Forest rangers putting out a fire at a charcoal burning kiln in Kenya’s Mau Forest. The future of the country’s indigenous forest cover is under threat but this has little to do with poverty and ignorance – experts say that it is greed which allows unsustainable practices, such as the lucrative production of charcoal and logging of wood. Credit: Robert Kibet/IPS

By Robert Kibet
NAIROBI, Apr 25 2015 (IPS)

Armed with twigs and placards, enraged residents from a semi-pastoral community 360 km north of Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, protested this week against wanton destruction of indigenous forest – their alternative source of livelihood.

With climate change a new ordeal that has caused frequent droughts, leading to suffering and death in this part of Africa, the community from Lpartuk Ranch in Samburu County relies on livestock which is sometimes wiped out by severe drought leaving them with no other option other than the harvesting of wild products and honey.

“People here are ready to take up spears and machetes to guard the forest. They have been provoked by outsiders who are out to wipe out our indigenous forest to the last bit,” Mark Loloolki, Lpartuk Ranch chairman, who led the protesting community members told IPS.

They threatened to set alight any vehicle caught ferrying the timbers or logs suspected to be from their forests.Illegal harvesting of forest products is pervasive and often involves unsustainable forest practices which cause serious damage to forests, the people who depend on them and the economies of producer countries

Their protest came barely a week after counterparts from Seketet, a few kilometres away in Samburu Central, held a similar protest after over 12,000 red cedar posts were caught on transit to Maralal, Samburu’s main town.

Last year, students walked for four kilometres during International Ozone Day to protest against the wanton destruction of the same endangered forest tree species.

A report titled Green Carbon, Black Trade, released by the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) and Interpol in 2012,  which focuses on illegal logging and its impacts on the lives and livelihoods of often some of the poorest people in the world, underlines how criminals are combining old-fashioned methods such as bribes with high-tech methods such as computer hacking of government websites to obtain transportation and other permits.

Samburu County, in Kenya’s semi-arid northern region, hosts Lerroghi, a 92,000 hectare forest reserve that is home to different indigenous plants and animal species. Lerroghi, also called Kirisia locally, is among the largest forest ecosystem in dry northern Kenya and was initially filled with olive and red cedar trees.

It is alleged that unscrupulous merchants smuggle the endangered red cedar products to the coastal port of Mombasa for shipping to Saudi Arabia where they are sold at high prices.

“This is a business that involves a well-connected cartel of merchants operating in Nairobi and Mombasa,” said Loloolki.

In Kenya, the future of indigenous forest cover is under threat but has little to do with poverty and ignorance – experts say that it is greed which allows unsustainable practices, such as the lucrative production of charcoal and logging of wood.

“This forest is our main water catchment source and home to wild animals such as elephants,” Moses Lekolool, the area assistant chief, told IPS. “Elephants no longer have a place to mate and reproduce or even give birth, with most of them having migrated.”

According to Samburu County’s Kenya Forest Service (KFS) Ecosystem Controverter Eric Chemitei, “as a government parastatal, we [KFS] do not issue permits for transportation or movement of cedar posts. However, we do not know how they get to Nairobi, Mombasa and eventually to Saudi Arabia as alleged.”

At the same time, Chemitei told IPS that squatters currently residing inside the forest are mainly families affected by insecurity related to cattle rustling, adding that their presence was posing a threat to the main water towers of Lerroghi, Mathew Ranges, and Ndoto and Nyiro mountains.

He further noted that harvesting of cedar regardless of whether forest was privately or publicly owned was banned in 1999, and that over 30,000 hectares – one-third of the Lerroghi forest – has been destroyed.

Reports from INTERPOL and the World Bank in 2009 and from UNEP in 2011 indicate that the trade in illegally harvested timber is highly lucrative for criminal elements and has been estimated at 11 billion dollars – comparable with the production value of drugs which is estimated at around 13 billion dollars.

In a report on organised wildlife, gold and timber, released on Apr. 16, UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said: “There is no room for doubt: wildlife and forest crime is serious and calls for an equally serious response. In addition to the breach of the international rule of law and the impact on peace and security, environmental crime robs countries of revenues that could have been spent on sustainable development and the eradication of poverty.”

According to the KFS Strategic Plan (2009/2010-2013/2014), of the 3.4 million hectares (5.9 percent) of forest cover out of the Kenya’s total land area, 1.4 million are made up of indigenous closed canopy forests, mangroves and plantations, on both public and private lands.

The plan also indicated that Kenya’s annual domestic demand for wood is 37 million cubic metres while sustainable wood supply is only around 30 million cubic metres, thus creating a deficit of seven million cubic metres which, according to analysts, means that any projected increase in forest cover can only be realised after this huge internal demand is met.

Last year, Kenya’s Cabinet Secretary for Environment Judi Wakhungu said that KFS’ revised policy framework for forest conservation and sustainable management lists features including community participation, community forest associations and benefit sharing.

The policy acknowledges that indigenous trees or forests are ecosystems that provide important economic, environmental, recreational, scientific, social, cultural and spiritual benefits.

Nevertheless, illegal harvesting of forest products is pervasive and often involves unsustainable forest practices which cause serious damage to forests, the people who depend on them and the economies of producer countries.

Forests have been subjected to land use changes such as conversion to farmland or urban settlements, thus reducing their ability to supply forest products and serve as water catchments, biodiversity conservation reservoirs and wildlife habitats.

Meanwhile, the effect of forest depletion on women has been noted by Veronica Nkepeni , Director of Kenya’s Centre for Advocacy and Gender Equality, who told IPS that the “most affected are women in the pastoralist areas, trekking long distances in search of water as a result of the effects of forest depletion leading to water scarcity.”

Edited by Phil Harris    

Africa’s wetland areas are experiencing immense pressure from commercial development and agriculture, settlements, excessive exploitation by local communities and improperly-planned development activities. Credit: Creative Commons CC0

By Tonderayi Mukeredzi
HARARE, Mar 12 2015 (IPS)

African wetlands are among the most biologically diverse ecosystems on the continent, covering more than 131 million hectares, according to the Senegalese-based Wetlands International Africa (WIA).

Yet, despite their importance and value, wetland areas are experiencing immense pressure across the continent. Commercial development ranks as the major threat for the draining of wetlands, including for tourism facilities and agriculture, where hundreds of thousands of hectares of wetlands have been drained.

Other threats to Africa’s wetlands are commercial agriculture, settlements, excessive exploitation by local communities and improperly-planned development activities. The prospect of immense profits from recently discovered oil, coal and gas deposits has also led to an increase in on-and offshore exploration and mining in sensitive ecological areas.Commercial development ranks as the major threat for the draining of [Africa’s] wetlands, including for tourism facilities and agriculture … Other threats are commercial agriculture, settlements, excessive exploitation by local communities and improperly-planned development activities

In Nigeria, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique, for example, wetlands and estuaries coincide with fossil fuel deposits and related infrastructure developments.

In northern Kenya, port developments in Lamu are set to take place in the West Indian Ocean Rim’s most important mangrove area and fisheries breeding ground.

In KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape of South Africa, heavy mineral sands are located in important dune forest ecosystems, and gas is being prospected for in the water-scarce and ecologically unique Karoo.

In East Africa, oil discoveries have been made in the tropical Congo Basin rain forest and the Virunga National Park – a world heritage site and a wetland recognised under the Ramsar Convention.

The Okavango Delta in Botswana, one of Africa’s most important wetlands and designated as the 1,000th world heritage site by UNESCO, has been home to many threatened species and the main water source of regional wildlife in Southern Africa. Yet it is shrinking due to drier climate, increased grazing and growing pressure from tourism.

“This delta is a true oasis in the middle of the bone-dry Kalahari Sand Basin, a rare untouched wilderness that’s been preserved by decades of border and civil wars in the Angolan catchment,” said National Geographic explorer Steve Boyes in an interview. “Many people along the Okavango River live like communities did some 400 years ago – and from them I think we can learn a lot about how to be better stewards of the natural world.”

Boyes calculated the abundance of life in the delta: more than 530 bird species, thousands of plant species, 160 different mammals, 155 reptiles, scores of frogs and countless insects.

“Everywhere you look you find life. We surveyed bats and we found 17 species in three days. We started looking for praying mantises and found 90 different species,” he said.

A recent survey by the Botswana Department of Wildlife and National Parks and the environmentalist group BirdLife Botswana concluded that that the wetland’s historical zones of dense reed beds and water fig islands were largely destroyed by hydrological changes and fire. Bush fires and a high grazing pressure further reduced the natural shores of the Okavango Delta.

Studies by BirdLife Botswana also showed that the slaty egret, a vulnerable water bird living only in Southern Africa, with its main breeding grounds in the wetlands of Zambia, Mozambique and Botswana’s Okavango Delta, is now estimated to have a total population of only about 4,000 birds.

The egret, which is listed on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species as vulnerable, seems to be losing its main breeding sites in the Okavango.

Environmentalists hope that they can still save the wetland, and pin their hopes on a “Slaty Egret Action Plan” which will be used by the Botswana’s Department of Wildlife and National Parks, BirdLife and other environment stakeholders to guarantee the survival of the Okavango Delta as a safe haven for the birds.

In a further step to save the wetlands, the Botswana government announced this month that from now on, seekers of mobile safari licences would be prohibited from operating in the Okavango Delta because the area in now congested.

The Botswana Guides Association, which represents many of the mobile safaris, is threatening to appeal.

Another example of the devastation of major wetlands occurred in Nigeria with pollution of farmlands linked to the Shell oil company.  The Niger Delta Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration Project, an independent team of scientists from Nigeria, the United Kingdom and the United States, has characterised the Niger Delta as “one of the world’s most severely petroleum-impacted ecosystems.”

In 2013, a Dutch court found the Nigerian subsidiary of Shell culpable for the pollution of farmlands at Ikot Ada Udo in Akwa Ibom state in the coastal south of the country.

The Niger Delta is Africa’s largest delta, covering some 7,000 square kilometres – one-third of which is made up of wetlands. It contains the largest mangrove forest in the world.

Assisted by environmental organisation Friends of the Earth, the court ruling was a victory for the communities in the Niger Delta after years of struggle against the oil company dating back 40 years, although the clean-up still has far to go.

“Destruction of wetlands is prevalent in almost all countries in Africa because the driving factor is the same – population pressure – many mouths to feed, ignorance about the role wetlands in playing in the ecosystem, lack of policies, laws and institutional framework to protect wetlands and in cases where these exist, they are hardly enforced,” John Owino, Programme Officer for Water and Wetlands with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)  told IPS from his base in Nairobi, Kenya.

Owino said that the future of African wetlands lies in stronger political will to protect them, based on sound wetland policies and encouragement for community participation in their management, which is lacking in many African countries.

But very few African governments have specific national policies on wetlands and are influenced by policies from different sectors such as agriculture, national resources and energy.

Edited by Lisa Vives/Phil Harris   

Despite a major online crackdown on the sale of illegal wildlife products in China, merchants are still peddling their wares in a thriving social media market.

TRAFFIC, a wildlife trade monitoring group, says “considerable quantities” of ivory, rhino horns, tiger and leopard bones, scales and more numbering in the thousands are being bought and sold each month on social media in China.

A new report ‘Moving targets: Tracking online sales of illegal wildlife products in China’ – released Tuesday, to coincide with World Wildlife Day – outlines monitoring of e-commerce websites and social media undertaken by TRAFFIC since 2006.

The report states that while trade on standard e-commerce and antiques sites has dropped off significantly, due to efforts by groups like TRAFFIC to alert website managers and enforcement agencies to the sale, trade through social media has grown and remains high.

“Despite the inherent difficulties in monitoring such trade, TRAFFIC’s research has revealed that considerable quantities of illegal wildlife products are bought through social media channels,” the report states.

Between January 2012 and early 2013, the number of advertisements for illegal wildlife products on surveyed websites fell from 30 000 to 10 000, and figures have remained steady since. At least 15 of China’s most-used e-commerce sites have publicly stated a zero-tolerance policy to illegal wildlife trade.

“Major online retailers in China have been important allies in efforts to stamp out illegal wildlife trade… yet the high number of such advertisements remains of concern and we are also seeing a shift in the way such transactions now take place,” said Zhou Fei, head of TRAFFIC’s China Office.

Through social media advertisements however, which TRAFFIC began tracking in March 2014, the trade has not been as effectively addressed.

The report stated that in one month monitoring on one social network, there were over 100 ivory tusks, 270 ivory segments, 80 rhino horns, 46 helmeted horn bill casques, and thousands of ivory items listed for sale.

“That is why it is imperative that researchers and enforcement agencies – as well as social media platform administrators – concentrate their efforts on monitoring and deterring illegal wildlife trade on social media,” the report recommended.

TRAFFIC conceded targeting social media trade was more difficult than trade on regular e-commerce sites. For one, audiences on social media can be limited greatly, to only those buyers that the dealer or merchant trusts; for another, code words for products are often used, and can be regularly altered, making it difficult for enforcement agencies to keep up.

“Progress in eliminating illegal online trade is hampered by the practicalities of blocking certain code words, while limited capacity means it is simply not possible to find and delete all offending advertisements in time,” the report warned.

“The speed with which online transactions can take place is also a major impediment, both to monitoring and to effective enforcement action.”

TRAFFIC’s recommendations include training courier companies to check cargo and recognise illegal wildlife products, and for social media companies to “share information about their client base” with “relevant law enforcement agencies.”

Follow Josh Butler on Twitter @JoshButler

Edited by Roger Hamilton-Martin

Dead addax (white antelope) hunted by soldiers in Chad – “We should not underestimate the seriousness of wildlife crime”. Credit: John Newby/SCF

By Bradnee Chambers
BONN, Mar 1 2015 (IPS)

It is no exaggeration to say that we are facing a “wildlife crisis”, and it is a crisis exacerbated by human activities, not least criminal ones.

Whatever our definition of wildlife crime, it is big business. In terms of annual turn-over it is up there narcotics, arms and human trafficking – and the proceeds run into billions of dollars each year, helping to finance criminal gangs and rebel organisations waging civil wars.“Whatever our definition of wildlife crime, it is big business. In terms of annual turn-over it is up there with narcotics, arms and human trafficking – and the proceeds run into billions of dollars each year”

With seven billion people on the planet, it is tempting to shrug one’s shoulders and ask “What difference can any one individual make?”  Such an attitude means that we are in danger of repeating the “tragedy of the commons” – everyone making seemingly rational decisions in their own immediate interests – but this is a short-sighted approach that undermines the common good and ultimately sows the seeds of its own downfall.

With seven billion people on the planet, it is also tempting to say that people’s need for food, shelter and well-being should take precedence over nature conservation, but the two are not necessarily irreconcilable.  In fact far from it – the two often go hand in hand and are totally compatible – non-consumptive use of wildlife, such as whale-watching and safaris, provide sustainable livelihoods for thousands of people.

Extinction has been an ever-present phenomenon, with a few species losing their specialised niche or being edged out to a more aggressive competitor or, in the case of dinosaurs, being wiped out by a meteorite strike.

The number of species going extinct is increasing fast, at a rate that cannot be attributed to natural causes and it is clear that there is a human foot pressing down heavily on the accelerator pedal.

South Africa reports record numbers of rhinos killed for their horn; demand for ivory is pushing the elephant to the brink; tiger numbers might have risen in India of late but the wild population and the range occupied by the cats are a fraction of what they were at the beginning of the twentieth century.

And we are not just losing vital pieces in the elaborate jigsaw puzzle of ecosystems; we are losing elements of our natural heritage that contribute to human culture and society, and the lifeblood of sustainable activities that create employment in the tourism sector, generating foreign exchange and significant tax revenues.

Wildlife crime is not an abstract. It affects us all and there is more that individuals can do to make a difference than they perhaps imagine.  Understanding the consequences of killing the animals and highlighting the connection between the increased poaching and organised criminal gangs and terrorists have been extremely helpful in strengthening  political messages and in persuading  the public to demand that more be done.

The gangs care little about the fate of the animals – either the individuals they kill or the survival of the species.  They think nothing of shooting the rangers who stand in their way.  They do care about their profits and high demand for ivory in East Asian markets has sent the price through the roof – not that the poacher in the field or the craftsman in the backstreet workshop receive much of a share.

If demand evaporates, the price will fall and killing elephants for their ivory will no longer be a viable business. The gangs will have to find some other source of income, but they would have to do this soon anyway, as current levels of poaching mean that there will not be any elephants left in 30 years.

The maxim “get them while they are young” applies to many things, not least the environment and junior members of the household often influence the family’s behaviour with regard to recycling, saving energy and water, food purchases and a range of other “green issues”. So raising awareness among the younger generation of the need to tackle wildlife crime is crucial.

The fight against wildlife crime has to be conducted on several fronts.  It does register on governments’ radar and pressure from civil society can help keep it high on the agenda.  The public has a vital role to play in keeping pressure on governments, either individually or through local pressure groups and NGOs. People can also modify their own behaviour by minimising their footprint on the planet.

We should not underestimate the seriousness of wildlife crime, but nor should we dismiss the potential impact of the actions of individuals as consumers, customers or voters.

Edited by Phil Harris  

Excerpt:

Photo courtesy of Greenpeace/Marine Photobank

By Bradnee Chambers
BONN, May 21 2014 (IPS)

Some of the Earth’s most delicate tropical paradises are being disfigured by the by-products of the modern age – marine debris: plastic bottles, carrier bags and discarded fishing gear. 

Just a tiny fraction of this originates from the islands themselves – most is generated on land and enters the sea through the sewers and drains; the rest comes from passenger liners, freighters and fishing vessels, whose crews often use the oceans as a giant waste disposal unit.  While much of the garbage sinks, some of it joins the giant gyres where the currents carry it across the globe.

"Marine debris casts its ominous shadow and threatens to break the virtuous circle which would otherwise guarantee sustainable livelihoods and incentives to protect wildlife."
Small Island Developing States (SIDS), recognised as a distinct group of nations by the UN Conference on Environment and Development in 1992, lack the space to dedicate to landfill sites and do not have the resources to deal with the huge problem of marine debris that is being washed up on their doorstep – as the tides and currents wash the accumulated marine garbage onto their beaches.  Domestically, they can take steps to ensure that they do not add to the problem – American Samoa for instance has banned plastic bags – but the “polluter pays” principle would require that those responsible for producing the waste should be made responsible for disposing of it properly.

A litter-strewn beach is an eye-sore and with tourism playing a major role in the economies of many island states, marine debris can have substantial adverse financial implications threatening local businesses and employment prospects.

Palau has banned commercial fisheries in its huge territorial waters forsaking the lucrative licensing revenue and will develop ecotourism based on snorkelling and scuba diving as a sustainable alternative.  Alive, Palau’s sharks can bring in $1.9 million each over their life-time.  Dead, a shark is worth a few hundred dollars, most of it attributable to the fins used to make soup considered a delicacy in parts of East Asia.

In February, Indonesia became the world’s largest sanctuary for manta rays and banned the fishing and export of the species throughout the 2.2 million square miles surrounding the archipelago.  The numbers are about the same; as a tourist attraction, a manta ray is worth in excess of 1 million dollars; as meat or medicine no more than 500 dollars.

Whale-watching creates jobs while bird-watching boosts binocular and camera sales and both help hotel occupancy rates.  And the total number of international travellers broke the one billion mark for the first time in 2012 making tourism one of the main foreign exchange earners globally particularly for many developing countries, including SIDS.

But marine debris casts its ominous shadow and threatens to break the virtuous circle which would otherwise guarantee sustainable livelihoods and incentives to protect wildlife.

Sea birds inadvertently feed their young with plastic which then blocks the chicks’ intestines preventing them from eating properly and leading to a slow and painful death.  The staple prey of some marine turtles is jellyfish but the turtles often mistake plastic bags for their favourite food with same dire results.  For larger species such as whales, dolphins and seals, discarded fishing gear – ghost nets – are a problem as the animals become entangled in them.  This can impede the animals’ movement and ability to hunt as well as cause serious injury or even death through drowning.

Remote island habitats support a rich and diverse fauna often including unique endemic species and provide vital stop-over sites for migrants and breeding sites for marine birds. But long established bird colonies have fallen victim to another danger exacerbated by humans – that posed by invasive alien species.

The problem of rodent infestations is well documented.  Mice and rats have escaped from ships wreaking havoc on the local bird populations which had previously nested on the ground with impunity as there were no predators.  Eradication programmes have successfully rid 400 islands of their alien rodents.

Less well known is the phenomenon of “rafting” where the invaders also use marine debris as a vector – plastic bottles are harbouring a potentially devastating assortment of worms, insect larvae, barnacles and bacteria, and warmer waters arising from climate change increase the resilience of these unwanted stowaways making them an even more potent danger.

One of the fascinations of dealing with the animals covered by the Convention on Migratory Species is how they link different countries and even continents.  Many of the species are endangered and their conservation as well as the threats that they face require internationally coordinated measures.  This applies to marine debris, a singularly unwelcome “migratory species” whose continued presence CMS will be doing its utmost to eliminate.

Excerpt:

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.

By Bradnee Chambers
BONN, Mar 16 2014 (IPS)

They say religion doesn’t mix well with certain subjects, but in the case of conservation and religion this old rule of thumb doesn’t seem to apply.

Conservationists have been increasingly aligning with different religious groups to further their work, either by promoting conservation projects on the ground, or by working with religious groups to promote good conservation principles to their flocks of followers.

High in the Tibetan Plateau where some of the last snow leopards roam, Buddhist monks regularly send out patrols to ensure that the highly endangered cats are not taken by poachers. According to George Schaller, who works for a conservation group called Panthera, Buddhism has as a basic tenet – the love, respect and compassion for all living beings. For the last 3,000-4,000 snow leopards this is welcomed help to ensure their continued existence.Environmental organisations are increasingly seeing the advantage of working with different faiths to protect endangered wildlife.

In Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country in the world, Islamic clerics working with the World Wildlife Fund have issued a fatwa, a code of law under which violations are considered immoral and forbidden, to protect endangered animals. This fatwa could play an important role in protecting species such as the Asian Elephant sought after for its ivory, and even aquatic mammals such as dugongs, dolphins and whales.

Pope Francis, who took his name from the St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals and the environment, has on many occasions made strong statements on the subjects of climate change and nature protection. For example, upon meeting the Ecuadoran President, he is reported to have advised him to “take good care of creation. St. Francis wanted that. People occasionally forgive, but nature never does. If we don’t take care of the environment, there’s no way of getting around it.”

Some conservation groups say that there is still more to be done as there are links between the ivory trade and religious artefacts such as crosses and rosaries.

The Shembe Church of South Africa, officially a Baptist group but deeply immersed in Zulu customs, recently agreed to replace its leopard and animal hides seen as a symbol of wealth and prestige with faux skins.

Environmental organisations are increasingly seeing the advantage of working with different faiths to protect endangered wildlife. Most of the largest religions promote harmony with nature.

Christianity teaches that humans are meant to be stewards over God’s creation with a moral obligation to protect nature. Hindus believe that the Divine is everywhere and we are not separate from nature. Muslims have many elements in their religion advocating environmental protection. Over 80 percent of the world population follow one religion or another so the potential alliance is potentially very powerful.

In 1995, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh recognising the common goals between religion and conservation, founded ARC, the Alliance of Religions and Conservation. The group based in the United Kingdom works with religious groups to develop environmental programmes founded on their own core teachings, beliefs and practices. GreenFaith does similar work promoting social and environmental justice in the U.S.

The alliance between religion and conservation couldn’t come at a better time, because the threats to international wildlife have never been greater. The Convention on Migratory Species is one of the few global wildlife conventions in place; it protects species moving between countries, but finds its tasks increasingly difficult to carry out with regard to the most iconic animals in the world.

Big cats, dolphins, whales, sharks,  gorillas, elephants, bats, birds of prey and even monarch butterflies which have roamed the Earth for millennia are in danger either from direct threats such as poaching, illegal trade, overfishing, bycatch or loss of their habitat. Then there are indirect threats from climate change affecting their breeding and feeding patterns.

In the face of these threats unprecedented in human history, conservationists are exploring new avenues to protect these species. So why not religion? Conservation and wildlife organisations see the opportunity. Religion is not a threat to wildlife, but it could be a major ally for wildlife conservation because it can change and influence our fundamental values.

A question often asked is,why protect wildlife? Development can improve lives so why forgo it in place of killing off a few species? One can go through all the different arguments – its economic worth, its value importance for future generations or simply its beauty. But the powerful answer must be because it is part of our culture and therefore part of our beliefs and even our own identify. Once it’s second nature and part of a value system, no one will ever again ask the question why protect it.

Excerpt:

Credit: Sascha Kohlmann/CC BY-SA 2.0

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 22 2013 (IPS)

The tiger population in the rainforests of Sumatra is vanishing at a staggering rate, reducing the number of the endangered species to as few as 400, warns Greenpeace International.

The primary reason is the expansion of oil palm and pulpwood plantations, which are responsible for nearly two-thirds of the destruction of tiger habitat from 2009 to 2011, the most recent period for which official Indonesian government data are available.

In a new study released Tuesday, Greenpeace says such destruction fragments the extensive tracts of rainforest over which tigers need to range in order to hunt.

“It also increases their contact with humans,” the study says. “This leads to more poaching for tiger skins and traditional medicines and more tiger attacks, resulting in both tiger and human deaths.”

The decline of Sumatran tigers is a measure of the loss of rainforest, biodiversity and also climate stability, according to the study titled ‘Licence to Kill’.

This summer, huge fires, both accidental and deliberate, raged across the Sumatran province of Riau, destroying hundreds of thousands of hectares of rainforests – including the deep peatland forests that are a last stand of tiger habitat in the province.

The fires released record amounts of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and pollutants in a haze that stretched as far as Thailand.

There are no estimates as to how many tigers have been killed so far, although the figure could be in the thousands over the last decade.

Asked whether the United Nations is engaged in the protection of tigers, Bustar Maitar, the Indonesian head of Greenpeace’s Forest Campaign and Global Forest Network, told IPS, “I don’t see much U.N. activity on forests.

“The only thing I know is the U.N. Development Programme (UNPD) manages a one-billion-dollar fund from the Norwegian government for the U.N. collaborative initiative on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD).”

He said REDD was working closely with its Indonesian counterpart to accelerate REDD projects in Indonesia.

Maitar also said the U.N.’s focus is more on general sustainable development and democracy in Indonesia than on protecting the tiger, described as a critically endangered species.

“Or they might not really be clear as to how to fit in with this issue in Indonesia,” he said, adding that the U.N. could provide more technical assistance and capacity building for government and civil society.

The U.N. REDD programme was launched in 2008 and encompasses the technical expertise of UNDP, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), and the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP).

It supports nationally-led REDD+ processes and “promotes the informed and meaningful involvement of all stakeholders, including indigenous peoples and other forest-dependent communities, in national and international REDD+ implementation“, according to the United Nations.

Currently, about 85 percent of Indonesia’s GHG emissions typically come from land-use changes (principally related to deforestation for plantations or agriculture), and around half of this is peat-related.

Even Sumatran tiger habitat in protected areas such as the world-famous Tesso Nilo National Park has been virtually destroyed by encroachment for illegal palm oil production, and government officials acknowledge that protection for such areas exists only on paper, says Greenpeace International.

The study also points out that forested tiger habitat in licenced plantation concessions has no protection at all. One million hectares – 10 percent of all remaining forested tiger habitat – remained at risk of clearance in pulp and oil palm concessions in 2011.

Over the 2009-2011 period, pulpwood suppliers were responsible for a sixth of all forested tiger habitat loss. And during the same period, the palm oil sector cleared a quarter of the remaining tiger habitat in its concessions.

“These failures expose how unregulated and irresponsible expansion, notably of oil palm and pulp wood plantations, undermines the Indonesian government’s commitments to stop deforestation and to save the tiger and other endangered wildlife,” the study says.

Greenpeace also says its investigations have revealed that household names, including Colgate Palmolive, Mondelez International (formerly Kraft), Nestle Oil, Procter & Gamble, Reckitt Benckiser and a host of other companies are linked to Singapore-based Wilmar International Ltd and its international trade in dirty palm oil.

Wilmar is the world’s largest palm oil processor, accounting for over one-third of the global palm oil processing market and with a distribution network covering over 50 countries.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon points out that forests are vital for human well-being.

In a message for the International Day of Forests last March, Ban said forests cover nearly a third of the globe and provide an invaluable variety of social, economic and environmental benefits.

Three-fourths of freshwater comes from forested catchment areas. Forests stabilise slopes and prevent landslides, while also protecting coastal communities against tsunamis and storms.

More than three billion people use wood for fuel, some two billion people depend on forests for sustenance and income, and 750 million live within them, he added.

Ban also said forests are often at the frontlines of competing demands. Urbanisation and the consumption needs of growing populations are linked to deforestation for large-scale agriculture and the extraction of valuable timber, oil and minerals.

Often the roads that provide infrastructure for these enterprises ease access for other forest users, who can further exacerbate the rate of forest and biodiversity loss.

“We need now to intensify efforts to protect forests, including by incorporating them into the post-2015 development agenda and the sustainable development goals,” Ban noted.

“I urge governments, businesses and all sectors of society to commit to reducing deforestation, preventing forest degradation, reducing poverty and promoting sustainable livelihoods for all forest-dependent peoples,” he said.

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.”

The jaguar is one of the first three species that Brazilian scientists will attempt to clone. Credit: Courtesy of the Brasilia Zoo

By Alice Marcondes
RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 6 2012 (IPS)

Brazilian scientists are attempting to clone animals in danger of extinction, like the jaguar and maned wolf, although the potential impact on the conservation of these threatened species is still not clear.

The cloning initiative is being undertaken by the Brasilia Zoological Garden in partnership with the Brazilian government’s agricultural research agency, EMBRAPA, and is now in its second phase. The research is aimed at adapting cloning techniques to wild animal species as a means of contributing to conservation.

The first phase involved the collection of samples of genetic material, or germplasm, in the form of blood, sperm, somatic cells and umbilical cord cells.

“We already have 420 germplasm samples stored in our bank and are going to continue collecting,” EMBRAPA researcher Carlos Frederico Martins told Tierramérica*.

Eight animals have been chosen for the initiative, including the maned wolf (Chrysocyon brachyurus), the jaguar (Panthera onca) and the black lion tamarin (Leontopithecus chrysopygus). Most are on the Red List of Threatened Species compiled by the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

The samples were gathered over the course of two years. In addition to the three species mentioned above, the bank has also been stocked with germplasm from the bush dog (Speothos venaticus), coati (genus Nasua), collared anteater (Tamandua tetradactyla), gray brocket deer (Mazama gouazoubira) and bison (genus Bison).

The researchers harvested the genetic material primarily from dead specimens of animals native to the Cerrado, the vast tropical savannah biome that stretches across central Brazil.

The next phase will be the training of researchers at the zoo.

“At EMBRAPA we have already cloned cows. What we are going to do now is to transfer our knowledge to the researchers so that they can conduct studies to adapt the technique to wild animals,” said Martins.

EMBRAPA was responsible for the birth of the first cloned animal in Brazil, a calf named Vitória, who was born in 2001 and lived until 2011.

After Vitória, many other animals have been cloned, mainly cows and horses who now add up to over 100 living specimens.

A bill that has been making its way through the Brazilian senate since 2007 would establish regulations for the practice of cloning, since the current legislation does not set very clear rules.

“Research can be freely conducted, but there is little monitoring and control. Any laboratory can clone cows, so it is impossible to precisely say how many clones exist,” explained the EMBRAPA researcher.

This is Brazil’s first attempt at cloning wild animals. Martins noted that “countries like the United States and South Korea are already working on similar research.”

The lack of prior experience makes it difficult to foresee how long it will take to produce the first clone, he said. But “we can predict that it will probably be a maned wolf, since this is the species for which we have many samples of genetic material,” he added.

Martins stressed, however, that the goal is not to release the clones into the wild. “The zoo wants to increase the number of specimens for its own use. The idea is to keep these animals in captivity. The use of clones would prevent the impact caused by the removal of these animals from their natural setting,” he said.

“From the point of view of conservation, the ideal approach is to preserve and multiply the number of wild animals where they are found,” he emphasised. Since cloned specimens contain the exact same genes as the animals they were cloned from, “they do not have the genetic variability that would make it beneficial to release them in the wild,” he explained.

Cloned animals would only be released in extreme cases, Martins said.

“If a certain species was in a state of drastic decline, at risk of total extinction, and it was possible to provide reinforcement, we will have the capacity,” Juciara Pelles, the head of conservation and research at the Brasilia Zoo, told Tierramérica.

“We are still in the phase of developing the technology, so we still don’t know if it will be possible to rescue a population in the wild, but we could potentially make it viable again,” she added.

The current technique has a five to seven percent rate of effectiveness. According to Martins, this percentage is within the average range achieved worldwide.

“It’s a low number, which makes the technology more costly, but it is average. The research underway is also aimed at raising it,” he noted.

For Onildo João Marini Filho, a biologist at ICMBio, the cloning of horses and cows is justified by its commercial purposes. But the cloning of wild animals needs to be handled with caution.

“There has to be a very tangible benefit for conservation. If there is something to be gained, it is valid. It might be possible, for example, to increase the number of animals to help with a breeding programme,” he told Tierramérica.

In order for the second phase of the research to effectively begin, the Brasilia Zoo is waiting for legal authorisation from the relevant agencies. It is hoped that the initial steps towards the creation of the first clone can be taken in approximately one month. “This is a long-term project,” said Pelles.

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.

A pangolin in the Gir forest of Gujarat, India. Credit: Sandip Kumar/Wikimedia commons

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Pakistan, Oct 10 2012 (IPS)

Conservationists see the decimation of pangolins (scaly anteaters) in Pakistan as a sign of the callousness with which this country’s rich biodiversity is being traded away for commercial gain.   

Tariq Mahmood, assistant professor at the University of Arid Agriculture, Rawalpindi, tells IPS that if the illegal trade in pangolins – prized for their scales and meat – is not stemmed, the animal may well go extinct within the next few decades. 

Between December 2011 and March 2012, Mahmood’s team of researchers recovered 50 pangolin carcasses in the Potohar district of Punjab province alone.

International trade in Asian pangolin species is banned under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, but with each animal fetching about 125 dollars, poachers supplying markets in China and Southeast Asia are ready to take the risk.   

In China, the main market for pangolins, the meat of the animal is considered a delicacy with the scales, blood and other parts used as ingredients in traditional medicine.

“People in Pakistan know pangolins only as a harmless animal and are unaware that the animal also saves crops and plants from insect pests,” says Ejaz Ahmad of the World Wide Fund-Pakistan (WWF-Pakistan). “With their super strong sense of smell, they can detect termites and ants from hundreds of metres away.”

“They are natural pest controllers,” Rhishja Cota-Larson of Project Pangolin (PP) told IPS. “One pangolin can consume an estimated 70 million insects per year.

“If pangolins disappear, you would need to increase the use of pesticides in order to control the insect population. This, in turn, would have adverse affects on the environment and on people,” she said.

“We know of pangolins being killed for their scales in Pakistan and their seizures occur on a regular basis in India and Nepal,” Cota-Larson added. The PP has noted similar incidents in Zimbabwe, Kenya, Mozambique and Uganda.

The insatiable demand may have wiped out around 50,000 pangolins worldwide in 2011, according to PP. 

“In Pakistan, pangolins are bought for as much as 105 dollars per individual at some  five-star hotel for use in their Chinese restaurants,” said Mahmood.

Last year, Mahmood said, ‘Pangolins-wanted’ pamphlets were dropped by helicopter over rural areas around the Jhelum river giving details of people to contact if anyone had a captured animal for sale.  

There are no reliable estimates for the pangolin population in Pakistan as they are elusive, nocturnal animals. “We have no idea how many remain in the wild,” said Ahmad.

But pangolins are not the only animals under threat in Pakistan, and scientists have identified 100 species that are endangered. Taken together with the massive denudation of pine forests in areas such as Swat and the Khyber Paktunkhwa province, the damage to Pakistan’s biodiversity may already be irreversible, experts fear.   

WWF-Pakistan’s Ahmad said since every living thing is in a symbiotic web, balanced biodiversity is vital for the survival of life on earth. “Biodiversity is the summation of all living things on this planet.”

Already gharial, a crocodile species found in Pakistan till late 1970s, has vanished, says environmentalist Munaf Qaimkhani. “This knowledge alone should prompt us to take steps to save those species facing extinction,” he told IPS.

Similarly, the blind dolphin of River Indus, which lost its habitat due to the damming of the river, is now breathing its last, caught in nets, starved of fish and forced to live in increasingly toxic waters.  

In 2006, the WWF-Pakistan estimated that there were just 1,200 dolphins left in the Indus. “Each year almost two dozen dolphins get trapped in the irrigation channels,” said Nasir Panhwar, executive director of the Centre for Environment and Development, a non-governmental organisation based in Hyderabad in Sindh province.

Qaimkhani lists the snow leopard, white-backed vulture, falcons, houbara bustards, Chiltan markhor, Marco polo sheep, woolly flying squirrel and musk deer among animals in Pakistan that have become highly endangered.

Conservationists worry that there are cases where the government is not just apathetic about biodiversity loss but also collusive in its destruction for political or diplomatic reasons.

Raja Zahoor, a customs official, said many animals and birds are hunted for sport by foreign nationals with special permission granted by a government eager to “foster good relations” among influential countries in the Middle East. “Rare species of falcons and the houbara bustard are being taken away to Arab states on dubious documentation.”

Arab falconers hunt the internationally protected houbara bustard on special permits issued by the ministry of foreign affairs. They often bring in their own hunting falcons, but take back endangered Pakistani species using re-export permits. “It is very easy to swap the falcons,” said Panhwar.

“We know this is illegal, but our hands are tied. Customs officers who have tried to stop local falcons from being smuggled out of the country in this way have been taken to task,” Zahoor said. 

“In case a bird or animal is seized by customs, there are no facilities to keep it safely until the courts call for its exhibit or until the case is disposed of – often the animal or bird dies in custody,” Zahoor added.

Orangutan survival is seriously threatened by palm oil plantations. Credit: Kafil Yamin/IPS

By Kafil Yamin
JAKARTA, Aug 10 2012 (IPS)

When four men were sentenced to eight months in jail in March for the ‘murder’ of orangutans, it was the first time that people associated with Indonesia’s booming palm oil industry were convicted for killing man’s close relations in the primate family.

Conservationists were not happy with the ‘light’ sentences handed down by the court in Kutai Kertanegara district, East Kalimantan, on Mar. 18, to Imam Muktarom, Mujianto, Widiantoro and Malaysian national Phuah Cuan Pun.

“As expected, the sentences were light, much lighter than what the prosecutors demanded. Such punishments will not bring any change to the situation of orangutans,” Fian Khairunnissa, an activist of the Centre for Orangutan Protection, told IPS.

Indonesia’s courts have generally looked the other way as the palm oil industry relentlessly decimated orangutans by destroying vast swathes of Southeast Asia’s rainforests to convert them into oil palm plantations.

In April, a court in Banda Aceh, Sumatra, dismissed a case filed by the Indonesia Environmental Forum (WALHI) against PT Kallista Alam, one of five palm oil firms operating in Tripa, and Irwandi Yusuf, former governor of Aceh province, for the conversion of 1,600 hectares (3,950 acres) of carbon-rich peat forests into palm oil plantations.

The court admonished WALHI saying it should have sought an out-of-court settlement with PT Kallista Alam –  which never paused clearing its  1,600-hectare concession, granted in August 2011.  

Mysteriously, just before the WALHI case was to be heard in court, numerous fires broke out in the Tripa peat swamps, including in the concession granted to PT Kallista Alam.

Community leaders in Tripa point out that the concessions fly in the face of a presidential  moratorium on new permits to clear primary forests, effective in Indonesia since last year as part of a billion dollar deal with Norway to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

 “The issuance of a license to Kallista is a crime, because it changes the Leuser ecosystem and peat land forests into business concessions,” Kamarudin, a Tripa community spokesman, told IPS.

The Leuser Ecosystem, in the provinces of Aceh and North Sumatra, covers more than 2.6 million hectares of prime tropical rain forest and is the last place on earth where Sumatran sub-species of elephants, rhinoceros, tigers and orangutans coexist.

The survival of orangutans,  a ‘keystone species’,  is critical for the wellbeing of other animals and plants with which they coexist in a habitat.   

A statement released in June by the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme estimated that there are now only 200 of the red-harired great apes left in Tripa compared to  about 2,000 in 1990 and said their situation was now ‘desperate’ as result of the fires and clearing operations carried out by palm oil companies.

During the last five years, the oil palm business has emerged as a major force in the Indonesian economy, with an investment value of close five billion dollars on eight million hectares.

Indonesia plans to increase crude palm oil (CPO) production from the current 23.2 million tons this year to 28.4 million tons by 2014. This calls for an 18.7 percent increase in plantation area, according to Indonesia’s agriculture ministry.

But the price of the planned expansion would be further shrinkage of orangutan habitat by 1.6 million hectares because oil companies find it cheaper to burn forests and chase away or kill the orangutans. 

“If you find orangutans in palm oil plantations, they are not coming there from somewhere else… they are in their own homes that have been changed into plantations,” said Linda Yuliani, a researcher at the Centre for International Forestry Research.

“But plantation company people see the orangutans as the encroachers,” she said. “Confused orangutans can often be seen wandering in plantations, and with their habitat gone, they forage on young palm trees,” she said.

A joint survey by 19 organisations, including The Nature Conservancy, WWF and the Association of Primate Experts, found that some 750 orangutans died during 2008-2009, mostly because of conflict with human beings.

It has not mattered that Indonesia is one of the signatories to the Convention on Illegal Trade and Endangered Species, which classifies orangutans under Appendix I which lists species identified as currently endangered, or in danger of extinction.

“Clearing peat land also releases huge volumes of carbon dioxide, similar to amounts released during  volcanic eruptions,” Willie Smits, a Dutch conservationist who works on orangutan protection, tells IPS.

Reckless clearing of peat swamp forests has already turned Indonesia into the world’s largest emitter  of carbon dioxide, after the United States and China.

“The government may earn some money from oil palm investment, but there are far bigger losses from environmental destruction,” says Elfian Effendi, director of Greenomics Indonesia. “There is a multiplied effect on the local economy and loss of biodiversity.”

But, even to some conservationists, stopping the oil palm business in Indonesia – which feeds a vast range of industries from fast food and cosmetics to biodiesel – is impractical.

“What is needed is enforcement of schemes that allow the palm oil business and orangutans to co-exist,” Resit Rozer, a Dutch conservationist who runs a sanctuary for rescued orangutans, told IPS.

Palm oil companies that are members of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), a convention to encourage importers to buy only RSPO-certified CPO, see no advantage in the scheme that requires them to set aside a forest block for orangutans within plantations and provide safe corridors for the apes to move from one spot to another.

“U.S. and several European countries still buy non-certified CPO as the RSPO certificate does not gurantee purchase,” Rozer told IPS. “The West told us to practice environmentally-sound business, but they do not buy RSPO-certified CPO because implementation has been delayed till 2015,” Rozer said.

 “For companies that have invested in RSPO certification, the delay has been a heavy blow. They feel cheated,” said Rozer who helps palm oil companies in creating orangutan refuges and corridors.

Baka from Ngoyla, near Cameroon’s Nki National Park, hold up a map of the forest. The dark red areas are those they have been restricted from entering which are of social, economic and cultural interest to them. Credit: Ngala Killian Chimtom/IPS

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
YAOUNDE, Jun 28 2012 (IPS)

As Lysette Mendum listens to the sound of bulldozers crashing through the forest clearing a road to a mining site near her small village of Assoumdele in the Ngoyla-Mintom forest block in Cameroon’s East Region, she has never been more fearful in her life.

The forest block is 943,000 hectares of relatively intact forest that straddles part of eastern and southern Cameroon. And it is Mendum’s home.

But all the indigenous Baka widow thinks about when she hears the bulldozers is how uncertain the future is for her three kids. The indigenous Baka, historically called pygmies, are an ethnic group of about 35,000 people who have traditionally lived within the forests of southeastern Cameroon.

But now they have been displaced from their traditional homes in the government’s bid to develop this West African nation into an emerging economy.

“The government of Cameroon and some white people moved us out of the heart of the Ngoyla-Mintom forest block and resettled us in this village in the precinct of it. Now we go into the depths of the forest in the day and return in the evening. We are not allowed in there at night,” Mendum told IPS.

As logging and mining companies are granted concessions to large portions of the country’s forests, environmental agencies have expressed concern about the situation.

Of Cameroon’s 22.5 million hectares of forest area, 17.5 million or roughly 78 percent are classified as productive forests and are being allocated to logging companies, according to statistics from the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife (MINFOF).

Out of the 17.5 million hectares of productive forests, the government has already granted logging concessions for 7.5 million hectares. In the Ngoyla sub-district where Mendum lives, an Australian iron ore exploration and development company has been granted mining rights.

A source at the MINFOF told IPS that a modest 20 percent of the 17.5 million hectares of productive forests has been classified as wildlife reserves, which include national parks, game reserves, botanical and zoological gardens, sanctuaries and hunting zones.

“Government has been dishing out logging and mining permits since the early 2000s to various companies in an effort to generate wealth and become an emergent economy by 2035. But this has had the effect of depriving the Baka Pygmies of access to the forests they have always considered their natural home,” David John Hoyle, director of conservation at the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), told IPS.

This is because the 1994 Wildlife, Forestry and Fishery law prohibits human settlement inside protected areas, which include areas marked for logging and national parks. The law also restricts access to these areas.

So from 2000, the government began moving the Baka out of the productive forests and attempted to integrate them into society.

Mfou’ou Mfou’ou, the director of conservation at the MINFOF, told IPS that the government was working with its partners to ensure that the forests are managed in a sustainable manner.

“This means also protecting the rights of the Baka,” he said.

He said his ministry signed a 1.7-million-dollar accord with the Ministry of Social Affairs to enable it to implement best practices in the socio-cultural and economic integration of the Baka into mainstream society. But it has been against their will.

“The Baka have been living in the forests of southern Cameroon for thousands of years, and they have lived in total harmony with the forest,” Hoyle said.

For the Baka, it has been a devastating exclusion from their traditional land and its resources.

“At first we thought our people would benefit from all these companies coming here, but all we got at the end was an interdict asking us not to go into some parts of the forest near the Boumba Bek National Park,” said Ernest Adjima, president of Sanguia Bo Buma Dkode, a Baka association, which translated from the original Bakola means “One Heart”.

Samuel Naah Ndobe, coordinator of the Cameroonian Centre for the Environment and Development, told IPS that the government now wants to settle the Baka on agricultural land along the country’s main roads.

“But the Baka have to burrow the forest for game … and agricultural lands along the main roads are generally considered to belong to the dominant Bantu tribes. So when the Baka come out of the forest to settle here, the Bantus simply tell them ‘You don’t have land here, this is ours.'”

But now when they return to the forests they are treated like unwelcome visitors.

“We can’t help being afraid because everyday strangers come to us preaching a new gospel of mining. And as the days go by, we see systematic restrictions on our rights,” Mendum told IPS.

Naah Ndobe said that when the Baka attempt to access the forests, game rangers and conservators routinely evict them.

“With no land to call their own, these first settlers are now very vulnerable. They no longer have rights to the land which they have enjoyed and considered home for centuries,” he told IPS.

Government’s user rights policy for the forests has also sidelined the Baka.

The policy allows the Baka the right to retrieve non-timber products from the forests like medicinal herbs, wild fruits, tubers, honey, and game for personal consumption. But the Baka have not been allowed to sell any of the items they collect from the forest.

“The Baka can only hunt game for family consumption, for instance. So they cannot sell the game to send their children to school,” Naah Ndobe said.

Now, there is a deep sense of defiance among the Baka and an urgency to share in the resources of their traditional land.

“If they come for us we shall not run away, we shall wait for them to come and kill us here because we rely on this forest for our basic needs,” Mendum told IPS.

But they are not struggling alone.

In 2000, the WWF began its Jengi Southeast Forest Programme, which aims to negotiate access rights for the Baka into protected forest areas, among other things.

Hoyle said progress has been made, with some logging companies committing to protect the forests.

“WWF has been assisting logging companies that have embraced Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification standards and, along with the Baka, mapped out areas of social, economic and cultural interest to the Baka within logging concessions with guarantees that they can harvest wild tubers, honey and medicinal plants and carry out fishing in such areas,” Hoyle told IPS.

The FSC is a non-governmental organisation established to promote the responsible management of the world’s forests.

He also said a memorandum of understanding has been reached with the government to guarantee the Baka access to the Boumba Bek National Park. It not only enables the Baka to gather food, it also allows them to perform their traditional Jengi rites, which usually take place at night. Jengi is the Baka god or spirit of the forest.

Mfou’ou said that while efforts are being made to guarantee the Baka access rights to national parks, social infrastructure like schools and health centres are also being constructed.

However, Naah Ndobe said it was urgent that Cameroon develop more specific support structures and policies to cater for the rights of the Baka.

The Sumatran tiger has been classified as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Credit: Cheetah100/CC BY 2.0

By Charundi Panagoda
WASHINGTON, Feb 20 2012 (IPS)

The survival of Sumatra’s tigers, elephants, orangutans, rhinos, as well as indigenous communities, is threatened by the “world’s fastest deforestation rate”, caused by none other than the pulp and paper industry, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

In a recent report, WWF named the Indonesian-based company Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) as “responsible for more forest destruction in Sumatra than any other single company”. APP and competitor Asia Pacific Resources International Limited (APRIL) have consumed the majority of the wood harvested from commercial forest clearances and agriculture conversion.

“In central Sumatra, the impact of APP’s operations on wildlife has been devastating. The company’s forest clearing in Riau Province has been driving Sumatran elephants and tigers toward local extinction,” the report said.

The companies have also begun clearing peat swamp forests. According to Indonesian ministry of forestry estimates, deforestation associated with peat decomposition and burning totals 1.2 gigatonnes of carbon emissions per year, making Indonesia the world’s third largest greenhouse gas emitter.

“Products made with APP fiber linked to forest destruction are flooding the U.S. market and landing in grocery stores, other retail chains, restaurants, hotels, schools and municipalities in the form of toilet tissue, paper towels, copier paper, stationery, paper bags and paper-based packaging,” WWF reported.

Two of APP’s products identified in the U.S. are Paseo and Livi tissues. APP products are distributed and marketed in North America by a variety of subsidiaries and affiliates including Solaris Paper, Mercury Paper and Papermax.

Despite concerns raised by environmental groups, APP claims to be “committed to being socially, environmentally and economically sustainable throughout its operations”. When Indonesia’s Eyes on the Forest released a report on APP clearing Sumatra’s Senepis Tiger Sanctuary, the company fired back saying the allegations were “clearly false”.

Philip Rundle, CEO of Oasis Brands which market Paseo and Livi, wrote in a letter that their products are “100 percent sustainable… (made from) plantation-grown, rapidly renewable fiber supplied by APP.”

“It’s plainly ridiculous, profoundly untrue to claim that anything APP produces is environmentally sustainable. To me, it borders on false labeling. …There are maps, evidence. It’s incontrovertible that some of the practices APP engages in are not sustainable,” Andrea Johnson, director of forest campaigns for the Environmental Investigation Agency, told IPS.

APP is engaging in a “very strong campaign” to “greenwash” their activities and to assert they are actually doing everything legally, Johnson added. APP’s declarations include asserting that only “degraded” land is being cleared, that only a little of Indonesian land is allocated for mills, and emphasising APP’s donations to environmental foundations.

What APP calls “degraded land” is what WWF calls “tiger habitat,” WWF forest programme manager Linda Kramme told IPS. She believes many of the sustainability statements made by APP and Oasis are misleading. Suggesting APP is only impacting a small amount of Indonesia is like saying the recent Gulf oil spill only impacted a small amount of the U.S., she added.

“[WWF] believes they are mischaracterising their practices happening on the ground. Many U.S. customers and companies don’t have the ability to go to Indonesia and see what’s happening, so it can be easy for them to read materials that APP and companies that market their products like Oasis say – that they have different certification, that they are doing things with conservation. But our teams for two decades have seen impacts on ground and we see and obligation to raise the questions and to raise the facts,” she said.

WWF started engaging APP in 2001 to introduce the company to long-term sustainability practices. However, WWF cut off ties with APP after the company broke its promises to stop using natural forest fiber despite signing a letter of intent.

Legally, bills such as the Lacey Act in the U.S. in principle should create various incentives not to buy illegally logged products, Johnson said. However, greenwashing campaigns and incredibly complicated supply chains make prosecution harder.

“APP has been increasingly using subsidiary companies and resorting to opening mills under other names in countries like U.S. and Canada…It’s not that difficult to start another company and put another name on it and use the same fibre. You see that tactic increasingly being used by companies… I think that structuring on part of the company is very intentional in order to make traceability almost impossible, which obviously makes it difficult to enforce the law,” Johnson said.

In 2010, APP was affected by the U.S. Commerce Department imposing anti-dumping duty orders for certain coated paper imported from Indonesia. “Dumping” is a predatory pricing practice in international trade that allows companies to sell their imported products at very low prices, driving out the competition.

“There is an environmental component to the fact that (APP products are) less expensive. One of the reasons they can afford lower costs is because they are getting fibre illegally (by illegal logging, for example). They are not engaging in the kind of business practices which cost a little bit more if you want to do things legally and that result in lower prices,” Johnson said.

Still, the U.S. can prosecute companies like APP only if the government of the producer country has criminal penalties for the same activity. Therefore, it’s the responsibility of the Indonesian government to effectively implement conservation laws, activists say.

Johnson says a strong case can be made that Indonesia has affectively subsidised the pulp and paper industry by not enforcing its own laws.

Excerpt:

BANGKOK, Feb 20, 2012 (IPS) – When World Bank president Robert Zoellick steps down in June, the tiger will lose an ally who worked to prevent the decimation of Asia’s iconic animal by a voracious demand for its bones and parts in newly affluent China.

Keshav Sharma Credit:World Bank

Under Zoellick’s watch, the Washington-based financial powerhouse launched the Global Tiger Initiative (GTI) – focusing on an animal that roams 13 countries – as a symbol of its commitment to protect the planet’s biodiversity and thwart the illegal wildlife trade.

“There was a need for urgent, concentrated action to protect the tigers,” says Keshav Varma, head of the GTI. “There was a decline both in the number of tigers and in their habitats.” Launched in June 2008 the GTI provided a powerful platform to “bring the tiger range countries into the forefront of conservation.”

These countries, with Russia at one end and Indonesia at the other, are home to 3,200 wild tigers. They are a fraction of the 100,000 striped, majestic beasts that existed in the early 20th century in the tiger range that includes India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Bhutan as also China, Burma, Cambodia,Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Malaysia.

The Bank’s efforts have given these countries prominence in the efforts to save the tiger, Varma said, in an interview on the sidelines of a meeting here of the International Consortium on Combating Wildlife Crime.

Excerpts from the interview follow:

Q: The Bank has said that it sees the tiger as the face of biodiversity. Is this still the case four years after the GTI was launched?

A: Yes, because they are an iconic indicator of the pressure biodiversity is facing. Through the eyes of the tiger you come to know what is happening in remote areas. We have seen tiger habitats reduced to the borders of countries, or where development and urbanisation have completely destroyed or fragmented their habitat. So, if it were not for the tigers you would not know what is happening to the forests.

Q: What do you bring to the table that is new to helping the tiger range countries?

A: Six countries have been assured resources – 100 million dollars in concessional lending – by the Bank and GEF (Global Environmental Facility) with 65 million dollars in grants. We have also launched a multi-donor trust fund for another 30 million dollars. And we have created partnerships with the Smithsonian to train park rangers in modern management.

Q: Are you saying that park management was ignored till the Bank stepped in?

A: It was something where attention was not being paid before. The parks have to be managed according to modern, scientific systems. There has to be a management of information. This is a weak link in this whole area. And what has also prevailed is that people in these countries are better trained in forestry than wildlife management.

Park ecology is not being monitored properly. We have taken initial steps by training 300 people in tiger range countries.

Q: That may boost the Bank’s commitment as a conservationist, but your critics in civil society see this foray into a new territory as ‘greenwashing,’ since the Bank’s funds to build roads, dams and large infrastructure projects have caused untold environmental damage?

A: No, no, it is not greenwashing. We are conscious of the environment and environment sustainability is an important issue for the Bank. This is not new. It has been bank territory before. We have lent 20 billion dollars for biodiversity projects and some of these were directed towards conservation of wildlife.

Since launching the GTI, it has affected the way we do business within the Bank. There is much awareness on how we plan infrastructure projects. For instance, there is a rural road programme in India, and they are coming to the GTI and are coordinating their work to ensure that the roads do not adversely impact habitat.

There is a filter in terms of environmental impact analysis, where you are taking a much closer look at how our programmes do not impact the environment. We also conduct evaluations based on that; definitely, there is a greater amount of consciousness in the Bank. So the GTI has become a bit of a catalyst in terms of reassuring better awareness.

Q: Since Asia is the testing ground for the GTI, China does come into the picture, given the large number of tiger farms it has. Conservationists estimate that nearly 5,000 tigers have been bred in captivity to feed the trade in tiger products. Is the Bank calling for such farms to be closed?

A: Our position is that tiger farms help the market commercialisation of tiger parts. The Bank is prepared to offer assistance to countries to phase them out. In the interim, they need to be better regulated and better managed. There are definitely a lot of tiger farms and tiger parts are commercially produced in the region. China is not the only place.

Q: Is your concern about tiger farms shared by the tiger range countries?

A: Some countries are concerned that tiger farms are getting out of control and may ask GTI for assistance. They are aware about the surge in demand for tiger parts due to the emergence of a richer class in Asia and the illegal trade being more aggressive and better organised.

(END)

While shoot-at-sight orders are now effectively keeping rhinoceros poachers at bay, an aggressive weed is threatening the one-horned ungulate in one of its last retreats – the Kaziranga National Park (KNP) in eastern Assam state.

Grazing rhino picks out grass from thorny, pink-flowered mimosa weed. Credit: Ranjita Biswas/IPS

Originally introduced in the tea gardens surrounding the KNP as a nitrogen-fixer, mimosa (Mimosa diplotricha) has spread through the 430 sq km park, edging out the tall grasses on which the rhino and other herbivorous wildlife feed.

“Unless this problem is solved, it’s going to destroy Kaziranga by smothering the grassland. Without the grasses how will these animals survive?” rued Chinmoy Dhar, a deputy ranger.

Mimosa adversely affects grasses and other native plant varieties by drawing on water and other mineral nutrients in the KNP that is rich in biodiversity with its wetlands and mix of tropical evergreen and moist deciduous forests, earning it the status of a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1985.

KNP fauna include elephants, Indian bison, swamp deer, hog deer, sloth bear, leopard cat, jungle cat, wild boar, pythons, monitor lizards and more than 500 species of birds.

Thanks to the abundance of prey, KNP also has the highest density of tigers in the world with 32 of the Bengal tigers species per 100 sq km, according to a study carried out in 2010 by Assam’s forest department.

But, KNP’s most famous resident is the one-horned rhino with a third of the estimated 3,000 individuals found here, most of the remainder being in Nepal. A few pairs survive in the Lal Sunehra Park in Pakistan, indicating the once vast stomping grounds of the lumbering animal.

For long, KNP was in the news for the relentless poaching of the rhino for its horn, used in Chinese traditional medicine and believed to have aphrodisiacal qualities.

Better surveillance and tougher laws have, however, reduced the incidence of poaching over the last decade. Where 48 rhinos were killed by horn hunters in 1992, the number of killings reduced to 14 in 2009 and nine by 2010.

Forest rangers, armed with shoot-at-sight orders and given immunity from prosecution since 2010, shot dead nine poachers in that year and another three in 2011.

But, such is the demand for rhino horns from Chinese buyers that even the take-no-prisoner policy is insufficient deterrence. In January, a rhino was killed on the western range of the KNP, though the poachers could not take away the horn.

“Sometimes we face poachers from (insurgency-hit) neighbouring states like Nagaland or Manipur who work in connivance with local men. They carry sophisticated weapons which we lack,” says Surajit Dutta, KNP director.

“Some of our camps are in far corners of the park and manned by only three to four forest guards. We need groups of at least six to seven guards in each camp to face these criminals,” said Dutta.

Forest guard Kanak Chandra Nath says the rhino’s clean habits contribute to its own undoing. Pointing to a huge pile of rhino dung, he said: “Rhinos don’t soil everywhere. They pick certain places and this makes it easy for the poachers to track them.”

Despite continued poaching attempts, KNP is regarded as a success story for conservation in India, though that record is now under threat by the mimosa weed.

Various safe methods to weed out mimosa are being tried out with scientific support from the Rain Forest Research Institute (RFRI) in Jorhat town.

Director of the RFRI, N.K. Vasu tells IPS: “From my long experience (he was director of the KNP previously) I find that manual eradication is the only way to stop the creeper; other methods might damage the diverse animal species in the park.”

Vasu believes that mimosa spread can be contained “if eradication is done twice a year for two to three consecutive years.”

Dutta says that manual eradication is a good solution but carrying it out through the extensive park would involve a considerable amount of money.

KNP is closed to the public during the monsoon season from April to November, mainly because much of its area along the banks of the Brahmaputra river gets flooded and waterlogged.

The tourist season brings another set of problems, a deluge of noisy visitors who take up residence in the numerous guesthouses that have sprung on the edge of the KNP.

“Tourism entails certain responsibilities, but most people don’t follow the rules of the wild. Often they are noisy, they think it’s a zoo,” Dhar said