Tuesday, July 24, 2007
The Zambia Office of the President investigates elephant poaching in Nyimba district...
The Chairman of the soon to be registered Luembe Development and Caretaker Community Association (LDCCA) reports that officers of the Office of The President (OP) are carrying out an investigation of the role of ZAWA officers in the poaching of elephant and other wildlife in the district. LDCCA has been carrying out its own investigation for some time and has pinpointed the source of more ivory.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Lebanese in Zambia seized for unlawful possession of elephant tusks
16:10, July 21, 2007
A Lebanese has been arrested in Zambia for unlawful possession of 55 pieces of elephant tusks worth nearly 80,000 U.S. dollars and 58 rounds of ammunition, Times of Zambia reported Saturday.
The 65-year-old Lebanese was arrested in Kitwe, Copperbelt Province after a tip-off and then handed over to the Zambia Wildlife Authority for prosecution, Rosten Chulu, public relations and press liaison officer of the Drug Enforcement Commission, was quoted as saying.
Chulu warned Zambians and foreign nationals to stay away from such criminal activities.
Source: Xinhua
A Lebanese has been arrested in Zambia for unlawful possession of 55 pieces of elephant tusks worth nearly 80,000 U.S. dollars and 58 rounds of ammunition, Times of Zambia reported Saturday.
The 65-year-old Lebanese was arrested in Kitwe, Copperbelt Province after a tip-off and then handed over to the Zambia Wildlife Authority for prosecution, Rosten Chulu, public relations and press liaison officer of the Drug Enforcement Commission, was quoted as saying.
Chulu warned Zambians and foreign nationals to stay away from such criminal activities.
Source: Xinhua
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Zambia Ivory cache owners sentenced to 5 years hard labour...
In Nyimba today, two Zambian nationals, one of them, Reg Gray, the elder brother of the former M.P. Lloyd Gray, were sentenced to five years hard labour for being in possession of 24 elephant tusks. The district has for some time been in the grip of an elephant poaching gang.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
The killing of another elephant in West Petuake GMA... by Japha Mbewe
I am here reporting the above mentioned.
It was on 3rd July when we received the above report from Martin who is the MBEZA SAFARIS driver. According to the report, the workers who were clearing the hunting road in Ilinda area as they were clearing the road, one of the' ten poachers approached the workers and invited them to have the elephant meat which, these poachers had removed the Ivory from it these people saw the dead elephant and decided to inform Martin about the development, Martin without delay he rushed to the CRB Chairperson Mr. Ackson Lungu, who immediately informed Zambia Wildlife Authority (ZAWA) Nyimba and your office. Martin also confirmed that there were also gun shots heard in Ilinda area.
After you had provided the ZAWA with the transport, they were deployed to the same area the same day. Two days later the Petauke ZAWA Officers were also deployed to the same area but via Luangwa Bridge route. These poachers had AK47 assaulted rifles. According to the ZAWA officers they confirmed that they had also the same information about these poachers and they said they suspected these poachers to have come from Lukwipa Lufunva area.
The Luembe Community Resource Board (C.R.B) meeting is to be held at 14th July to discuss, what would be the solution for those officers who were involved in poaching, because under the village scout the procedure is that if the village scout is involved in poaching he has to be fired from work with immediate effect, now the question will be what of the ZAWA Officers what will be the procedure for the ZAWA Officers who were involved in poaching.
So far, one Village Area Group (VAG) meeting was conducted and the community during their meeting supported the idea of writing a letter to the ZAWA and requiring them to remove and transfer these officers from our area.
Yours faithfully,
Japher Mbewe dip. pub. pros.
LUEMBE TRUST PUBLIC PROSECUTOR
C/O Luembe CRB
Nyimba, Zambia.
It was on 3rd July when we received the above report from Martin who is the MBEZA SAFARIS driver. According to the report, the workers who were clearing the hunting road in Ilinda area as they were clearing the road, one of the' ten poachers approached the workers and invited them to have the elephant meat which, these poachers had removed the Ivory from it these people saw the dead elephant and decided to inform Martin about the development, Martin without delay he rushed to the CRB Chairperson Mr. Ackson Lungu, who immediately informed Zambia Wildlife Authority (ZAWA) Nyimba and your office. Martin also confirmed that there were also gun shots heard in Ilinda area.
After you had provided the ZAWA with the transport, they were deployed to the same area the same day. Two days later the Petauke ZAWA Officers were also deployed to the same area but via Luangwa Bridge route. These poachers had AK47 assaulted rifles. According to the ZAWA officers they confirmed that they had also the same information about these poachers and they said they suspected these poachers to have come from Lukwipa Lufunva area.
The Luembe Community Resource Board (C.R.B) meeting is to be held at 14th July to discuss, what would be the solution for those officers who were involved in poaching, because under the village scout the procedure is that if the village scout is involved in poaching he has to be fired from work with immediate effect, now the question will be what of the ZAWA Officers what will be the procedure for the ZAWA Officers who were involved in poaching.
So far, one Village Area Group (VAG) meeting was conducted and the community during their meeting supported the idea of writing a letter to the ZAWA and requiring them to remove and transfer these officers from our area.
Yours faithfully,
Japher Mbewe dip. pub. pros.
LUEMBE TRUST PUBLIC PROSECUTOR
C/O Luembe CRB
Nyimba, Zambia.
Friday, July 06, 2007
Encouraging news from Zambia for the elephant poaching war...
The news that Gerald Musoni has oncemore taken up the position of Chief Investigations Officer with the Zambia Wildlife Authority (ZAWA) lends encouragement for our efforts in combating elephant poaching - now running at epidemic levels. Perhaps he had something to do with the recent ivory bust in Nyimba involving the elder brother of the former Member of Parliament, Lloyd Grey.
Musomi was removed from ZAWA a few years ago, along with the present Director-General, Dr Lewis Saiwana (who went back to his farm for two years), by the hapless Hapenga Kabeta, the D-G at the time. As Saiwana represents about all of the institutional memory of ZAWA, and as Musomi was building up a reputation as a concerned and honest crime fighter, this was a grave error on Kabeta's part, as well as a severe misjudgement on the part of the ZAWA Board. Fortunately, the pair are oncemore united, reversing somewhat the recent spate of resignations and firings of senior personnel in the embattled organization. But they are going to need all the help they can get; time surely for the donors to fund the necessary technical supports for a much leaner and fully funded regulatory body. But this will require that Saiwana continue his innovative work in developing public private partnerships in the management of our National Parks - with Africa Parks leading the way, and that he address the very pressing problem of the poaching and fire situation within Game Management Areas by embracing the concept of land trusts in which the ownership of wildlife is held on behalf of the villagers. Ownership is the key here; without it the tragedy of the commons will continue.
I.P.A. Manning
Musomi was removed from ZAWA a few years ago, along with the present Director-General, Dr Lewis Saiwana (who went back to his farm for two years), by the hapless Hapenga Kabeta, the D-G at the time. As Saiwana represents about all of the institutional memory of ZAWA, and as Musomi was building up a reputation as a concerned and honest crime fighter, this was a grave error on Kabeta's part, as well as a severe misjudgement on the part of the ZAWA Board. Fortunately, the pair are oncemore united, reversing somewhat the recent spate of resignations and firings of senior personnel in the embattled organization. But they are going to need all the help they can get; time surely for the donors to fund the necessary technical supports for a much leaner and fully funded regulatory body. But this will require that Saiwana continue his innovative work in developing public private partnerships in the management of our National Parks - with Africa Parks leading the way, and that he address the very pressing problem of the poaching and fire situation within Game Management Areas by embracing the concept of land trusts in which the ownership of wildlife is held on behalf of the villagers. Ownership is the key here; without it the tragedy of the commons will continue.
I.P.A. Manning
The tusk detective...by Emma Marris
Published online: 5 July 2007; | doi:10.1038/news070702-12
The tusk detective
Samuel Wasser is a conservation biologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, and an outspoken opponent of elephant poaching. He talks to Emma Marris about his genetic methods for tracing poached ivory.
Emma Marris
Q. Tell me about some of the ivory seizures you've worked on.
A. There was a seizure in 2002 in Singapore of 6,500 kilograms of ivory — 531 tusks, many of which were huge. The authorities knew that poachers were carrying tusks across Zambia and into Malawi. One day they got a tip it was on the move. They went on a truck and then travelled by ship to Singapore. Hong Kong authorities got to the dock just hours before they arrived. The strong smell suggested that at least some of the ivory was fresh.
The ivory was high quality and going to an infrastructure that could get it to wealthy buyers. This is not your small-time village poacher. Everyone thought the ivory had come from multiple locations. We showed it was all from Zambia.
In May 2006, we got another seizure, in Hong Kong. It was 3,900 kg. The tusks were found when officials x-rayed a container from Cameroon. We analysed the tusks and the pieces and found that they were all from elephants in southern Gabon and maybe a bit of the southern part of the Republic of Congo. Everyone thought the poachers were a bunch of little guys operating all over. That's not what seems to be happening here. This is highly organized.
Q. Has it always been this way?
A. Before 1989 there was a period of massive killing of elephants. The population went from 1.3 million to 600,000 in 10 years. That comes out to about 7% annual mortality. It was so bad that CITES — the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna — banned the ivory trade, and the ban stopped poaching across the whole continent. It was probably the most effective international wildlife legislation in history.
The legislation was so effective that by 1993, western countries withdrew a lot of their aid for law enforcement. Meanwhile, people started to log the forests of central Africa, which created unprecedented access to its forest elephants, which are almost a different species and have desirable harder ivory with a pinkish hue. It was really easy for the poaching to get really bad really fast. Those elephants are getting creamed.
Q. Are things worse now than before 1989?
A. Between August 2005 and August 2006, 25,000 kilograms of ivory were seized. If you estimate that customs catches 10% of what goes through, we are talking almost 37,000 elephants. So now we are at 7.8% annual mortality, higher than the 7% pre-ban.
Q. What's driving the trade?
A. You've got a dramatic increase in the price of high-quality ivory, from US$200 a kilogram in 2004 to $850 now. In China and Japan, the rising middle class has created a tremendous new demand for ivory carvings and signature stamps — hankos. Plus, the CITES rules against illegal trade just apply between nations. Once you get the ivory into the destination country, there are no laws or no enforcement. So it is a formula for disaster.
There is heavy involvement of organized crime. There may also be a strong connection between the ivory trade and gun-runners.
Q. How does determining the origin of ivory through DNA help?
A. When you identify the place of origin you show where the poaching hotspots are and how these guys are actually operating. They seem to be focusing on an area and working it hard. It also forces these countries to take responsibility for the poaching going on inside their borders, because right now few of them do.
Q. How does it work?
A. The secret is to pulverize the ivory without heating it up, which denatures the DNA. We use a freezer mill. It submerges a tube containing a small piece of ivory and a magnet into liquid nitrogen. This freezes the ivory and makes it brittle. We rapidly switch the magnetic field back and forth, causing the magnet to act as a battering ram, smashing the ivory. It's fantastic. I got the idea from this marvellous Canadian dental forensics scientist named David Sweet.
We amplify and sequence the genes of interest in the standard way. The hardest part of the whole project is assembling the reference map of DNA from all over the continent. I am still working on that. Whenever I am at a meeting like this, I work the crowd to fill in any gaps we have in our map.
My genius collaborator Matthew Stephens, a professor of statistics at the University of Chicago, Illinois, developed a new statistical method to assign the ivory. Taking advantage of the fact that two populations close together are much more likely to share genes than are two farther apart, he could generate the probable gene frequencies for areas we don't have data for. That allowed us to ask "where in Africa did this tusk come from", as opposed to "which of our reference samples is this most like?"
Q. Have your studies made a difference?
A. In the Singapore seizure, practically nobody was prosecuted, including customs officials who stamped the shipment identifying the ivory as soapstone. They only prosecuted one guy in Singapore. There are so many wildlife officials and high-level government officials that are getting filthy rich on poaching. Organized crime can afford to bribe everyone.
Q. So what can be done?
A. We need a major infusion of law enforcement in Africa. What you are talking about is a bunch of Land Rovers, guns and ammunition and a little bit of a salary hike. We are not talking about a lot of money here. And legalized ivory trades aren't helping. We need to cool this market down.
Q. And if governments decide to cull certain elephant populations, what should they do with the ivory?
A. Burn it.
The tusk detective
Samuel Wasser is a conservation biologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, and an outspoken opponent of elephant poaching. He talks to Emma Marris about his genetic methods for tracing poached ivory.
Emma Marris
Q. Tell me about some of the ivory seizures you've worked on.
A. There was a seizure in 2002 in Singapore of 6,500 kilograms of ivory — 531 tusks, many of which were huge. The authorities knew that poachers were carrying tusks across Zambia and into Malawi. One day they got a tip it was on the move. They went on a truck and then travelled by ship to Singapore. Hong Kong authorities got to the dock just hours before they arrived. The strong smell suggested that at least some of the ivory was fresh.
The ivory was high quality and going to an infrastructure that could get it to wealthy buyers. This is not your small-time village poacher. Everyone thought the ivory had come from multiple locations. We showed it was all from Zambia.
In May 2006, we got another seizure, in Hong Kong. It was 3,900 kg. The tusks were found when officials x-rayed a container from Cameroon. We analysed the tusks and the pieces and found that they were all from elephants in southern Gabon and maybe a bit of the southern part of the Republic of Congo. Everyone thought the poachers were a bunch of little guys operating all over. That's not what seems to be happening here. This is highly organized.
Q. Has it always been this way?
A. Before 1989 there was a period of massive killing of elephants. The population went from 1.3 million to 600,000 in 10 years. That comes out to about 7% annual mortality. It was so bad that CITES — the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna — banned the ivory trade, and the ban stopped poaching across the whole continent. It was probably the most effective international wildlife legislation in history.
The legislation was so effective that by 1993, western countries withdrew a lot of their aid for law enforcement. Meanwhile, people started to log the forests of central Africa, which created unprecedented access to its forest elephants, which are almost a different species and have desirable harder ivory with a pinkish hue. It was really easy for the poaching to get really bad really fast. Those elephants are getting creamed.
Q. Are things worse now than before 1989?
A. Between August 2005 and August 2006, 25,000 kilograms of ivory were seized. If you estimate that customs catches 10% of what goes through, we are talking almost 37,000 elephants. So now we are at 7.8% annual mortality, higher than the 7% pre-ban.
Q. What's driving the trade?
A. You've got a dramatic increase in the price of high-quality ivory, from US$200 a kilogram in 2004 to $850 now. In China and Japan, the rising middle class has created a tremendous new demand for ivory carvings and signature stamps — hankos. Plus, the CITES rules against illegal trade just apply between nations. Once you get the ivory into the destination country, there are no laws or no enforcement. So it is a formula for disaster.
There is heavy involvement of organized crime. There may also be a strong connection between the ivory trade and gun-runners.
Q. How does determining the origin of ivory through DNA help?
A. When you identify the place of origin you show where the poaching hotspots are and how these guys are actually operating. They seem to be focusing on an area and working it hard. It also forces these countries to take responsibility for the poaching going on inside their borders, because right now few of them do.
Q. How does it work?
A. The secret is to pulverize the ivory without heating it up, which denatures the DNA. We use a freezer mill. It submerges a tube containing a small piece of ivory and a magnet into liquid nitrogen. This freezes the ivory and makes it brittle. We rapidly switch the magnetic field back and forth, causing the magnet to act as a battering ram, smashing the ivory. It's fantastic. I got the idea from this marvellous Canadian dental forensics scientist named David Sweet.
We amplify and sequence the genes of interest in the standard way. The hardest part of the whole project is assembling the reference map of DNA from all over the continent. I am still working on that. Whenever I am at a meeting like this, I work the crowd to fill in any gaps we have in our map.
My genius collaborator Matthew Stephens, a professor of statistics at the University of Chicago, Illinois, developed a new statistical method to assign the ivory. Taking advantage of the fact that two populations close together are much more likely to share genes than are two farther apart, he could generate the probable gene frequencies for areas we don't have data for. That allowed us to ask "where in Africa did this tusk come from", as opposed to "which of our reference samples is this most like?"
Q. Have your studies made a difference?
A. In the Singapore seizure, practically nobody was prosecuted, including customs officials who stamped the shipment identifying the ivory as soapstone. They only prosecuted one guy in Singapore. There are so many wildlife officials and high-level government officials that are getting filthy rich on poaching. Organized crime can afford to bribe everyone.
Q. So what can be done?
A. We need a major infusion of law enforcement in Africa. What you are talking about is a bunch of Land Rovers, guns and ammunition and a little bit of a salary hike. We are not talking about a lot of money here. And legalized ivory trades aren't helping. We need to cool this market down.
Q. And if governments decide to cull certain elephant populations, what should they do with the ivory?
A. Burn it.
Monday, July 02, 2007
More ele plunder in West Petauke, Zambia.
A report received from my field workers an hour ago - relayed to the Chairman of the Luembe Community Resource Board, is that a fresh elephant carccass was discovered yesterday on the Ilinda stream ( and they suggest that there are more dead ones to be discovered), the recent site of our uncovering of two poached impala in which the local ZAWA officials imprint resonates (www.zambiaconservation.blogspot.com). But hang on, enter, one, James Milanzi, the acting o/c Eastern Province, who is doing something about it. His troops are being deployed as I write this, and we are assisting, of course. Why is there this frenzy of killing? Look at the recent CITES agreement and at the dsienfrachisement of the rural poor from legally derived benefits from natural resources. Surely, a matter of ownership under an honest and capable trust structure suggests the way forward. Are the donors and Government listening?
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