April 2014: A proposed bill that will rapidly increase the penalties for poaching wildlife, particularly of endangered species, in conservation areas in Mozambique has passed the parliament’s first reading.
Introducing the bill, Tourism Minister Carvalho Muaria said the current legislation “does not allow for severe penalties against offenders, and so there are no measures that discourage poaching”.
Muaria said that over the last six months (October 2012-March 2013) Mozambique´s largest conservation area, the Niassa Reserve, had lost two to three elephants to poachers a day. Mozambique is also used as a corridor to smuggle ivory and rhino horns (often from rhinos killed in South Africa) to the Asian market.
The bill proposes prison sentences of between eight and 12 years for people who kill, without a licence, any protected species, or who use banned fishing gear, such as explosives or toxic substances. The same penalty will apply to people who set forests or woodlands on fire (poachers often use fire to drive animals into the open).
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