US says man can bring back 'skin, skull, teeth and claws' of hunted Tanzania lion

Environmental organizations say ‘very concerning’ move could open floodgates for importing other endangered species

Maanvi Singh in Oakland

Sun 15 Sep 2019 06.00 BSTLast modified on Mon 16 Sep 2019 19.00 BST

The Trump administration has authorized a Florida man to bring back the “skin, skull, teeth and claws” of a lion he hunted in Tanzania, granting the first permit to import a lion from that country since the species gained protection under the US Endangered Species Act.

Environmental organizations say the move could open the floodgates for importing other endangered species such as lions and rhinos. A freedom of information request made public by the US Fish and Wildlife Services (FWS) also revealed that the hunter, Carl Atkinson, was represented by lawyer John Jackson III, who is also a member of the Trump administration’s International Wildlife Conservation Council, a controversial advisory board that promotes trophy hunting.

“This is all very concerning,” said Tanya Sanerib, the international legal director for the Center for Biological Diversity. “It signals that the administration is ready to approve, trophy imports from Tanzania despite that country’s history of wildlife mismanagement.”

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East Africa’s drought threatens iconic wildebeest migration

24 May 2017


By Adam Popescu in Serengeti, Tanzania

The wildebeest look tired. Skittish at the slightest sound, their hooves perpetually pound the dusty plain until they kick up a cloud that obscures the hundreds of animals forming the herd.

Under the dust, the short grass is yellow and grey, if it’s there at all. How do these animals find sustenance amid this sparseness, I wonder? Where is the water?

“Drought,” answers Ngiimba, my Maasai guide. “More than a year now. Killed over 50 per cent of livestock.”

I’m in Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park, a sprawling wilderness the size of Belgium. And though there is wildlife seemingly everywhere – lions, cheetahs, elephants, zebras, wildebeest – Ngiimba’s words hint at trouble.

More than 90,000 tourists flock here every year to see the Serengeti’s great annual migration, in which as many as 2 million wildebeest, zebras and gazelles travel thousands of kilometres between Tanzania and Kenya. The grazers cross rivers and arid scrub along the way, and leave a trail of droppings in their wake that keeps soils rich in nutrients, giving life to the land.

But there’s a story that travel sites and Instagram posts don’t share. Although biodiversity here ranks among the world’s highest, Africa is particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change – and rising temperatures can cut crop yields by as much as 20 per cent. Factor in an already depleted ecosystem and an infrastructure unable to handle a fast-growing population, and East Africa faces a bleak future.
Not a drop

It’s supposed to be the rainy season, but not a drop has fallen in my 10 days here. The parched earth reminds me of my native California, but whereas we have dams and irrigation to deal with water shortages, there are no such facilities here.

The relationship to water stretches far beyond the savannah, and affects humans as much as wild animals. The water shortages are causing humans to compete with wildlife for resources and push into their territory.

It is not uncommon for locals to lead their flocks onto protected lands to graze. Increasingly, people find that their crops and livestock are dying, leading to a food shortage that could become a humanitarian crisis.  

 

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Rare combination of genetic changes increases the virulence of canine distemper virus

Study explains how CDV killed lions, spotted hyenas in the Serengeti 

Date: December 8, 2016
Source: Forschungsverbund Berlin e.V. (FVB)

Summary:The long-running debate about why just one of several canine distemper virus (CDV) outbreaks in the Serengeti in Tanzania during the past 25 years was fatal for lions and spotted hyenas has been resolved. An international team of scientists conducted genetic analyses of CDV strains obtained from a range of carnivores between 1993 and 2012 and discovered that lethal CDV infections in lions and hyenas during the 1993/1994 epidemic was caused by a rare and genetically distinct CDV strain with three rare mutations not present in any other Serengeti strain isolated from domestic dogs or wild canids. Two of these rare mutations were found to increase the ability of CDV to invade lion cells.  

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‘Treasure trove’ of ancient footprints found near African volcano

October 11, 2016

by Brett Smith 

On the shoreline of Tanzania’s Lake Natron, scientists have recognized and cataloged a particularly rare find: a large set of well-preserved human footprints left behind between 5,000 and 19,000 years ago.

Scientists found more than 400 footprints in an area bigger than a tennis court, covering the dark gray mudflat of Engare Sero. No other location in Africa has as many ancient human footprints-making it a remarkable find for researchers trying to understand the earliest days of modern humans.

A few of the tracks appear to show people jogging through the mud, running a 12-minute-mile pace or faster. Other prints indicate a person with a somewhat strange, potentially broken big toe. Even more tracks show that about a dozen people, mainly women and children, journeyed across the mudflat together, traveling the southwest for an unknown destination. The mud recorded it all-including the muddy drops that fell from their feet with each and every step.

“The first time we went out there, I remember getting out of the vehicle, and I teared up a little bit,” Cynthia Liutkus-Pierce, an Appalachian State University geologist, told National Geographic. “Human origins is a huge interest of mine: where we came from, and why we are who we are. It was definitely emotional to see our own history in this.”

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6 jailed in Tanzania for total of 122 years for wildlife trading.

Posted on December 22, 2015 by Kevin Heath

In less than a week the Tanzanian courts have made a bold and strong statement in order to protect the country’s wildlife. Six people involved in wildlife trafficking have been jailed for a total of 122 years.

In one court case, yesterday (Monday 22 December 2015), two ivory traders were sentenced to 21 years each for their part in trying to smuggle 4 elephant tusks out of the country.

Resident Magistrate Odira Amwol sentenced the two to the long jail term after the court had proved beyond reasonable doubt that they committed the offence.

The prosecution told the court that Justin Bruno, 50, a resident of Usevya Village and Philbert Leo, 35, a resident of Ikuba Village, were arrested on Thursday in possession of the haul. The magistrate ignored their pleas for lenient sentencing because they had families to look after.

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Genetic differences among monkeys in Tanzania show troubling pattern

Research taps region's landscapes to explain how human activities are affecting an already endangered species

Date:October 5, 2015

Source:University of Oregon

An endangered monkey species in Tanzania is living in geographical pockets that are becoming isolated from one another. The situation, researchers say, is mostly driven by the monkeys' proximity to villages and the deliberate burning of forests to make way for crops and pastures.

An international team, led by Maria Jose Ruiz-Lopez, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oregon, combed five distinct forested areas from 2011 to 2012. Gathered were 170 fecal samples of the Udzungwa red colobus monkey (Procolobus gordonorum), for DNA analyses. These monkeys are considered an indicator species of ecological change.

The region studied has fertile soils and forests scattered in valleys and along mountain ridges in the Eastern Arc Mountains, part of a vast region known as the Eastern Afromontane Hotspot. It is home to many plants and animals that live nowhere else in the world.

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Tanzania turns a blind eye to poaching as elephant populations tumble

As illegal poaching escalates in national parks from Selous to Ruaha, officials attempt to silence the crisis and many fear Serengeti herds will be next

Hannah McNeish in Dar es Salaam

Thursday 20 August 2015 10.17 BSTLast modified on Thursday 20 August 201510.42 BST

For tour guides in Tanzania, the results of a continental elephant census showing that the country had lost two-thirds of its herd in five years and become Africa’s ivory trading hub came as no surprise. 

They’d tried to prevent tourists from seeing the melting skins and drying bones littering the Selous ecosystem in southern Tanzania for years. But they couldn’t mask the shots heard from safari camps in a reserve once known as “the elephant capital of the world”. Last year it was named in the journal Science as Africa’s poaching hotspot, and a Unesco world heritage in danger site. 

“When you hear the gunshots next to the camp, you know that they’re [elephants] being finished,” said one safari guide in Tanzania’s commercial capital, Dar es Salaam, who spoke on condition of anonymity. 

As people cried foul over Cecil, a 13-year-old lion shot to fame by a holidaying Minnesotan dentist in Zimbabwe, the slaughter of five elephants by Tanzanian poachers in Kenya’s Tsavo park passed almost silently. 

In Tanzania, it is not hunters who can freely take home trophy elephants, but illegal poachers, who have decimated herds in the Selous. Leaving behind mainly baby elephants waiting for tusks, they’ve followed disappointed safari-goers to Ruaha, Tanzania’s second greatest pachyderm-heavy area. 

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EU bans import of elephant tusks as hunting trophies from Tanzania and Mozambique

The EU has banned the import of elephant hunting trophies from Tanzania and Mozambique, due to their elephant populations being decimated by poaching. A ban on elephant trophies from Zambia was also upheld. 

The decision was taken by an EU scientific committee which rules on whether hunting trophy imports are sustainable. Previously Tanzania and Mozambique were each permitted to export tusks from 100 elephants every year into the EU as hunting trophies.

Both countries have seen a significant decline in elephant numbers due to soaring levels of poaching, and neither could give information to show that the export of tusks as hunting trophies is sustainable.

Liberal Democrat MEP Catherine Bearder, long-time wildlife campaigner and founder of the cross-party MEPs for Wildlife group, said: "I'm glad the EU is leading the way in stopping the slaughter of endangered animals for sport. Trophy hunting of elephants is not only senseless and cruel, it is wholly unsustainable. African elephants could be extinct in the wild within our lifetimes; we must do everything we can to prevent this iconic species from being wiped out."

Source ...

Elephant poaching figures so bad Tanzania calls for recount

Posted on June 1, 2015 by Kevin Heath

The results of a recent aerial survey of elephants in Tanzania released today offers a mixed bag of results but one area stands out from the crowd. While some areas of Tanzania have seen increases in elephant numbers the Ruaha region has lost over 12,000 elephants in just 2 years.

The survey has shown that the current population is just 8,727 compared to 20,000 in 2013. In 2009 the region had over 31,000 elephants. The release of the figures seem to confirm that figures leaked a couple of months ago were reasonably correct.

The drop has been so dramatic that the Tanzanian Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism Lazaro Nyalandu has announced a re-survey of the Ruaha-Rungwa area.

He suggested that some of the drop could be down to elephant migrations but that is disputed by those who undertook the survey. The minister though did concede that poaching in the Ruaha-Rungwa area was so bad that it was a ‘slaughterhouse for elephants’.

Nyalandu confirmed that the Rungwa game reserve appears to be the epi-centre of elephant poaching in the country and that the government will take action to deal with the situation.

Action the government will take include hiring additional rangers and allocating more funding towards tackling the poaching gangs of the region. The minister also announced plans that the government will pull together a law enforcement strategy to try and tackle the low numbers of arrests that result in prosecutions.

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Questions remain over UK’s support for Tanzania’s ivory stockpile

Posted on April 25, 2015 by Kevin Heath

As more details are finalised and publicised on the deal between the UK and Tanzania the more it supports the fears we first raised back in July 2014. When the UK said it was only going to support a count of the ivory the information we were provided with from Tanzanian sources was that the UK was going to do far more than this.

The information we were provided with was that the UK would fund the counting of the ivory, the building of high-tech storage for keeping the ivory in good condition and for the treatment of ivory and tusks to help prevent the stockpile from deteriorating in quality.

While the government and Minister for Africa fervently denied this investment in Tanzania’s ivory stockpile it’s quite clear now which information is correct and that raises question of should the UK be paying multi-million pounds in grants to protect the economic value of tusks and ivory when across the world other countries are destroying their stockpiles.

The UK has announced that it will be giving Tanzania £10 million towards an African elephant action plan the bulk of which is designated to be used by Tanzania to count, store and monitor its estimated 112 tonnes of tusks.

This story has issues that keep coming up that indicates that there is something not quite right with the situation.

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Dog disease in lions spread by multiple species

Date:

January 27, 2015

Source:

Washington State University

Summary:

Canine distemper, a viral disease that's been infecting the famed lions of Tanzania's Serengeti National Park, appears to be spread by multiple animal species, according to a study published by a transcontinental team of scientists.

Their findings demonstrate that in natural ecosystems, a deadly virus can jump between species and thrive, thereby threatening vulnerable animal populations.

"Our study shows that the dynamics of canine distemper virus are extremely complex, and a broadened approach -- focusing not only on domestic dogs--is required if we are to control the disease among lions and other wild animal species," said veterinary researcher Felix Lankester of Washington State University's Paul G. Allen School for Global Animal Health, a co-author based in Tanzania.

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Elephant ivory smuggling 'kingpin' arrested in Tanzania

Suspected organised crime boss Feisal Ali Mohammed is arrested following publication of Interpol most-wanted list

Feisal Mohamed Ali, bottom-right, has been arrested in Tanzania following an Interpol most-wanted list. Photograph: Interpol

AFP

Tuesday 23 December 2014 12.19 GMT

A suspected organised crime boss alleged to be a leading figure in the illegal ivory trade has been arrested by Interpol agents in Tanzania, officials said on Tuesday.

The international police organisation last month put Kenyan national Feisal Ali Mohammed on a list of nine most-wanted suspects linked to crimes against the environment.

“Feisal Ali Mohammed was arrested by Interpol officers in Dar es Salaam. He was then booked in Musimbasi police station at 10:42pm last night,” Kenya’s director of public prosecutions said in a statement.

It said he is facing charges in Kenya’s port city of Mombasa for “dealing and possession of elephant tusks” weighing more than two tonnes and equivalent to at least 114 poached elephants, which were found during a raid in June.

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Specialist anti-poaching air squadron set to launch in Tanzania

Kevin Heath / 2 days ago

Speaking at a hand over of donated 4×4 vehicles the Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism in Tanzania, Lazaro Nyalandu, has announced that a special air squadron of 5 helicopters is set to take to the skies in the New Year as the country continues its fight against poachers.

Despite the loss of a helicopter which crashed last month killing 4 staff, the Ministry has said that the new squadron will be ready to take on the poachers within weeks.

The crashed helicopter is covered by insurance and will be replaced. A second helicopter is currently on the way to Tanzania and once new pilots have been trained in South Africa and the United States the squadron will be bought up to strength.

The minister made the announcement as the wildlife service received a donation of five Toyota Land-Cruiser Pickup trucks from the Wildlife Conservation Foundation of Tanzania.

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Chinese criminal syndicates & corruption behind Tanzania’s elephant meltdown

Paul Newman / 13 hours ago

A new report reveals that Chinese-led criminal gangs are conspiring with corrupt Tanzanian officials to traffic huge amounts of ivory, a trade which has caused half of Tanzania’s elephants to be poached in the past five years – even diplomatic visits by high-level Chinese Government delegations have been used to smuggle ivory. 

In the major new report Vanishing Point – Criminality, Corruption and the Devastation of Tanzania’s Elephants, released on the eve of a major regional wildlife crime summit in Tanzania, the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) details how the country’s elephants are being slaughtered in vast numbers to feed a resurgent ivory trade in China. 

In December 2013, an official visit by a Chinese naval task force to Tanzania’s capital city port of Dar es Salaam spurred a major surge in business for ivory traders, with one dealer boasting of making US$50,000 from sales to naval personnel. In addition, a Chinese national was caught trying to enter the port with 81 illegal tusks intended for two mid-ranking Chinese naval officers. 

Earlier that year, in March, the visit of a large official delegation accompanying Chinese President Xi Jinping to Tanzania created a boom in illegal ivory sales and caused local prices to double. 

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27 new species found in Tanzanian forests

A recent study revealed that 27 new vertebrate species have been found in the forests of Tanzania’s Eastern Arc Mountains. Of these, 23 were amphibians and reptiles. Of the total species that were identified in the region, the study found that there are 211 vertebrate species that are found only in the Eastern Arc Mountains, and 203 of them are found in Tanzania alone. These findings, says the study, re-enforce the importance of the Eastern Arc Mountains as one of the top locations on Earth for biological diversity and uniqueness.

“The Eastern Arc Mountains were already known for the unusually high density of endemic species,” explains Neil Burgess, a leading expert on Africa's biodiversity and vice-chair of the TFCG, “however we lacked comprehensive data from at least six of the 13 mountain blocks.”

The study was conducted by an international team, and included researchers from the Tanzania Forest Conservation Group (TFCG) and MUSE-Science Museum in Italy, and was financed by Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF).

The Eastern Arc Mountains are an isolated chain of geologically ancient mountains that extend from southern Kenya to south-central Tanzania. According to scientists, the forest has existed on the mountains for more than 30 million years and was once connected to forests in the Congo Basin and West Africa.

Source: Z News

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/eastern-arc-269.html

Thirsty Serengeti wildlife to get new water hole: Lake Victoria

By Kizito Makoye

DAR ES SALAAM Tanzania (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - After decades of struggling to help the wildlife of Serengeti National Park cope with Tanzania's increasingly intense droughts, the government is implementing a controversial plan to use Lake Victoria as an alternative water source for animals.

The project aims to ensure the survival of millions of animals, including the wildebeests and zebras that take part in the Great Migration every year, and involves reviving a 36 sq km (14 sq mile) wildlife corridor by extending the border of the park to Lake Victoria's Gulf of Speke.

But guaranteeing animals safe passage to the second-largest freshwater lake in the world will mean evicting hundreds of families living on the land.

Government officials say moving about 8,000 people out of the Speke Game Controlled Area in Bunda district is essential to conserve the Serengeti's ecosystem as it faces worsening drought.

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Habitat loss and fragmentation reduce chameleon population in Tanzania

25th August 2014 

1 hour ago by Sathya Achia Abraham

(Phys.org) —Tucked away among the lush rainforests of the Eastern Arc Mountains of Tanzania are a host of species of plants and animals found nowhere else in the world.

Among them are a variety of chameleon species differing in size, color and how they use their forest dwelling. However, all of them rely on the rainforest for survival.

In the past 50 years, the chameleon populations in the montane rainforests of Tanzania have declined by more than 60 percent from historical levels due to habitat loss and fragmentation, according to a new study by Virginia Commonwealth University biologists.

In the study, published in Diversity and Distributions, a top organismal conservation journal, researchers surveyed three chameleon species in the East Usambara Mountains of Tanzania using a hierarchical, distance-sampling model.

Read more at: 

Elephant population triples in Serengeti Maasa Mari – are they fleeing poachers?

Posted by: Kevin Heath / 3 days ago

Are elephants fleeing Kenya for the relative safety of Tanzania in the Serengeti? That is the question being posed as a new survey released this week shows that elephant numbers in the Tanzania sector of the vast eco-system have tripled in just 28 years.

The areal survey was conducted by Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute (TAWIRI), the Frankfurt Zoological Society (FZS) and the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) and was targeting the populations of elephants and buffaloes in the world’s largest ecosystem.

The result was surprising with elephant populations in some areas of the Serengeti tripling in number since the last large-scale survey was undertaken in 1986. In the Serengeti-Mara region there was 7535 elephants counted compared to a population of 2058 in the 1986 survey – a 266% increase.

“The census results show that there has been a 266 per cent upward increase of elephants in the Serengeti Mara with most of the 7535 Jumbos counted, found to be concentrating in the Serengeti National Park, the adjacent Maswa, Kijereshi and Ikorongo game reserves as well as Ngorongoro Conservation Area, precincts falling within Tanzania,” said the Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism, Mr Lazaro Nyalandu.

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Snubbing lion hunters could preserve the endangered animals

Date:

May 14, 2014

Source:

University of California - Davis

Summary:

A change in longstanding cultural practice in Tanzania is saving some endangered lions from being killed by hunters. For hundreds of years young men from some ethnic groups in Tanzania, called "lion dancers" because they elaborately acted out their lion killing for spectators, were richly rewarded for killing lions that preyed on livestock and people. Now when a lion dancer shows up he might be called a rude name rather than receive a reward.

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United States bans elephant trophies from Tanzania and Zimbabwe

Posted by: Kevin Heath / 1 day ago

The United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) on Friday announced a ban on the import of elephant trophies from Tanzania and Zimbabwe during the 2014 hunting season. The USFAWS has questioned whether there is sufficient monitoring of the big-game hunt and whether the number of elephant hunting permits is sustainable in the current poaching crisis.

The service also highlighted questionable management practices, a lack of effective law enforcement and weak governance. With the current elephant poaching crisis impacting on elephant populations across Africa the service has decided that no import permits will be issued for 2014.

In the press statement issued on Friday the USFWS stated:

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