Scientists uncover patterns of elephant poaching in East Africa

December 19, 2017, University of York

Scientists analysing data from aerial surveys carried out over one of East Africa's most important nature reserves have uncovered clusters of elephant carcasses close to some ranger posts.

The team, from the University of York and the Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute (TAWIRI), made the discovery while working together to address the problem of elephant poaching in the Ruaha-Rungwa ecosystem.

The study used data from three successive aerial surveys during the peak of the poaching crisis from 2013-2015 and revealed patterns of elephant carcasses across the region.

Wet season

Using aerial surveys and spatial analysis, the team revealed the poachers preferred to operate in the wet season – when swollen rivers meant travel by road was extremely difficult and tourism was minimal.

The study, which involved collaboration between the University of York and TAWIRI, also revealed the signs of poaching tended to be away from the main, well-equipped ranger posts, where the aerial surveys revealed fewer carcasses.

However, the data revealed elephant remains were found in greater numbers than expected close to three out of 13 outlying ranger posts. If carcasses had been as rare around outlying posts as near the park headquarters, overall there would have been seven per cent fewer carcasses.

Lead author, Dr Colin Beale from the University of York's Department of Biology, said a lot has changed since the surveys were done and the Tanzania government was working hard to address the problem, with evidence that poaching has since fallen substantially.

Read more at: 

Elephant poaching in Africa falls but ivory seizures up: study

October 24, 2017

Continent-wide, Botswana has the most number of elephants, while populations in Kenya, Namibia, Rwanda, South Africa and Uganda are holding steady or climbing

Elephant poaching in Africa declined for a fifth straight year in 2016 but seizures of illegal ivory hit records highs, the CITES monitor said Tuesday, calling it a "conflicting phenomena".

In its latest report, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species also noted that despite the overall fall in poaching, Africa's elephant population has continued to drop "due to continued illegal killing, land transformation and rapid human expansion."

Global illegal ivory trade has remained relatively stable for six years, CITES reported.

But 2016 saw a full 40 tonnes of illegal ivory seized, the most since 1989, as well as the hightest-ever number of "large-scale ivory seizures", the group said.

"The overall weight of seized ivory in illegal trade is now nearly three times greater than what was observed in 2007", CITES added in a statement.

That could be a result of increasing vigilance among border guards and "scaled up enforcement", said CITES secretary general John Scanlon.

Read more at: 

Poaching of old forest elephant matriarchs threatens rainforests

Scientists warn that killing of the oldest, wisest females -- the guardians of their community's forest and social knowledge- could cause cascading effects on ecosystem integrity

Date: May 12, 2016

Source: Wildlife Conservation Society

Scientists working for the Wildlife Conservation Society, the University of Stirling, and the Amboseli Trust for Elephants say that the high levels of poaching forest elephants will result in a loss of the oldest, wisest matriarchs, who are living libraries of their vast rainforest domain. The oldest females guide and teach their young where to go for food and minerals, what to eat, how to process tricky foods, and how to avoid danger. Without these mothers, forest elephant social lives and their understanding of their ecosystem will be lost. This exacerbates the ongoing loss of ecosystem function already underway by the loss of these most effective seed dispersers and forest gardeners.

Future conservation plans for the lesser known cousin of the African savannah elephant, they say, must include strategies that consider changes to elephant social structure, habitat integrity, and pressure from growing human populations.

The essay titled "Consequences for elephants and forests: poaching and anthropogenic change" appears in the online version of Conservation Biology. The authors are: Thomas Breuer of the Wildlife Conservation Society; Fiona Maisels of the Wildlife Conservation Society and the University of Stirling; and Vicki Fishlock of the Amboseli Trust for Elephants and the University of Stirling.

"We've been aware of the catastrophic decline of forest elephants since 2013" said WCS Conservationist Dr. Thomas Breuer, lead author of the essay. "But, as with savannah elephants, the impacts are greatest when we lose the matriarchs."

Scientists conducting long-term studies on savannah elephants have documented numerous and long-lasting effects of poaching and other forms of anthropogenic disruption on behavior. For instance, savannah elephants exposed to poaching become more nocturnal and more skittish outside of protected areas, which in turn can become more crowded with elephants and may be impacted by increased grazing and browsing.

Continued ...

The war on elephants

How the very existence of Africa’s elephants is threatened by poachers, traffickers and Asia’s appetite for ivory

Bloated and eerily upright the large adult elephant was still standing where it had been killed - just next to the stream - its face hacked off.

It had been fleeing the carnage in the mud 100m or so away, where the remains of four other adults and one young elephant lay fallen and disfigured, their tusks and trunks all taken for ivory and meat.

Like a macabre statue, this faceless animal stood as a landmark to the horrors of poaching, of the ivory trade, and of the mass slaughter of the last remaining elephants in central Africa.

The pilot of the light aircraft was out on a regular reconnaissance mission when circling vultures drew him to the scene.

The armed rangers on patrol nearby hadn't heard the shots, so it was the scavengers feasting on the carcasses that had raised the alarm.

Garamba, in the north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, is one of the oldest national parks in Africa, designated in 1938.

It covers 14,000 sq km (5,500 sq miles) dominated by savannah grasses, which when green and lush can reach 3m in height, enveloping the elephants and concealing them even from the air.

It's tough going on foot with the criss-crossing streams that feed the great Congo River, punctuated by papyrus marsh, forest and scrub.

The park was made a World Heritage Site in 1980 for its rare Northern White Rhinos, and with 22,000 elephants back then, they never seemed in danger.

But the last rhino was seen some years ago. Poaching has wiped them out, and now with 95% of the elephants gone, and the killing continuing week after week, these giants are going the same way.

It's not a good neighbourhood for conservation.

Continued ...

Suspected poachers 'kill 14 elephants with cyanide' in Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe's wildlife agency investigates suspicious deaths of elephants in Hwange national park - which was home to Cecil the lion

By Our Foreign Staff

8:01PM BST 06 Oct 2015

Suspected poachers used cyanide to kill 14 elephants in Zimbabwe's western Hwange national park and in the north since Sept 26, the national wildlife agency said on Tuesday

Hwange, home of Zimbabwe's most famous lion Cecil who was killed by an American dentist in July, holds 53,000 elephants, twice the park's carrying capacity, the park's agency says.

The Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Mamagement Authority spokeswoman Caroline Washaya-Moyo said six elephants were killed on Sept. 26 inside Hwange park and their tusks were removed.

Continued ...

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. 

Continued ...

Elephant poachers penetrate South African borders again

Posted by: Cindy Tilney / posted on July 30th, 2014

A second elephant has been butchered for its tusks by poachers in Parfuri, northern Kruger National Park, 10km in from the Mozambican and Zimbabwean borders. SANParks officials discovered the two day old carcass with its tusks hacked out yesterday morning. No further details regarding the age or sex of the elephant were available and no suspects have as yet been arrested in connection with the crime.

This is the second incident of elephant poaching in the Parfuri region of Kruger in recent months, highlighting the onslaught of elephant poaching predicted by conservationists, who have warned that rampant poaching in neighbouring countries would begin to spill over South African borders, and the urgent need for heightened action by government to step up protection measures and find solutions to a crisis that seems to be not only looming, but already unfolding.

“Elephant poaching has been happening for a while now in Mozambique and Zimbabwe, so we did expect that it would at some stage reach our area,” said SANparks spokesperson William Mabasa.

Continued

Chad burns its ivory

February 2014: Chad marked its commitment to combating elephant poaching by burning its ivory stockpile, which weighed more than a tonne.

The ceremony took place at Goz Djarat , the town at the entrance to Zakouma National Park, the country’s flagship national park and was witnessed by a delegation of Chadian cabinet ministers, the African Parks team that manages Zakouma, representatives from other NGOs and the media.

Rampant elephant poaching has destroyed the region’s once thriving elephant population. Fifty years ago Chad was teeming with 50 000 elephants: today the total population is estimated at 1 500.

The match was lit by The President of the Republic of Chad, His Excellency Idriss Déby Itno who was one of five African Heads of State who pledged support for the Elephant Protection Initiative at the UK Government’s London Summit on the Illegal Wildlife Trade. The initiative comprises a range of measures including a commitment to cease trading in ivory products for a minimum of 10 years.

The ivory burn formed part of Zakouma National Park’s 50th anniversary event that also included the unveiling of a commemorative monument to the 23 guards slain on duty at Zakouma since 1998.

In the last couple of months many countries have destroyed their ivory stockpiles or announced their intention to do so including China, France and Hong Kong, and Prince William has called for the ivory in Buckingham Palace to be destroyed.

What do you think? Should countries destroy their ivory? Does it help in the fight against poaching? Let us know your thoughts...

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/chad-ivory-014.html

'Poaching is too much risk' – the pygmy poacher who became elephant protector

Brice Mouapele is the latest addition to the team of eco-guards patrolling Congo-Brazzaville's Odzala-Kokoua national park

theguardian.com, Thursday 13 February 2014 11.59 GMT

The speed at which Brice Mouapele moves through the dense tropical undergrowth is impressive. The humidity is stifling, but Mouapele appears unaffected as his small frame, clad in camouflage fatigues, brushes past jungle vines while he clutches his rifle. The 39-year-old pygmy is the latest addition to the team of eco-guards patrolling Congo-Brazzaville's Odzala-Kokoua national park. He is also the first pygmy to turn from elephant poacher to protector.

Continued

Drones Enter the Battle Against Elephant, Rhino Poachers

By Megan Gannon, News Editor | February 05, 2014 02:52pm ET

To give park rangers in Africa an upper hand in the fight against poachers, conservationists are bringing drones to the places where vulnerable elephants and rhinoceroses roam.

Google gave the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) a $5 million Global Impact Award about a year ago to look for new ways to detect and deterwildlife crime.

Now the conservation group and its partners in Namibia are just about ready to implement bungee-launched drones and a host of other poacher-tracking technologies in some of the country's national parks, WWF officials say.

Continued

Former poachers help in the fight against elephant poaching

Ex-poachers turn the tables on their former fellow contempories

November 2013: Two victories in the battle against elephant poaching in the Congo have been achieved by the Odzala-Kokoua National Park’s eco-guard unit, which now has former poachers in its ranks. The first involved the arrest and conviction of a Congolese regional ivory kingpin in July, and the second involved the arrest of an alleged major Chinese ivory trader in October.

The Odzala eco-guard unit comprises of former poachers who applied for the park’s ground-breaking amnesty programme at the end of last year. The inaugural “poacher-to-protector” amnesty programme was launched last December with a word-of-mouth drive via existing eco-guards and with official notification letters to the chiefs of villages surrounding the park. Poachers who entered the amnesty programme were required to hand in their illegal weapons and provide written statements detailing their poaching crimes. As part of the amnesty programme, they were entitled to take part in a selection and training programme for new eco-guards in the park.

Continued

Gabon official arrested as mastermind of elephant poaching gang

An extensive network of traffic ivory dismantled in Gabon

Ivory seized in Gabon - Photo Courtesy of Parks Gabon

March 2013. The Gabon National Agency for National Parks and judicial authorities have recorded significant success in their crusade against poaching in Minkébé National Park.

The National Parks and the Minkébé Provincial police have concluded a week of intense activity marked by numerous arrests of poachers, and seizure of weapons and ivory stock. They have arrested a man who is believed to be the mastermind of one of the most active poaching networks.

Mr Athanase Edou Mebiane, a Sub-Prefect in the local government, was arrested and accused after authorities gathered damning evidence about the senior local government official's active involvement in illegal hunting and ivory trafficking.

It is alleged that the Mebiane ran a team of elephant hunters in the Minkébé Forest. He provided them with guns, ammunition and money for supplies. Mebiame then shipped the ivory to neighbouring Cameroon himself.

The dismantling of this network is a warning to all criminal organizations involved in the ivory trade in Gabon. Mebiane, apparently having confessed, then sent a warning to other poachers, staing that "The determination of the State will not fade, so all poachers will be hunted and put out of harm's way, wherever they are and whoever they are."

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/gabon-poacher.html#cr

Elephants being poached in Burma

New 'open' Myanmar opening up to poachers too.

February 2013. Though not on the scale of poaching in Africa, a new and worrying development has occurred in Myanmar, where at least 11 elephants were killed by poachers in 2012. An estimated 3,000 wild elephants still live in Burma, but until very recently they had remained relatively untouched by elephant poaching.

However as Myanmar opens up to the world, and with its proximity to China with whom it shares a highly porous border, elephant and tiger poaching were bound to become more of a problem. In fact Wildlife Extra reported a few years ago that tiger parts were openly on sale in some markets.

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/myanmar-elephants013.html

African elephant poaching threatens wildlife future

Three elephant corpses lay piled on top of one another under the scorching Kenyan sun.

In their terror, the elephants must have sought safety in numbers - in vain: a thick trail of blackened blood traced their final moments.

In December, nine elephants were killed outside the Tsavo National Park, in south-eastern Kenya. This month, a family of 12 was gunned down in the same area.

In both cases, the elephants' faces had been hacked off to remove the tusks. The rest was left to the maggots and the flies.

"That is a big number for one single incident," said Samuel Takore of the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS). "We have not had such an incident in recent years, I think dating back to before I joined the service."

Mr Takore joined in the 1980s, and his observations corroborate a wider pattern: across Africa, elephant poaching is now at its highest for 20 years.

During the 1980s, more than half of Africa's elephants are estimated to have been wiped out, mostly by poachers hunting for ivory.

But in January 1990, countries around the world signed up to an international ban on the trade in ivory. Global demand dwindled in the face of a worldwide public awareness campaign.

Elephant populations began to swell again.

Continued:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-21018429

Rescue of four baby elephants in two weeks highlights increased poaching threat in Kenya

Elephants will be raised for release into the wild

October 2012. Four orphaned baby elephants have been rescued in the last two weeks in Kenya by the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust (DSWT) - suggesting that poaching levels are continuing to rise.

The charity, which will protect and raise the baby elephants through an adoption programme run with the support of UK charity Care for the Wild, has now rescued 28 baby elephants in 2012 alone.

Three orphaned by poachers
Three of the elephants are reported to be victims of poaching for the illegal ivory trade, left alone after their mothers were killed by poachers. The fourth elephant Lemoyian, was rescued from a man-made well having fallen and become trapped.

Philip Mansbridge, Chief Executive of Care for the Wild, said: "This is fantastic work by the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust. These orphans have the ‘awww' factor, but we must also focus on the big picture - poaching is at record levels, and if the international community doesn't do something to stop it, there won't be anything left to rescue."

As poaching continues to escalate, elephant numbers have fallen from 1.3 million in 1979 to an estimated 400,000. Presently up to 36,000 elephants are being killed every year for their tusks, left unchecked, this level of poaching would see wild elephants in Africa disappear by 2025.

Continued:  http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/orphan-elephants.html

UK House of Lords debate elephant poaching

Lords debate on elephant poaching 

July 2012. The House of Lords in the UK recently held a brief discussion on the current disgrace that is elephant poaching in Africa. Although not known for their instant actions, the fact that The Lords have actually talked aboutthe issue must be a good sign, even if only a small one.

The discussion, as listed in Hansard, was as follows.

ELEPHANT POACHING

Asked by Lord St John of Bletso

To ask Her Majesty's Government what measures to address the increase in elephant poaching and the illegal sale of ivory to the Far East they plan to support at the Standing Committee meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species on 23 July.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Taylor of Holbeach): My Lords, as a party to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, the UK is supportive of CITES's increasing focus on enforcement and work to reduce elephant poaching and the illegal trade in ivory. Defra officials are working with the European Commission and other member states to agree a common position to be taken in preparing for, and negotiating at, the CITES meeting in three weeks' time.

Lord St John of Bletso: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his reply but is he aware that a recent analysis, commissioned by CITES, indicates that as many as 12% of Africa's elephants were poached last year in order to satisfy the burgeoning demand for ivory, particularly from Asia? Based on this analysis and the 2007 estimates of the continent's elephant population, in excess of 35,000 elephants may have been killed last year. Can the Minister provide assurances that the British Government will use their influence to ensure that the European Union will reject any proposals for further ivory sales, including stockpiles, and the down-listing of the elephant population?

Lord Taylor of Holbeach: Yes, I can give the noble Lord that assurance. We certainly cannot be confident that smuggling and the poaching of ivory are currently under control. The Government take very seriously

4 July 2012 : Column 683

the threat to elephants and other wildlife from smuggling and the international trafficking of wildlife products. Richard Benyon, the Minister responsible, announced last year that the illegal trade under CITES, in particular the trade in elephant ivory, is a UK wildlife crime priority for the National Wildlife Crime Unit.

Continued:  http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/lords-debate-elephant.html

Meet the awesome dogs that are stamping out elephant poaching

The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Virunga National Park employs a lean, mean team of crime-fighters to take on evil elephant poachers. These elite commandoes are fearless trackers, work for practically nothing, have exceptional loyalty, and are a pack of adorable puppies.

Meet Carla, Stella, Lila, Dodi, Lily, and Sabrina. The bloodhounds — or Congohounds, as they’re called in Virunga — are currently being trained to protect the National Park’s animals from poachers. Rangers rely on the hounds’ especially keen sniffers to track and apprehend suspects — bloodhounds can identify a single scent out of 5 million competing smells.

Continued:  http://grist.org/list/meet-the-awesome-dogs-that-are-stamping-out-elephant-poaching/

Poaching is an immediate danger to the world’s elephant populations - CITES

Experts report highest elephant poaching and ivory smuggling rates in a decade
June 2012 - Elephant poaching levels are the worst in a decade and recorded ivory seizures are at their highest levels since 1989, according to a report published by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). 

The report analyses data from the CITES programme on Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants (MIKE), IUCN's data on the status of elephant populations, the Elephant Trade Information System (ETIS) managed by TRAFFIC, and the CITES trade database managed by the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC).

Elephant poaching and ivory seizures have close correlation
These authoritative sources of information have shown a very close correspondence between trends in elephant poaching and trends in large-scale ivory seizures, detecting essentially the same patterns at different points in the illegal ivory trade chain.

Seizures good, prosecutions better
Commenting on the report, the CITES Secretary-General, Mr John E. Scanlon, said: "We need to enhance our collective efforts across range, transit and consumer states to reverse the current disturbing trends in elephant poaching and ivory smuggling. While being essential, enforcement efforts to stop wildlife crime must not just result in seizures - they must result in prosecutions, convictions and strong penalties to stop the flow of contraband. The whole ‘enforcement chain' must work together."

Worst years
According to ETIS data, three of the five years in which the greatest volumes of ivory were seized globally occurred in 2009, 2010 and 2011. In 2011 alone, there were 14 large-scale ivory seizures-a double-digit figure for the first time in 23 years, when ETIS records were first compiled. They totalled an estimated 24.3 tonnes of ivory; more than in any previous year. Large-scale ivory seizures (those involving >800 kg of ivory in a single transaction), typically indicate the participation of organised crime.

Continued:  http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/elephant-poaching-2012.html#cr

'Slaughtered for their ivory': Up to 35,000 elephants slain in one year, charity says

By Carol Marquis, NBC News

LONDON -- Up to 35,000 elephants were killed last year for their tusks, the head of a charity told NBC News.

Charlie Mayhew, the chief executive of Tusk Trust, said: "What we have witnessed over the last 18 months or two years has been a significant escalation in the poaching of both rhino for rhino horn and elephant for ivory, fueled by sort of a dramatic increase in demand from consumers in the Far East.

"Last year we believe that as many as 35,000 elephants may have been slaughtered for their ivory," he added. "South Africa lost 434 rhino last year. This year we know that they've lost more than 170 rhino. That's more than an average of one every 15 hours and that is just South Africa alone."

Continued:  http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/30/11467687-slaughtered-for-their-ivory-up-to-35000-elephants-slain-in-one-year-charity-says?lite

Kenya rangers gun down suspected elephant poachers

Kenyan rangers shot dead five suspected elephant poachers in a night-time firefight in the north of the country, the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) said on Saturday.

"Five suspected poachers were last night gunned down and one escaped during a fierce exchange of fire with Kenya Wildlife Service rangers at Chepareria in West Pokot County," it said.

Two rangers were wounded in the firefight which went on for more than 40 minutes, the KWS said, adding that it had recovered 50 kilograms (110 pounds) of elephant tusks and three assault rifles at the scene.

Trading in ivory was banned in 1989 under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/kenya-rangers-gun-down-suspected-elephant-poachers-133236152.html