‘Hero to many’ – especially Africa’s elephants … remembered by Goodall, all conservationists

Africa – especially its wonderful elephants – has lost a stalwart conservationist when Wayne Lotter died – for his conservation work at https://pamsfoundationtanzania.org 

The Guardian news item 

The Independent news items – Lotter helped catch ‘Queen of Ivory’ 

This from Dr Jane Goodall, whom I have personally met and will I think be okay to share this : “I was profoundly shocked when I heard that Wayne Lotter, co-founder of PAMS Foundation, and known for his courageous fight against poaching of wildlife, had been shot and killed last night in the Masaki district of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
Wayne was a hero of mine, a hero to many, someone who devoted his life to protecting Africa’s wildlife.”

It was in 2009 that he teamed up with Krissie Clark and Ally Namangaya to form the PAMS Foundation since then they have worked tirelessly to fight both poachers and corruption. I knew of their activities long before I first met them in 2014 when the elephant poaching crisis was at it’s worst in the Ruaha National Park. At that time powerful vested interests were desperately trying to blacken Wayne’s name and close down the PAMS Foundation. Wayne passionately believed in the importance of involving local communities in the protection of wildlife, and through his work with PAMS he helped train hundreds of village game scouts in many parts of the country. As a result he gained the support of many of the local people, but inevitably faced strong opposition from dealers and many high level government officials. He also worked to develop an intelligence-based approach to anti-poaching that undoubtedly helped to reduce the shocking level of elephant slaughter in Tanzania. ” (By Dr Jane Goodall. Full post can be viewed here on the IRF Facebook page  )

As I re-launch this blog and remainder of the website including updating the pages, I re-dedicate it to all those who care for and fight for the natural world – and our crucial connections to it!

Zoos urged to halt imports of African elephants

As a former zookeeper, I believe zoos do have a real part to play in conservation – but definitely not for ‘Africana loxodonta’ 

From China Daily : Wildlife experts have called for Chinese zoos to stop importing elephants from Africa, saying they cannot meet the animals’ physical or psychological needs.

In January, four young elephants were imported from Zimbabwe, two for Xinjiang Safari Park in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region and two for Taiyuan Zoo in Shanxi province. However, one at Taiyuan Zoo died soon afterwards.

Joyce Poole, an elephant behavior study expert with Elephant Voice, an NGO in the United States, said confining wild elephants to cages should be stopped.

Elephants are complex animals who like to live with their family and in herds, she said. They have the habit of walking long distances each day to hunt for food, meet spouses and to conduct other social activities.

“Foraging is an intellectual challenge,” Poole said, pointing out that elephants learn many skills while on the move.

Liu Xiaoyu, a volunteer with the China Animal Observer Group, a Beijing-based NGO, said she has seen several elephants at zoos nationwide hurting themselves, which she says is a sign of depression.

“Once elephant (at Taiyuan Zoo) kept rubbing itself against the walls. It definitely felt uncomfortable,” she said.

According to her research, zoos target young elephants because they are easier to import than older animals. As a result, exported young elephants can easily experience serious depression from being apart from their families.

Mang Ping, a professor with the Academy of Chinese Culture, said the death of the elephant at Taiyuan Zoo last year clearly showed the zoo did not prepare for its arrival.

“How can animals that come from tropical rainforests survive in sub-zero temperatures in northern China?” she asked. “Besides the poor conditions, unethical and immoral methods imposed by zoo staff for performance training are also disastrous for elephants.”

But Zhang Jingsong, a senior engineer with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said: “China can export pandas to zoos in other countries, why can’t we import elephants from Africa?”

China has temporarily halted imports of another 14 elephants from Zimbabwe after the death at Taiyuan Zoo, according to Meng Xianlin, director of the China Management Authority for the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora.

“However, the importing behavior itself is in accordance with international and domestic law,” he said. “The Chinese side should further check on elephants’ health.”

Zhou Ke, a professor at Renmin University of China, said: “The wildlife importing and exporting approval system remains a blind spot in China. Regulation has no consideration of animals’ welfare, which is the root of all animal tragedies.”

Jiang Mengyu contributed to this story.

yangyao@chinadaily.com.cn

ELEPHANTS : Illegal ivory trade ‘funding Lord’s Resistance Army rebels’

The Lord’s Resistance Army has resorted to elephant poaching in order to fund its activities, according to human rights organisations. The Independent reports 

Human rights activists and conservationists warn that “poaching and its potential linkages to other criminal, even terrorist, activities constitute a grave menace to sustainable peace and security in Central Africa.”

The LRA leader, Joseph Kony, tops the wanted list of the International Criminal Court. Together with three other leaders, Okot Odhiambo, Dominic Ongwen, and Vincent Otti, Kony has been indicted for crimes against humanity. Atrocities in Northern Uganda including murders, mutilations, rape, abductions, lootings and displacement of communities have all been attributed to the LRA.

Kony, originally based in South Sudan from where his militants terrorised Northern Uganda, has not attacked Uganda since 2006. However, the group reportedly continues to attack and displace people in the Central African Republic and Democratic Republic of Congo.

These places are also bases for their illegal trade and, human rights activists say, they are threatening the existence of elephants in Africa. The UN estimates that the elephant population in DRC and CRA could have already declined by 90 per cent.

The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon warned: “Wildlife crime has become a serious threat to the security, political stability, economy, natural resources and cultural heritage of many countries.

“The extent of the response required to effectively address this threat are often beyond the sole remit of environmental or wildlife law enforcement agencies, or of one country or region alone.”

The LRA joins other rebel groups like Janjaweed in Cameroon and CRA, who have for long relied on illegal ivory trade to fund their operations.

“The spread of cross-border poaching in Central Africa and its links to sophisticated armed groups is alarming. We have seen the devastating impact of this crime in too many countries,” said Jim Leape, International Director General of international conservation group WWF.

The report, Kony’s Ivory: How Elephant Poaching in Congo Helps Support the Lord’s Resistance Army, was authored by Invisible Children, an American charity organisation dedicated  to exposing the atrocities of the LRA.

One of Invisible Children’s most popular videos Kony 2012, while controversial, enlightened a mostly oblivious world about the extent of LRA atrocities. Critics however say the film simplified the LRA war and ignored the atrocities equally perpetuated by the Ugandan army. Following Kony 2012, the U.S sent troops to reinforce the UPDF’s efforts in fighting the LRA.

In this latest report, Invisible Children, together with co-authors Enough Project and the Satellite Sentinel Project, say that the resources gained from the illegal trade of ivory undercut the efforts of the African Union Regional Task Force soldiers to combat the LRA and undermine the mission of US military advisers to assist their work.

The biggest market for ivory is china. The country is under pressure from international community that wants it to stop the trade in ivory to help conservation and, now, security efforts.

WILDLIFE UPDATE : Elephants Poached in Gabon’s National Park

Forest elephants in the Mbeli River, Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park, Congo. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has announced that Gabon‘s Minkebe Park has lost over 11,000 elephants due to poaching. ENN reports.

Gabon contains over half of Africa‘s forest elephants, with a population estimated at over 40,000, however with this recent drop, WCS scientists confirm that Africa’s largest elephant population has been cut in half during the past ten years.

Elephants are poached mainly for their ivory, which has been an important part of Asian art for over a thousand years. Ivory can also be carved and used in everything from billiard balls to piano keys. Besides the ivory trade, elephants are poached for their meat and hide and even for entertainment.

“This sad news from Gabon confirms that without a global commitment, great elephant populations will soon become a thing of the past,” said WCS President and CEO Cristián Samper. “We believe that elephants can still be saved — but only if nations greatly increase their efforts to stop poaching while eliminating the illegal ivory trade through better enforcement and reduced demand.”

Until recently, Gabon’s elephant herds were believed to be less impacted by poaching than in other parts of Africa, however, Gabon’s National Park Agency reported an increase in poaching, including the 2011 slaughter of 27 elephants in a protected area just outside of the capitol.

So if this national park is supposedly protected, how and why is poaching still occurring?

One reason is the demand for ivory in the Far East. With low supply and high demand, prices for ivory go up, leading to more aggressive poaching. Also, in June 2011, a significant increase in human activity in the Minkebe National Park was detected. A small camp of gold miners had expanded to over 5,000 miners, poachers, and arms and drugs dealers.

Since the survey results were announced, Gabon has stepped up its anti-poaching efforts seizing 20 tusks in the nation’s capitol and arresting poachers who had illegally entered the country from neighboring Cameroon. Gabon’s National Park staff recently engaged in a firefight with armed poachers in Minkebe National Park after arresting two individuals carrying six tusks, which makes elephant protection a dangerous game.

Gabon President Ali Bongo Ondimba announced that Gabon will pass new legislation to further dissuade commercial ivory poachers by increasing prison terms to a minimum of three years for ivory poachers and 15 years for poaching and ivory trafficking involving organized crime.

Read more at the Wildlife Conservation Society.

– See more at: http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/45600#sthash.pGysetMd.dpuf

 

Related articles

• Disturbing Photos Of Elephant Slaughter (huffingtonpost.com)
• Poachers kill 11,000 Gabon elephants in under a decade (guardian.co.uk)
• Surveys Reveal Horrific Magnitude of Elephant Slaughter in Gabon’s Minkebe National Park (ecology.com)
• 11,000 Elephants Slaughtered in African Forest (newswatch.nationalgeographic.com)
• Elephant crisis – what poaching does to animals, environments and people (environmentaleducationuk.wordpress.com)
• Poachers kill over 11,000 elephants in Gabon (wwf.panda.org)

Elephant crisis – what poaching does to animals, environments and people

African Elephant in South Africa (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

From WWF blog: Dr Kate Evans is the director and founder of Elephants for Africa. She started her research over a decade ago, looking at adolescent male elephants in the Okavango Delta and how they socialise – with an emphasis on how captive-bred animals would react in a wild environment. Here she talks about how complex these beautiful (and emotional) animals are:

“Elephants have always been my passion, and growing up the poaching crisis of the 1970s and 80s had a massive impact on the journey that my life would take. Since 2002 I have been studying the elephants of Botswana, home to the largest remaining population in the world. My particular interest is male elephants and their ecological and social requirements.

Observing and documenting elephants is key in understanding their behaviour – and how humans affect it. © Mphoeng Ofithile

The charity Elephants for Africa was founded in 2007 to support research and education towards the conservation of the African elephants, and we have since expanded to include projects in Ethiopia and South Africa.

I am shocked, but not surprised, to find ourselves in the middle of another poaching crisis, one that is having massive impact throughout the African continent. A small trinket or a large extravagant ornament made of ivory will have had a bloody start as most ivory these days is illegal; hacked from the face of a dead or dying elephant.

Whole herds are being gunned down, calves and adults alike, left to rot in the African sun in a pool of blood to feed humanity’s thirst for ivory.

This mass loss of individuals leads to the breakdown of family units and elephant society at large, leaving herds of leaderless elephants trying to make their way through their home that has become a war zone.

Analysis involves looking at everything we can do with elephants… © Dr Ricardo Stanoss

I have seen dead elephants, the bodies of young and old that have died of natural causes, and I have seen elephants visit those carcasses and grieve. One young male I know guarded the dead body of a much older male for three days, chasing the scavengers off.

We have to ask ourselves, what does an elephant do, feel or think when they come across a whole herd of dead elephants? Are they aware of who is responsible? What are the consequences for us humans?

I have come across bush meat poachers whilst by myself in the field and slept with a machete under my pillow in fear of reprisals. Thankfully I’ve never needed to defend myself, but the rangers and wardens that are out there in the field protecting our elephants get my utmost respect. They show no fear, yet they often come across poachers better equipped than themselves and risk their lives daily.

A close encounter with Seba! © Simon Buckingham

Our researcher in Ethiopia has seen the devastation first-hand, with reports of 66 elephants poached in recent months. With only an estimated 150—250 left in Babile Elephant Sanctuary, this loss is devastating – not only to the elephants but also to the ecology of the area if they were to lose this keystone species.

A sea of humanity isolates this population, so if the last elephant were to die there would be no natural repopulation – leading to irreversible change within the system, which would affect the animals and people that rely on this wilderness area.

Even Botswana, a safe haven for wildlife for so long can no longer escape the bloody tide and more and more reports of poaching are emerging.

We cannot fully comprehend the extent of the impact the extinction of the African elephant will have on the ecology and economy of Africa, yet this is where we are heading if we do not stop the illegal ivory trade.

Please be a voice for those that have no voice. The solution is simple: stop the illegal trade in ivory.”