering the legal market, suppliers can fit legal horns with traceable transponders and DNA signatures for less than 200 dollars per horn, he says.

Not convinced

But various conservation groups oppose legal trade. They argue that legalisation could drive demand for rhino horn to a point the market could not sustain and create a situation where the criminal market would flourish alongside the legal one, as is the case with abalone, which is severely threatened by poaching in South Africa.

Mary Rice, executive director of the Environmental Investigation Agency, an independent organisation committed to investigating and exposing environmental crime, points to the spike in illegal ivory sales in China after it legally bought stockpiles of ivory from Botswana, South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe in 2008.

The Chinese government bought ivory for 157 dollars/kg but sells it for up to 1,500 dollars/kg. Retailers, however, sell ivory products for as much as 7,000 dollars, according to an Environmental Investigation Agency report.

But as much as 90 percent of the ivory that enters the market in China is illegal, according to the report.

“Legal ivory is now more expensive than illegal ivory, and what you have is the biggest upsurge in poaching since the (1989) ban (on international ivory trade),” Rice told IPS.

Legal trade opponents are concerned governments would not be able to adequately police the rhino horn market, and cite corruption as a problem. Last year, police arrested four South African National Parks officials in connection with rhino poaching, who are out on bail.

Accurate figures for the actual size of the rhino horn market are not available.

“We don’t know what the demand is, and if we open trade we don’t know what the demand will become,” Allison Thomson, director of activist group Outraged SA Citizens Against Poaching, told IPS. “If you open that door and increase the demand, if it’s the wrong thing to do, to close that door is going to be absolutely impossible.”

Officials of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Wildlife Department holding falcons seized from illegal hunters in Peshawar, Pakistan. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Apr 2 2013 (IPS)

While the Taliban’s military activities continue to plague Pakistan’s northern Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), the incessant violence has been a blessing in disguise for one creature: the falcon.

Declared endangered by the Union for the Conservation of Nature, this bird of prey suffered for years at the hands of poachers and hunters, whose unfettered access to FATA and the adjacent Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province guaranteed the birds a short life span in the wild, with most destined to be trapped, killed or sold.

But “continued militancy has kept the poachers (and hunters) away,” Khalid Shah, an official at the KP Wildlife Department, told IPS, adding that the survival rate of falcons and some other migratory birds has “increased tremendously”.

In 2005 only 2,000 falcons lived in these northern territories, but by 2008 wildlife officials had recorded an increase of up to 8,000 birds.

Experts trace this population growth to the beginning of the insurgency here, which began after the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan toppled the government in Kabul and sent scores of Taliban and Al Qaeda members across the border into Pakistan’s sprawling mountainous terrain.

Being the U.S. ’s ally in the so-called “war on terror”, the Pakistan army has engaged in a military offensive to root out the insurgents, believed to be scattered across all seven districts that comprise FATA.

Under fire from both sides, civilian residents say militancy has made daily activities – among them hunting and poaching — impossible.

Hunting, trapping, poaching

Falcons begin arriving in Pakistan from Siberia, China, Russia and Afghanistan during the months of August and September and either take up residence in desert landscapes, or nest in the foothills of arid regions.

In FATA the birds find a ready supply of food in the form of “reptiles, mammals, insects and small birds”, while thickly-forested parts of the tribal areas offer a safe and natural habitat, wild conservationist Ali Murad told IPS.

Besides playing host to migratory guests, the region is also home to several indigenous falcon species. In total, Pakistan boasts 10 falcon species at the height of the migration season.

The number of falcons in northern Pakistan has increased from 2,000 to 8,000 since the onset of militancy. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

Falcons are monogamous creatures with a slow reproduction rate, placing them in popular demand as rare trophies, Murad added. The female lays just two eggs annually; usually, only one chick survives and takes five years to reach adulthood.

Arab nationals use the birds – particularly the females — for falconry, especially for hunting houbara bustard in Pakistan and other countries.

“Dignitaries from Arab countries visit the KP and FATA to purchase the falcon of their choice from a market fed by hundreds of trappers,” Fareed Khan, a falcon dealer, told IPS.

Falcon trappers attach balls of nylon and feathers to the feet of smaller birds like kestrels, Laggar Falcons and white-eyed buzzard. Mistaking these contraptions for prey, larger falcons sink their talons into the “bait”, causing both birds to tumble to the ground and into the hands of the waiting trappers, Khan elaborated.

Sometimes, small birds like doves, pigeons and quails are placed as bait underneath nets on the ground. When the falcons swoop down on their prey they become entangled in the nets and are easily captured.

The large-scale trapping, hunting and dealing of falcons was in full swing when the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) declared the bird an endangered species in 2005, prompting the government to place a complete ban on issuance of licences to those who would interrupt the bird’s natural life.

Those licences had brought the government about 12,000 dollars annually.

Prior to the advent of terrorism, “hunters continued illegal poaching in KP and earned thousands of dollars from the sale of falcons to well-heeled Arabs”, Murad said.

“Now,” according to KP official Khalid Shah, “military activity, gunfire, the use of tanks and other kinds of warfare” have made FATA and the KP virtually too dangerous to enter.

For wildlife enthusiasts and environmentalists who have long fought against the relentless killing and capture of the birds, this is a bittersweet victory, as it comes at the expense of peace in Pakistan ’s tribal areas.

Birds still at risk

Wildlife officials, in “collaboration with the KP Forest Department, are working on habitat improvement for falcons to further encourage” population growth, Shah said.

The government is also working to implement its ban by imposing harsh penalties on those who violate the law.

“The government has issued over 450 challans (orders for payment of fines) in the last five years, bringing in revenue worth roughly 3,000 dollars,” Wildlife Department Spokesperson Kashifullah Shah told IPS.

In March alone, seven falcons have been confiscated and released. An additional 20 falcons were confiscated in January and February of 2013 and released into the wild, he said.

Kashifullah Shah says a shortage of staff and a dearth of adequate facilities have hampered efforts to bring about the desired results.

The population could be raised much more if stronger measures are taken, he stressed.

With a going rate of between one and ten million rupees (10,000 and 100,000 dollars), falcons are prized trophies, and neither militancy nor a government ban will be sufficient to keep hunters and trappers at bay forever.

“Only 450 field workers are not enough to stop illegal hunting and smuggling of falcons in the province, (especially) since each of the workers is required to monitor an area of 200 square kilometres on foot, while the trappers have (modern equipment) and vehicles.”

“We need to deploy more staff with vehicles in potential hunting areas where hundreds of trappers are active, like Swat, Peshawar and Dera Ismail Khan to conserve the species,” he said.

“We should also involve local communities by establishing village conservation committees to keep an eye on the hunters. This strategy has worked well in the past.”

This programme also helps scale up public awareness about the endangered creature and the importance of preserving its natural habitat.

(END)

Sri Lanka fishers say they are losing as much as a fifth of potential income due to illegal poaching by Indian trawlers. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS.

By Amantha Perera
JAFFNA, Sri Lanka, Mar 6 2013 (IPS)

The sea is all that 40-year-old Arul Das has mastered. From looking at the clouds or from the direction of the wind, this fisher from northern Jaffna can predict the condition of the sea fairly accurately.

Till May 2009, the sea he fished in was the most dangerous in the region. He had to keep clear of deadly skirmishes between the Sri Lankan Navy and the naval unit of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The Tigers, then fighting for a separate state for the Tamil minority in northern Sri Lanka, used the sea to smuggle arms and carry out deadly suicide attacks on the government Navy.

The Tigers often used civilian fishing boats, and that meant that Das and others like him had to be particularly careful they did not get mistaken for Tigers.

“There were fishing restrictions on the times we could go out, on the strength of the engines we used, and how far we could go,” Das told IPS.

The war ended in May 2009, when the Tigers were defeated by government forces. Das and thousands like him thought that was also the end of their troubles at sea.

But almost four years since the war ended and security restrictions were lifted, he has not been able to improve his catch. Now he faces a new mid-sea threat – Indian fishing trawlers illegally poaching in Sri Lankan waters in thousands.

On any given day, the powerful and larger Indian boats can be seen poaching across the maritime boundary in the Palk Strait, the narrow sea that divides Sri Lanka and India. These trawlers use larger nets, with some hooking concrete beams to the nets to gain better traction as they drag along the ocean bed.

Smaller Sri Lankan boats know that attempts to confront the Indian boats can end in serious losses. “Every time I have run into the Indian trawlers, I have returned to shore with damages over a thousand dollars,” Das said. Now he simply stays away from the areas where the bigger boats ply. Unfortunately, these happen to be the richest fishing waters.

Maarten Bavinck, director at the Amsterdam-based Centre for Maritime Research has been researching the impact of the Indian incursions. He told IPS that more than half the estimated 5,000 trawlers based in South Indian fishing harbours like Rameshwaran and Nagampathan depend on Sri Lanka fishing grounds for their catch.

Bavinck’s research shows that Sri Lankans have suffered dearly. His studies at two fishing villages in the north showed that fishers who would ideally go out to sea for 200 days a year have now cut this down to between 60 to 80 days. “The trawler incursions are a major reason for this low number of fishing days,” he said.

The financial impact of this reduction in fishing days is dramatic. Between 20,000 to 28,000 families depend on fishing in the northern province of Sri Lanka, according to available government data. The family members number well over 100,000.

Bavinck estimates that incomes have fallen by as much as 20 percent. In some cases the losses are as large as 300 dollars per year for a fisher whose average monthly income is around 7,000 to 8,000 rupees (53 to 60 dollars), Bavinck said.

“As one cannot feed a family on income from 60 days (at sea), these fishers necessarily have to find additional income sources, such as working as masons,” he said.

The contributions of fishing to the regional economy have also lagged. They remain a relatively small 3 percent of the provincial economy, a third of the share a decade back during a ceasefire.

The poaching is on the rise despite patrolling by the Sri Lankan Navy and its Indian counterpart along the maritime boundary that runs 463 km between the island’s northern coast and the Indian mainland. Indian boats have been sighted as far out as the seas of eastern Trincomalee and Mulaittivu, more than 300 km from the nearest Indian coast.

Nimal Hettiarchchi, director general of the Sri Lanka Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources told IPS that the authorities in both countries acknowledge the issue of poaching. “I don’t think enforcement is the answer, we need to come up with a workable solution that has support of fishermen on either side.”

The official said that discussions were continuing at ministerial level at the joint working group on fishing set up in 2011.

Bavinck agreed that any solution should be a mutual compromise. “The trawl fleet in India needs to be reduced in size, so that it matches the carrying capacity of Indian waters. This is a complex process.”

Many Indian fishers still regard areas outside the country’s maritime boundary as their traditional fishing grounds, despite the boundary that was agreed in 1976. “The Indian trawler fleet has nowhere else to go but Sri Lanka (waters),” Bavinck said.

For the time being there is usually peace. Fishers in the north tell IPS they have been instructed not to engage the Indians.

“We have been told to let them fish and go back, even the Navy seems to follow that,” said Douglas Paul, a boat owner from the northern fishing port Point Pedro.