Last week ten people were arrested at the Luangwa Bridge as they attempted to smuggle elephant meat and four tusks through to Lusaka on a lorry. Alerted by a Nyalugwe Community Resource Board member, in whose country the two elephant were poached, paramilitary arrested the group, delivered some impromptu corporal punishment, then released - for reasons unknown, the driver and the lorry, and sent the poachers to Nyimba town jail. Two sporting rifles (.375 and 30.06), a shotgun and a muzzle loader were confiscated. The poaching group are from the hamlet of Lukwipa, forty miles East of the Luangwa bridge, a roadside village notorious for its game meat market; two of the members are prominant citizens in the village, one a schoolmaster, the other the dispensary assistant. This continuing onslaught on our elephant is having the unfortunate effect of forcing them to take refuge around villages, attacking grain bins, huts and villagers.
Reports have also been received of an attack by poachers on personnel looking after a safari lodge at Mushika in the Lower Zambezi National Park; and in the adjoining Rufunsa Game Management Area a wildlife officer recently poached a kudu, calling in his friends on his cell phone.
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