Zambia Elephant Times

Ivory Poaching At Critical Levels: Elephants On Path To Extinction By 2020?

2008-08-03T15:17:00.000+02:00

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080731140219.htm

Is the prohibition of trade saving wildlife, or causing it to become extinct...

2008-03-08T13:34:00.000+02:00

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10807694

ZAWA poaching gang caught red-handed; evidence eaten

2008-02-14T02:30:00.000+02:00

Machine-gun wielding elephant poaching gang invades Zambian chiefdom…

2007-11-01T01:27:00.000+02:00

In an all to common occurrence, a large gang of poachers, obviously forewarned, have taken advantage of the withdrawal for training of eight out of twelve Zambia Wildlife Authority (ZAWA) and village scouts from the Nyalugwe chiefdom in Zambia’s southern Luangwa Valley, to poach elephant, buffalo and hippo. Ominously, one of a number of camouflaged men carried a light machine gun and a belt of ammunition across his shoulders. Are rogue elements of the army involved here?

On 13 October, a Nyalugwe villager, Yesai Lungu, phoned Peter Nyalugwe to report that three elephant had been killed, one falling dead in the Chilinga reserve, the other on the privately owned Piamanzi ranch, the other in the West Petauke hunting block – the latter’s tusks being removed by the poachers. Villagers report widespread killing of elephant with only a few of the carcasses being found.

On 18 October, Peter Nyalugwe visited his country, interviewed a fisherman, Langizulu, who reported coming on the machine-gun toting gang of poachers – none of whom he recognized, while he was a kilometer or so from the carcass of a bull elephant busily being stripped by villagers under the supervision of Chief Nyalugwe. The poachers were obviously wary of trying to recover the ivory while the chief was there. In the Chilinga reserve, Peter came on a patrol of ZAWA, which included the notorious Joseph Mbo, whom I had caught hunting earlier this year and who has merely been transferred for his many sins from his former camp, Kalansha, to Nyimba. Present also were Frank Mwaza, Chitambo, and Perry Daka. They had been sent by the regional headquarters at Mfuwe - from their base at Nyimba, as a result of a report Peter had sent through to me, and which I had forwarded. They stayed one week and left; another patrol from Mfuwe itself reportedly patrolled for a period in the Nyalugwe portion of the West Petauke hunting block. Of course, these patrols rarely stay for longer than a week, so the area remains protected by one ZAWA officer at Kasolo camp, one village scout and one ZAWA officer at Mulilanama camp, and in the remaining camp called Fundu, one ZAWA officer and 2 village scouts. What this means is that the area has been left to the poachers for a period of three months while eight of the twelve ‘protectors’ are given a refresher course many miles away. As this is a Norwegian Aid (NORAD) supported project, one wonders at the thinking.

And where, in the absence of ownership rights to wildlife being transferred to the community under a chiefdom trust arrangement, is all this to end? There is just not enough money coming in from hunting concessions to protect wildlife, even were it not shared with ZAWA and the community. Our Luembe Conservancy Trust in the chiefdom north of Nyalugwe, rather than receiving the support of ZAWA and the current UNDP/GEF ’Reclassification of Protected Areas Project’ is left to its own devices, the hope being that it will simply wither and die away, for we are viewed as being people inciting villagers against the Government. Although an assessment of the NORAD project: ‘Focus on environment in NORAD and decentralised management of natural resources in rural development - a project case from Zambia” stated: “The most exiting finding from a political science point of view was the role of the community-programme in empowering the local people and the democratic effects this has.” http://wo.uio.no/as/WebObjects/theses.woa/wa/these?WORKID=9450

It seems that if you are a donor project going about community empowerment it is fine, but if you are an investor/advocacy conglomerate, you are considered to be inciting the community against Government, even a threat to state security.

Elephant anarchy descends on Nyalugwe chiefdom

2007-10-15T00:29:00.000+02:00

Peter Nyalugwe of the Nyalugwe Chiefdom in eastern Zambia reports as follows:

"The incident of elephants killing last week on unknown date but this month of October 2007. A group of 45 poachers invaded the Nyalugwe hunting block and open area. A report reached me that three elephants were shot from afar in the open area and died near the Chilinga villages where they were found dead

The community rushed to skin out the meat where the three carcasses were. While they were skinning a mob of poachers came and asked about the village scout, Abiya Daka, his whereabouts. Instead the one they were talking to was the same scout. When they left one of the poachers knew him and came back to him but they found him gone into hiding. Abiya Daka was left out for the Nyamaluma training course. The rest of the village scouts are at Nyamaluma in Mfuwe for training.

Meanwhile all the villagers have meat in their homes. The cause of this trouble of poaching is due to hiked hunting licenses and the absence of the village scouts who were taken away for training. The same mob is planning to burn the Kasolo Wildlife Camp which is 5 km away from the Chief's palace.

However investigations must take place immediately and about the ivories we don't know the one who got them.

Zambia Wildlife Official pays labourers with ele meat...

2007-09-01T11:31:00.001+02:00

This documents is signed by 27 villagers who worked for the Luembe based Wildlife Police Officer cum poacher and thief, Benson Mwale, in exchange for the elephant meat he had poached. He, and other fellow ZAWA poachers, have not been suspended, let alone prosecuted.

15 February 2008
Lakwisha says that Zambians who live on less than a dollar a day need to eat elephant meat, therefore the end justifies the means i.e. killing elephant. So, to the bushfolk's everyday burden of survival with very slender support services (primary health-care, basic education, clean water...) must be added that of being a criminal. But these are Zambian civil servants who are poaching, not villagers; and applications by the community for harvesting rights of game such as impala - despite it being their right under the Wildlife Act of 1998, have been refused. Where to now Lakwisha?

Nyalugwe village scout found with tusks...

2007-08-25T08:28:00.000+02:00

On 15 August 07, a Nyalugwe Community Resource Board village scout, Davy Zulu, paid for and controlled by the Zambia Wildlife Authority, but from hunting concession fee money obtained from Mbeza Safaris, was found in possession of a pair of tusks. He is shortly to appear in the Nyimba Magistrate's Court. Japha Mbewe, the Mbeza and Luembe Trust legal officer, is investigating.

Latest
On 22 August 2006, Zulu and his wife appeared in the Magistrates Court in Nyimba and were each sentenced to five years in prison. She apparently has a young child. Village scouts and their families are local people; that they are involved in such activities is the direct responsibility of their Zambia Wildlife Police Officer (ZAWA WPO) supervisors, one of whom is always placed in a village scout encampment. None of them, though most are involved in the poaching racket being run by the ZAWA office in Nyimba, has so far been brought to court, let alone sentenced. And word has it that the organizer of much of this, the notorious Goodson Chibeka - officer in charge at Nyimba, is now merely being transferred to Mfuwe. A disgrace, but very much a local tradition when remembering that some years ago, the then officer in charge was found with a lot of ivory and merely transferred to the provincial ZAWA HQ at Mfuwe.

A follow up on the Nyalugwe poaching syndicate...

2007-08-25T08:08:00.000+02:00

24 August, 07
by
Peter Nyalugwe
Mbeza Safaris Liaison Officer

Ten days ago a report was made to the MD of Mbeza Safaris, Mr Ian Manning, by the owners of the game ranch in Nyalugwe on the Nyimba/Luangwa rivers, that across the river, in the West Petauke Hunting Block, many rounds were fired. They said that law and order had broken down. Mr Manning said, that he had paid out money for anti-poaching (paying $21, 000 for this in 2005), but that it was the 12 village scouts and three ZAWA Wildlife Police Officers – who his company paid concession fees to support, which were directed by Wildlife Act of 1998 to protect the wildlife resource so that safari hunting could be done.

Mr Manning then instructed me to go to Nyalugwe and to report on the situation.

19 August, 07
I met the Community Resource Board (CRB) Chairperson for Nyalugwe and he briefed me how the CRB is being disorganized. If he calls a meetings the members do not gather as they were elected due to financial and food problems for them to attend.
a) I asked him what’s the way forward? He said he suspected that my absence as Secretary of the CRB left a gap for I worked with the previous CRB nicely and able to submit returns to South Luangwa Management Unit (SLAMU) and Chilanga (ZAWA HQ) head office respectively
b) No bank statement has been received from the CRB account in Petauke.
c) The analysis book is with the Community Liaison Officer (Nkhoma) in Nyimba for auditing
d) The Nyalugwe village scouts have not been paid since the last payment in march 2007
e) The community also complains over the hiked prices of the citizens game license hunting fees for 2007 which they say will now encourage them to poach. A poor villager can he afford to buy the animals. We doubt.

20 August, 07
Met the camp-in-charge, Whyson Daka. I reported about the many shots which had been heard in the hunting block. Daka mentioned that the shootings were the combined force of the ZAWA Wildlife Police Officers (WPOs) to chase away the elephants from crop raiding in the GMA residents fields. I asked him further about who were patrolling and he had no answer. For ammunitions I asked him how are issued at the camp. He said there is a field data form which they fill in when going out for patrols and where they have used them on what purpose and finally for the returns space. These ammunitions are being kept by the camp-in-charge. This was the answer given by the camp-in-charge. Ths same Daka left for Nyimba to hand over an old man called Zuwua Ibale from Fundo village, caught with snares and game meat on the Lunsefwa river. He had been beaten and had a very swollen eye.

21 August, 07
Met one of the village scouts at Kasolo camp and told me about a suspect who was caught with an illegal muzzle loader at Nyalugwe village hanging in his verandah. The man is Yesaya Lungu who appeared in court last Friday 17, 2007. I haven’t heard the ruling. ZAWA also within the same week on 19 August, caught three men selling game meat on the Great East road at Saulo village.

The quota setting meeting on 26 July 07 heard complaints that the monitoring officers (village scouts) sent by ZAWA to check on hunters coming to hunt in Nyalugwe from other parts of Zambia (urban dwellers) were corrupting these same officers – and shooting more animals than on license. As most village scouts cannot read or write they cannot do the job very well.

The negative point of it is they have the immunity on the ZAWA Wildlife Act No 12 of 1998 section 118 part xiii which whatever thy can practice will be protected. I don’t know what proper evidence can we take.

Peter Nyalugwe
Lusaka
24 August, 07.

COMMENTS OF IAN MANNING
Clearly Daka was aware that ZAWA personnel and CRB scouts were engaged in their normal activity of killing animals and preparing it for collection by the Nyimba ZAWA office. Why did he not go and investigate the presence of such a large gang in the area? Because they were his own staff. And once again village scouts are unpaid and therefore help themselves under the eager ZAWA meat syndicate. And what of the rural poor? Well they now have increased hunting license fees, are refused game harvesting rights as is allowed under the Wildlife Act of 1998, are assaulted and hauled off to a prison unfit for decent people who simply are trying to survive, and have to stand by and watch while the Government officials kill the very animals living on their own traditional land, animals they are supposed to protect. And what can Mbeza do, the company whom Chief Nyalugwe, with the help of Asian businessmen, tried to have removed from his area simply because it had seen to it that no more customary land was stolen from the community and sold off for 99 years. Not much. Jealousy is poison.

JAMES MILANZU, I/C SLAMU RESPONDS
Hi,
Thanks for the information. ZAWA-SLAMU is equally concerned of these activities. For own information we are now sending patrols from Mfuwe and combine with scouts from there. We also had a combined team from Mfuwe and Lower Zambezi where several arrests have been made. The Saulo village arrests were from Mfuwe. It is costly but we have a mandate to protect wildlife in that area. We are making several changes in leadership like transfering those incharge, some WPOs from Mfuwe and increased investigative operations from Mfuwe and Chilanga. A lot of information has been gathered and we will continue to help until the sector is able to stand on its own again.

On salaries we have sent names of all VS for their salaries for previous months and the remaining months in the year.

Again thanks for the info.

James

Zambia poaching mayhem unabated...

2007-08-16T07:53:00.000+02:00

A few days ago, a visitor to the Nyalugwe Open Area, on a number of occasions heard numerous shots being fired across the Luangwa river in the Nyalugwe section of the West Petauke Game Management Area. It is presumed that this is the work of the ZAWA Wildlife Police Officers and the Nyalugwe Community Resource Board village scouts, who, together with other units working within the Nyimba sector, receive unlimited amounts of ammunition from the officer in charge, the notorious Mr Chibeka, who later drives in with a ZAWA vehicle to collect the meat. Peter Nyalugwe has gone to investigate.

And in Luembe, ZAWA and Luembe village scouts caught poaching by me, continue in their posts.

In Rufunsa GMA, south of West Petauke GMA, ten ZAWA Police Officers and village scouts have this year been suspended for poaching.

Zambia's wildlife is being decimated by the very people employed to protect it.

ELEPHANT HUNTING…

2007-08-12T09:59:00.001+02:00

2 NOVEMBER 2006

I respond to Eugene Lapointe’s article in BBC News weekly Green Room where the former head of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) makes the case for hunting and why it can be a part of wildlife management policies, posing the question: “Are bans on hunting and trade the best way to conserve species?”

In so far as trade bans are concerned, Lapointe makes a general point, which requires further elucidation. In general prohibitions don’t work, either because the prohibitors are embarked on some crusade without moral or practical merit, or because those being so prohibited from having access to something or other are convinced of their right to the prohibited entity, or are without moral scruple – or both. In the case of the ivory trade, those without scruple are the traders of the Far Eastern nations who require ivory for an ever growing market and who go to any lengths to obtain it. Therefore, if you allow the trade in ivory they will access what is available – and more by illegal means in order to satisfy demand, and if not available they will simply get hold of it by any means. There will therefore always exist a drive to satisfy demand, which means obtaining more than what is legally available; and if that legal harvest is 100 tons or no tons, the effect will be the same. Hunting of elephant, provided it is sustainable, and provided it does not damage your photo-tourism industry, is an excellent way to conserve the species, but by allowing the trade in ivory, this laudable goal is made impossible.

Poor African countries have many pressing demands on public money - with conservation standing in the queue. But the needs of the African ‘budget’ goes way beyond that, concentrating as it does on the ‘eternal scramble for Africa’ harvesting of donors so as to cover the shortfall for conservation, for education, for other development needs, but also for prestige projects having little to do with achieving the Millenium Development Goals.

It would be ideal were African conservation self-supporting, but then the conservation department, like the traffic department, the ministry of immigration, and all the rest, becomes yet another cash cow growing an ever over-centralized bureaucracy of non civil servants fattening on their slumbers and establishing yet another taxation tier set to drive investors dilly.

Eugene says that southern Africa countries have followed the philosophy of sustainable use with elephant hunting, and that they do not shoot breeding animals; this is simply not true of them all. In Zambia, despite the advisory note to the contrary from the cross-sectoral Natural Resources Consultative Forum (of which the safari hunting fraternity is a member) which cited the total lack of supporting scientific evidence as the reason for not allowing hunting, the Zambia Government, through its statutory body, the Zambia Wildlife Authority (ZAWA), issued 20 bull elephant to safari operators – supposedly crop raiders - or so they told CITES. The animals - shot by those operators with little regard for conservation, were certainly breeding animals, but they were also the icons supporting the tourism industry, supposedly the panacea, along with agriculture, for rescuing us from our poverty.

Sport hunting produces the only income in many areas it is true, so you could call it significant, but it is not enough to offer the necessary incentive to local people to stop supplying meat for the bushmeat trade and denuding their own lands of something which actually should belong to them but which has been expropriated by central government. Over the last five years, ZAWA’s income has been sourced as follows: hunting 23%; donor grants 44%; National Parks 26%; and other, unspecified income 7%. However, very little of this is invested in conservation activities with between 7 – 18% only going on field operations. What investment there is comes from the private sector and the donors. In our hunting area, our hunting quota allows for maximum gross earnings of $50 per km2 – given what we spend on land use plans, training, anti-poaching support and food security studies. ZAWA earn $10 km2 from hunting, expending $3 km2 on scouts and retaining $7 km2 for their HQ costs. The Community Resource Board, which represents the community and has the unenviable unpaid task of paying village scouts, receive $5 km2 from ZAWA as their share of hunting but have costs of $6.26 km2 for their scouts alone, though they are supposed to spend income on community projects and the like; and over the last four years – including the purchase of the hunting company, we have invested $200 km2 – an amount we actually require annually if the biodiversity and the people are to prosper. But where is it to come from?

Eugene argues that because Kenya has banned hunting and the sale of ivory, that poaching is encouraged. Zambia’s experience does not bear this out. As we speak elephant and hippo continue to be poached and our good Zambian poachers are doing the same in Zimbabwe, and doubtless in Angola where CITES is unknown and ivory sold without hindrance. While safari hunting was on the go in Zambia, between 1994 and 2002, 123.5 tons of illegal ivory went out from here via Lilongwe in Malawi to the Far East (confirmed by the Malawian Anti-Corruption Commission) – most of it probably coming from our Luangwa Valley.

It is true that elephant do wreak havoc in some areas on people, and we do need to provide income and supports to offset this, but having elephant hunted has little effect on this. We have always had animal depredations, and it will continue, hunting or no, for we have failed to deal with the problem of land tenure and wildlife ownership, and Government refuses to compensate villagers, even though under English common law – on which our law is based, and under customary law, it is allowed. And we suffer very little from elephant damage to natural vegetation where as a keystone species elephant can have an extremely beneficial effect on the ecology, something we are trying to expand upon with the development of transfrontier conservation areas.

We do need to foster sustainable use but much of its failure to take hold is not due to the protectionists abroad but due to African governments themselves being unwilling to devolve power to their rural people, to decentralize – in this being supported by the donors, paradoxically following the system they inherited at independence. And Kenya, protectionist it may be, today stands out for its vigorous programme of game conservancies, something here we are trying to do but receiving no encouragement from Government, even though statutory and customary law is in place to support it.

Zambia Wildlife Authority officers implicated in poaching

2007-08-12T09:38:00.000+02:00

18 November,06

On Sunday 12 November 06, a matriarchal herd of elephant was attacked in Zambia’s Luangwa Valley by an AK47 wielding poacher, accompanied by seven unarmed meat carriers; an adult female and a juvenile killed - possibly another killed, and one seen crossing the river with blood on its side. Twenty-three shots were heard at the nearby Malone safari camp – closed for the rainy season, between 8.00 and 11.00 a.m.. Later that afternoon, at 4.00 p.m. two Wildlife Police Officers of the Zambia Wildlife Authority appeared at Malone and requested transport from the camp-in-charge, David Chileka – also a police reservist, and were driven inland for some 30 km to where four other officers were waiting. Nearby lay two elephant carcasses, their tusks removed and much of their flesh, numerous pieces of clothing, bedding, food and pots lying nearby, evidence of the gang. Seeing some vultures in trees in the distance, Chileka was told that there was probably another dead elephant there. No attempt was made to verify this.

The six scouts, all armed similarly with AK47’s, stated that the camp in-charge, Benson Mwale, had heard shots at their nearby camp, Ndevu, had then sent someone on foot to another camp, Kalansha – some 15 km away, for reinforcements, then much later in the day, after guards from Kalansha had arrived on foot, the armed group of six walked in the direction of the shots, eventually coming on the gang of eight, who had then run away. Firing a few shots in the air, and showing no inclination to go in pursuit, the officers then settled down to cut off as much meat as possible, the officers-in-charge of the two anti-poaching camps, Mbo and Mwale, walking to the Malone camp to request transport. A full load of meat was then delivered to the river crossing point at the nearby Ndevu game camp (where early that morning a fishermen, Gandi, had seen the gang collecting water), the officers explaining that local villagers could not have the meat as it was needed in the nearby town of Nyimba, and that they were waiting for their boss. When the Nyimba officer- in-charge of ZAWA, a Mr Chibeka, came, he reportedly recovered one bag of meat, another nine having disappeared.

On Tuesday, 14 November, the two camp officers-in-charge were seen on the Ndevu-Nyimba road, both drunk, and later, on Thursday 16th seen drinking at 9.00 a.m. in a nearby village.

Two weeks earlier an elephant had been killed in the same area and the ivory removed. Two other cases of poaching, one of a buffalo by a village scout, another of an ex-scout found in full uniform and hunting a hippo with a muzzle loader, unaccompanied by a monitoring scout as is required, is being investigated.

These disturbing events, given that in 2005 ZAWA village scouts had been caught poaching a buffalo, hippo and bushbuck, swopping some of the meat for village beer, suggest the collusion of ZAWA and village scouts in a meat and ivory poaching ring. Investigations are currently underway by the Chairman of the Community Resource Board, Mr Axon Lungu.

Conservationists continue to be alarmed at the well organized bushmeat and ivory trade in Zambia, it being recently revealed by the Malawi Anti-Corruption Commission that 23 tons of ivory had passed through Lilongwe on its way to the Far East over an eight year period. No arrests have been made.

Out there in Old Africa...

2007-08-12T09:35:00.000+02:00

The letter from the Luembe Community Resource Board of Nyimba district , Zambia, was quite straightforward. They needed funds to pay some volunteer teachers.
“As a Board, we strongly request for this help because we fell and accept that the government has failed to send teachers there. On this point , we ask you to to come to the aid of M’Shalira Basic School community found in the Game Management Area No. 17 to assist”.

As the rains threatened, and accompanied by Gordon Mace - a supposed agent based in Johannesburg, as well as the Chairman of the Board, Axon Lungu, we drove the six hours or so to my camp on the Luangwa river from the capital Lusaka, first dropping off Axon at his family village some 12 km away. The river was low, my pontoon of a dozen 44 gallon drums and angle iron stranded, so we crossed in the banana boat, skirting a hippo on the way. That evening, lightning played continuously on the horizon. We would have to hurry.

In the morning, we made ready for the short trip to M’Shalira school, first being briefed by my staff and the village scout, Emmanuel (only there as I had needed his protective help for some Belgian volunteers I had brought out to carry out a food security assessment), on the poaching incident some four days previously where a gang had killed two elephant – possibly another, and had wounded two, all from the same matriarchal group. My suspicions were aroused, for government wildlife police officers and the village scouts working under them, though paid by the Board from funds generated by our company, Mbeza Safaris, had appeared at the camp and asked for transport to collect the meat.

An hour after leaving Malone camp, not another person or hut to be seen, we drew up to the maize grinding mill which my sons had repaired two months ago, deposited diesel for the engine, and cement for the laying of a concrete slab, being watched by the friendly villagers from a village unchanged from that of their forefathers. And when one of my men emptied a sack of empty tins and bottles I had rescued from our Malone camp garbage hole, they rushed forward to claim them. Such are the treasures of a people forgotten by the world.

We then drove the short distance up to M’Shalira Basic school: and basic it is. Close to the road, I found the headmaster, Mr Daka, resting in his grass and pole Chitenje, the crumbling and cracked staff quarters standing close-by. We drove up to the school: six classrooms of mud brick and mud floors - one new classroom built of grass walls had been added on, and signs of flooding all around. Children beavered away inside at arithmetic, unsupervised, but as quiet as the surrounding bush.
“My only teacher is away in Petauke to get his pay. We have to go every month to collect it and it takes a week. As you see I am the only one here now, ” said Daka.
“When last were you visited by someone from the Department of Education?”
“Oh, they never come here. They can’t drive. You can see.”
“And the elephant, they give us a hard life here”, he said, waving towards some mangled pawpaw trees nearby.”

I thought of how an elephant can eat 4% of his body weight in a night of garden raiding.

Later I interviewed three volunteer teachers, one a member of the CRB whom I knew, the other the Village Area Group Chairman, part of the group of six with whom I was developing a landuse plan for the 1 million acre area. We settled on K250 000 each per month, the same sum I paid to keep the village scouts employed, unpaid by Government for seven months: $50 each a month; it did not sound much but it would feed them and their families; the villagers after all earned about $.30 cents a day – if that.

Daka showed me the book store-room, which seemed well stocked. Picking up a few work books, mud fell from between the pages. The termites were at work. Looking up at the dividing wall I could see that the bricks would soon fall onto the books.

On the way back to the camp we saw a group in the distance, obviously out hunting. One of them was in the green uniform of a village scout, but it turns out that he had resigned a month ago. He is hunting with a muzzle loader for a hippo, and as required, has no monitoring scout to see that he kills and marks the animal off on his resident hunting permit. We take his name and details which I will pass on to Axon. Later I hear of another village scout who has shot a buffalo legally but had not marked it off, therefore facing a poaching charge. And word was that the Zambia Wildlife Authority had issued four buffalo to residents, when last year they had agreed not to do so, given their decimation by the bushmeat trade.

That night the full loom of the rains rents our world asunder, and the following morning, once across the river, we only extricate ourselves with the help of my cheerful gang who take it in turns to look after our camp during the rains. In the nearest line of villages we see a group of men gathered under the eaves of a hut, drinking; there among them are the two ZAWA officers in charge of the game camps. Meat for beer. Cheers.

Zambia Wildlife Authority crime syndicate being investigated...

2007-08-05T01:08:00.000+02:00

News from Luembe, Nyimba district, is that Zambia Wildlife Authority officers from the Eastern Province headquarters at Mfuwe are currently in the area investigating the crime syndicate being operated by local ZAWA officers. This syndicate issues ammunition to ZAWA scouts and village scouts to poach animals for meat, and elephant and hippo for their ivory. As this syndicate has been in operation for many years it would be optimistic to hope for people being investigated, charged and imprisoned. However, there is little question that as a result of our work with the community over the last four years they now have some idea of their rights and obligations for the care of their land and its resources, and are now more determined to deal with outsiders stealing their resources, especially government officials.

The Zambia Office of the President investigates elephant poaching in Nyimba district...

2007-07-24T03:32:00.000+02:00

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.

Lebanese in Zambia seized for unlawful possession of elephant tusks

2007-07-22T02:40:00.000+02:00

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

Zambia Ivory cache owners sentenced to 5 years hard labour...

2007-07-18T04:18:00.000+02:00

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.

The killing of another elephant in West Petuake GMA... by Japha Mbewe

2007-07-11T00:13:00.000+02:00

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.

Encouraging news from Zambia for the elephant poaching war...

2007-07-06T11:13:00.000+02:00

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

The tusk detective...by Emma Marris

2007-07-06T11:10:00.000+02:00

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.

More ele plunder in West Petauke, Zambia.

2007-07-02T01:44:00.000+02:00

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?

Nylaugwe game scouts caught poachingin the Lower Zambezi National Park...

2007-06-29T04:07:00.000+02:00

The Nyalugwe Community Resource Board reports that some of their scouts were recently apprehended poaching in the Zambezi National Park by ZAWA Wildlife Police Officers . When questoned they reportedly said they had been sent there to obtain meat by the ZAWA Sector i/c, Collins Chibeka, based in Nyimba. Recently Chibeka organized a poaching foray by ZAWA WPOs and village scouts in the West Petauke GMA (see www.zambiaeletimes.blogspot.com). He and other ZAWA WPOs and Luembe village scouts are being investigated for their part in the killing of elephant and the removal of meat and ivory.

Ivory cache found in Nyimba, Zambia.

2007-06-29T04:01:00.000+02:00

Nyimba Police informed me on 24 June that a few days previously, the Zambia Wildlife Investigations Unit had raided the house belonging to the former FDD member of Parliament for Nyimba, Mr Grey, and had confiscated 24 elephant tusks. A woman who had been trying to sell the tusks to a ZAWA officer, and who had recieved a downpayment of 7 million kwacha, was being held in custody. Mr Grey let it be known that another 1 ton of ivory was available for sale.

PR man for Zambia Ministry of Tourism issues statement of dubious ecological clarity...

2007-06-28T07:05:00.000+02:00

Five Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries have struck a nine-year waiver deal for a one-off sale of ivory, ZANIS reported on Sunday. This follows successful negotiations for the sale of ivory at the just ended 14th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in the Hague, Netherlands. Bwalya Nondo, spokesman for Zambia's Ministry of Tourism, Environment and Natural Resources, said in a statement that the decision to sell ivory was in view of the ecological need to strike a balance between animal conservation and protection of the environment. "Zambia's desire to offload ivory on the market is keeping with the need not to threaten the carrying capacity of the environment against a growing population of elephants," he said. He said international ivory trade was an important source of revenue to support conservation and promotion of rural livelihood. He explained that Zambia and other SADC countries where elephant populations have already run beyond the CITES qualification for conditional international ivory trade pressed hard to amend the current trade ban in endangered animals. Other SADC countries that joined Zambia in negotiating for the sale of ivory are Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe. Zambia became a signatory to CITES in 1980.

Source: Xinhua

The CITES ivory quid pro quo...I.P.A. Manning

2007-06-17T06:43:00.000+02:00

While it is good news that official ivory trading was banned at CITES COP 14 for nine years, to hear that the quid pro quo for this was to allow Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia and South Africa to sell all their ivory registered before 31 January of this year, an amount unknown to CITES, is not good news; for it might, as was suggested at COP 14, be double the 70 tons which these countries had first applied to export. No one can control and regulate the ivory business in Japan and the flow of illegal ivory will join the legal. I predict that our hippo and elephant populations will, in some areas, now face eradication in the short term. From the field in Zambia, I can report a massive assault on our elephant and hippo; and elephant sport hunting of 20 bulls a year is allowed here, recently accounting for a 72 pounder, an animal of massive value to our tourist industry. Government intend increasing this number, as well as allowing the annual 150 or so animals shot on crop protection to be taken instead by sport hunters. All efforts to stop this have failed.

The only way we are going to see matters improve is if conservation and development money goes directly to villagers who share the elephant range. In some of these areas are trusts and associations which can care for the funds and see that it is not stolen. We need to support village schools, clinics and conservation agriculture as a start to encourage villagers to the view that destroying their wildlife resources will only make them poorer and more dependent on food aid. We need to make a direct connection between the conservation of elephant and hippo and development assistance. We need to prosecute the poachers. We need villagers to take responsibility for their land and natural resources.

Inquiries on conservation trusts, which are responsibly managed, may be addressed to gamefields@zamnet.zm

A Trojan Horse...

2007-06-16T05:18:00.000+02:00

Happy Faces all around the Conference Center
The International Fund for Animal Welfare's Lynn Levine is on the ground at CITES in the Hague...she filed this story about the situation in committee with elephants yesterday...
June 14 - E-Day

At the end of the day yesterday, the African elephant range states met once again to try and hammer out an agreement. Later in the evening, a representative from Chad flew in and deliberations continued well into the night (some have heard up until the morning). From these meetings, a new proposal, jointly submitted by Chad and Zambia (!) incorporating a significant amount of the philosophy of the pro-conservation range states, emerged. The accord calls for a nine-year suspension of all trade in ivory. It also states that there will be no discussions on ivory trade until the nine-year period has ended. Another element that proponents of the original Kenya and Mali proposal were pushing for was cross-border cooperation among all range states plus an African Elephant Action Plan. The concession for gaining this suspension was the release of additional stockpiles from South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Botswana, but only ivory which was already part of the officially registered government stockpile by January 31, 2007. The quantities are somewhat unclear: several African delegates have stated that these additional stockpiles total around 70 tonnes, but the Secretariat announced in its press conference earlier today that it was more than double. Such a higher number than expecting could be worrying, but everyone is still feeling positive that 1) all four of these countries wanting to dump their stockpiles must pass CITES scrutiny before the clock starts ticking on the nine years, so the resting period could actually be much more than just the stated nine years and 2) this is a great day for both the elephants and the African countries that support conservation efforts on their behalf.

Everyone here is not surprisingly, exhausted. Still, we're off to celebrate!

Lynn

AT LAST; GOOD NEWS OUT OF AFRICA!

2007-06-15T07:30:00.000+02:00

GLOBAL IVORY TRADE SUSPENSION APPROVED

IS THE FUTURE SECURE FOR AFRICA’S BELEAGURED PACHYDERMS?

THE HAGUE, The Netherlands, June 14, 2007 --/WORLD-WIRE/-- Government delegates today approved a compromise document to deal with the highly contentious continent-wide debate over the future of elephant conservation and the international sale of elephant ivory. After two weeks of intense deliberations, closed-door meetings, and Ministerial interventions, Parties accepted a plan to allow sale of current ivory stockpiles from Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe, while instituting a moratorium on further ivory trade for a period not less than nine years following the sale.

"The message must be heard across the planet today—by ivory poachers and profiteers alike—that CITES decision-makers have tired of the divisive debate over elephant ivory," said Will Travers, CEO of the Born Free Foundation and Chairman of the Species Survival Network. "Although we’re surely disappointed that the controversial stockpile sales have been allowed, we are thrilled that the Parties listened to the dozens of African elephant Range States, united under Kenya’s and Mali’s strong leadership, and have finally agreed to an ivory trade moratorium."

The deal, struck in middle of the night Wednesday, opens a new chapter in the ongoing, decades-long ivory debate under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). The ivory trade ban, which achieved such significant improvements in the security of elephants in the early 1990's has been the subject of sustained, deliberate long-term erosion for the last decade. Travers, commenting on the discussions, said, "Negotiations have been protracted and relentless and, while both sides can claim success, the acid test will be the impact on Africa’s most fragile elephant populations."

Notwithstanding the efforts of various African Elephant Range State Dialogue Meetings to reach consensus, the debate thus far has divided Africa with a small number of the most highly developed African elephant Range States strongly arguing for relaxations in the trade ban, and a large number of under-resourced African elephant Range States with vulnerable elephant populations arguing for sensible continent-wide conservation programs.

Parties have broadly agreed since 1997 to maintain the global prohibition on a continuous legal ivory trade, yet have relented under significant pressure to allow limited sales from verified ivory stockpiles. Members of the Species Survival Network, however, expressed continued concern over these stockpile sales, as it is hard to say exactly what the cumulative impact of the approved trade has been and will be on elephants.

Mary Rice of the Environmental Investigation Agency asked, "Will the stockpile sales approved at this COP be a green light to the poaching community and organized crime, or will the resting period truly deliver to Africa’s elephants an era of stability and security and increased wildlife law enforcement?"

However, it remains unclear as to what the "resting period" will mean in reality over these nine years. The compromise document states there will be no consideration of proposals for trade from countries with elephant populations already on Appendix II of the Convention. This, therefore, only applies to Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe. SSN wonders whether this means that any of the other 30 or more African countries with elephants can continue to apply to have their population downlisted to Appendix II and submit ivory trade proposals.

"Sadly," Travers concluded, "I have a sinking feeling that we shall still be debating ivory trade proposals throughout the resting period—despite what I believe to be the intention of Parties that this should not be the case. However, we hope that the countries with elephants still on Appendix I will respect the spirit of the decision taken today by the Parties and resist the temptation to seek ivory trade."

The SSN and its members nevertheless will continue their commitment to respond positively to the needs of African Elephant Range States and the elephant conservation challenges they face. It must be hoped that the resting period, so many have worked so hard to achieve, is full of elephant conservation action to the benefit of real conservation.

CONTACT:
Adam M. Roberts
Press Officer
Species Survival Network
In The Hague: 31-06-5213-6798
Globally: 1-202-445-3572

Organized crime fuels illegal ivory surge in Africa

2007-05-12T08:16:00.000+02:00

10 May 2007
Gland, Switzerland – Asian-run organized crime syndicates based in Africa are being implicated in the increase in illegal trade in elephant ivory, according to a new study by TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network of WWF and IUCN-The World Conservation Union.

The study identified the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cameroon and Nigeria as the three nations most heavily implicated as the sources of ivory in this illegal trade.

TRAFFIC’s report is based on an analysis of almost 12,400 ivory seizure cases from 82 countries recorded since 1989 in the Elephant Trade Information System (ETIS) — the world’s largest database of elephant product seizure records.

“With myriad conflict zones, Central Africa is currently hemorrhaging ivory, and these three countries are major conduits for trafficking illicit ivory from the region to international markets, particularly in Asia,” says Tom Milliken, Director of TRAFFIC’s Africa programme and the principal author of the study.

The illicit trade is directly correlated to the presence of large-scale, poorly regulated domestic ivory markets in parts of Africa and Asia. These markets are in direct contravention of decisions adopted by Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), aimed at prohibiting unregulated domestic sale of ivory.

“Four years ago, CITES drew up an action plan for tackling these domestic ivory markets, but so far, it appears to have had little impact,” says Milliken.

One exception is Ethiopia, which has effectively clamped down on its domestic ivory market by implementing the plan.

“Ethiopia has set a fine example for other countries to emulate,” says Dr Susan Lieberman, Director WWF’s Global Species Programme. “It shows what other countries could do if only they had the political will to do it.”

Markets in China create a high demand for illicit ivory, which arrives either directly or through ports such as Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan. Japan and Thailand are also important final destinations, whereas the Philippines mainly acts as a transit country linked to the major importers. Together, these seven countries and territories account for 62 per cent of the ivory recovered in the 49 largest seizure cases recorded by ETIS.

World-wide, the number of ivory seizures averages 92 cases a month, or three per day. Large-scale ivory seizures (of 1 tonne or more) have increased both in number and in size in recent years — from 17 between 1989 and 1997 to 32 between 1998 and 2006.

“This demonstrates greater sophistication, organization and finance behind the illegal movement of ever larger volumes of ivory from Africa to Asia,” says Dr Lieberman. “This is clearly a negative consequence of the ongoing globalization of African markets and economies.”

There has been significant improvement in law enforcement efforts and policing of local markets in mainland China, but ETIS records show that Chinese citizens have been arrested, detained or absconded in at least 126 significant ivory seizure cases in 22 African elephant range states.

“It is imperative that China reaches out to the growing Chinese communities in Africa with a clear message that involvement in illegal ivory trade will not be tolerated,” adds Milliken.

END NOTES:

• The establishment of ETIS was mandated under CITES in 1997 to monitor illicit trade in ivory and to assess whether any limited resumption of ivory trade would have negative impacts on elephant populations. Since its inception, ETIS has received funding from the UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the CITES Secretariat and the European Union.

• The analysis was carried out with the assistance of the Statistical Services Centre of the University of Reading, UK.

• The TRAFFIC report will be a formal agenda item at the upcoming meeting of CITES Parties in the Hague, Netherlands, from 3–15 June 2007.

• Between 1989 and 1997, all elephant populations were listed in Appendix I of CITES, which imposed a global ban on international commercial trade in elephant products. Subsequently, CITES Parties have twice approved limited, conditional one-off sales of ivory from four southern African countries (South Africa, Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe) whose elephant populations have been transferred to Appendix II.

For further information:
Tom Milliken, Director
TRAFFIC East/Southern Africa
Tel: +263 4 252 533
E-mail: milliken@wwfsarpo.org

Joanna Benn, Communications Manager
WWF Global Species Programme
Tel: +39 06 84497 212
E-mail: jbenn@wwfspecies.org

Zambia denies it has proposed sale of its ivory

2007-05-12T07:58:00.000+02:00

UPDATED: 09:44, May 12, 2007
Zambia Friday denied that it has submitted a proposal to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) for the sale of its ivory. Director general Lewis Saiwana of the Zambia Wildlife Authority (ZAWA) described as a misrepresentation the reports that it has submitted the proposal. He told a press briefing in Lusaka that his country has however supported the proposals by other countries in the region to benefit from the wildlife. He said Zambia's support is in line with the country's intention to offload its 28 tons of government-owned ivory stockpiles, which is in ZAWA custody.

Recently Namibia and Botswana submitted a proposal to the 14th conference of parties to CITES to take place next month requesting for an amendment to the conditional sales to include other activities that will benefit conservation and rural livelihood. Saiwana said Zambian government's intention has nothing to do with the killing of elephants for the sake of obtaining ivory for sale. However, the ZAWA official said Zambia would place a notification to sale its ivory during the next CITES conference to be held in 2010.

Currently the country has a stockpile of 28 tons of ivory owned by the government and which came from elephants that either died naturally or were killed after they killed people, he said. The ZAWA director general said Zambia has a big role to play as the regional representative and as a party to the CITES. Saiwana said wildlife resources when used sustainably can add economic value of the nation and to the conservation efforts of the same wildlife resources. He said those countries with good management strategies should be rewarded and not punished for the weakness of others. Zambia has a population of 25,000 elephants, Zimbabwe about 100, 000, Botswana 108,000 elephants. "Southern Africa should be rewarded for the healthy populations of the African elephants coupled with good conservation ethics hence the outcry for a chance to accord an opportunity to benefit from the resources they are conserving," he said.

Source: Xinhua

TRAFFIC RECOMMENDATIONS ON PROPOSALS TO AMEND THE APPENDICES TO CITES AT THE 14TH MEETING OF THE CONFERENCE OF THE PARTIES (COP14)

2007-05-10T08:00:00.000+02:00

CoP14 Prop. 4 [Botswana, Namibia] Maintenance of the populations of African Elephant Loxodonta africana of
Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe in Appendix, with the replacement of all existing annotations
with the following annotation:
“1) The establishment of annual export quotas for trade in raw ivory is determined in accordance with Resolution Conf.
10.10 (Rev. CoP12);
2) Trade in raw ivory is restricted to trading partners that have been certified by the Secretariat, in consultation with the
Standing Committee, to have sufficient national legislation and domestic trade controls to ensure that the imported ivory
will not be re-exported and will be managed in accordance with the requirements of Resolution Conf. 10.10 (Rev.
CoP12) concerning manufacturing and trade; and
3) The proceeds of the trade in raw ivory are to be used exclusively for elephant conservation and community
development programmes.”
1
Recommendation
This Proposal seeks to replace the current annotation governing trade in specimens of the four African Elephant
populations currently listed in Appendix II and seeks to establish annual commercial quotas for trade in raw ivory
subject to certain conditions. However, the Proposal fails to address the guidelines in Resolution Conf. 11.21 (Rev.
CoP13) which state: “for species transferred from Appendix I to II subject to an annotation that specifies the types of
specimen included in the Appendix, specimens that are not specifically included in the annotation shall be deemed to be
specimens of species included in Appendix I and the trade in them shall be regulated accordingly”. As a result, it
appears that the effect of this Proposal, if accepted, would be that other elephant specimens—including those currently
eligible for trade—would be regarded as specimens of species included in Appendix I. Amending the Proposal to
resolve this apparent impact would constitute an expansion of the scope, something disallowed under the CoP Rules of
Procedure.
It is premature to establish annual commercial export quotas for raw ivory, as called for in Resolution Conf. 10.10, since
the MIKE (Monitoring Illegal Killing of Elephants – one of the CITES elephant monitoring systems) baseline has not
yet been established. This was a key condition envisaged by the Parties when a one-off sale for specimens from three
elephant populations in Appendix II at CoP12 was agreed in 2002. Further analysis of ivory seizure data in ETIS
(Elephant Trade Information System – the other CITES monitoring system) will, for the third time, demonstrate an
increasing trend in illicit trade in ivory since the mid-1990s. This trend is most directly correlated to unregulated
domestic ivory markets and, so far, the CITES action plan to curtail such markets in Africa appears to have failed to
achieve any significant positive results so far.
REJECT
CoP14 Prop. 5 [Botswana] Amendment of the annotation to the population of African Elephant Loxodonta
africana of Botswana to read as follows:
“For the exclusive purpose of allowing in the case of the population of Botswana:
1) trade in hunting trophies for non-commercial purposes;
2) trade in hides for commercial purposes;
3) trade in leather goods for commercial purposes;
4) trade in live animals for commercial purposes to appropriate and acceptable destinations (and as determined by the
national legislation of the country of import);
5) trade annually in registered stocks of raw ivory (whole tusks and pieces of not more than 8 tonnes) of Botswana
origin owned by the Government of Botswana for commercial purposes only with trading partners that have been
certified by the Secretariat, in consultation with the Standing Committee, to have sufficient national legislation and
domestic trade controls to ensure that the imported ivory will not be re-exported and will be managed in accordance
with the requirements of Resolution Conf. 10.10 (Rev. CoP12) concerning manufacturing and trade; and
6) trade in registered stocks of raw ivory (whole tusks and pieces of not more than 40 tonnes) of Botswana origin owned
by the Government for commercial purposes on a one-off sale immediately after the adoption of the Proposal. Botswana
will trade only with trading partners that have been certified by the Secretariat, in consultation with the Standing
Committee, to have sufficient national legislation and domestic trade controls to ensure that the imported ivory will not
be re-exported and will be managed in accordance with the requirements of Resolution Conf. 10.10 (Rev. CoP12)
concerning manufacturing and trade.”
Recommendation
Botswana has at least a quarter of Africa’s elephant population, and an impressive conservation record. This Proposal
does not seek to change the current inclusion of Botswana’s elephant population in Appendix II with respect to hunting
trophies and trade in hides, but does seek to expand the scope of trade in leather goods and live animals to allow
transactions for commercial purposes, introduce annual quotas for raw ivory (in line with the requirements of
Resolution Conf. 10.10 (Rev. CoP12)) and provide for another one-off conditional sale of not more than 40 tonnes of
stockpiled raw ivory.
Trade in elephant hides and leather items is essentially a by-product of management action and sport hunting, and there
is no evidence to suggest that such trade drives the illegal killing of elephants. There is therefore no reason to oppose
trade in leather goods for commercial purposes. Trade in live animals is not a threat to the Botswana population, nor to
the species as a whole, but there are wider conservation concerns which need to be taken into consideration. Given
recent research developments on elephant genetics and taxonomy, including the possibility of recognizing two or more
elephant species in Africa, the IUCN/SSC African Elephant Specialist Group has agreed guidelines for governing the
translocation of elephants within their historical range to prevent genetic mixing and achieve long-term genetic
viability. Clarification is needed as to whether Botswana intends to follow such guidelines in future transactions of live
animals.
The establishment of annual export quotas for raw ivory is premature before a MIKE baseline is established and whilst
the ETIS analysis shows an escalating illegal ivory trade. However, an extension to the previously agreed conditional
2
one-off sale of a specified volume of recently stockpiled raw ivory from legal sources would not present a significant
risk provided such ivory was incorporated into the still-pending one-off sale agreed at CoP12.
ACCEPT, if the proponent:
- withdraws the request for an annual quota of raw ivory;
- specifies that any trade in live animals will be carried out with due regard to available international
conservation guidelines on translocation of African Elephants
- commits to undertaking the additional one-off sale of raw ivory in conjunction with the sale agreed at
CoP12.
CoP14 Prop. 6 [Kenya, Mali] Amendment of the annotation regarding the populations of African Elephant
Loxodonta africana of Botswana, Namibia and South Africa to:
a) include the following provision:
“No trade in raw or worked ivory shall be permitted for a period of 20 years except for:
1) raw ivory exported as hunting trophies for non-commercial purposes; and
2) ivory exported pursuant to the conditional sale of registered government-owned ivory stocks agreed at the 12th
meeting of the Conference of the Parties”; and
b) remove the following provision:
“6) trade in individually marked and certified ekipas incorporated in finished jewellery for non-commercial purposes for
Namibia.”
B. Amendment of the annotation regarding the population of Zimbabwe to read:
“For the exclusive purpose of allowing:
1) export of live animals to appropriate and acceptable destinations;
2) export of hides; and
3) export of leather goods for non-commercial purposes.
All other specimens shall be deemed to be specimens of species included in Appendix I and the trade in them shall be
regulated accordingly.
No trade in raw or worked ivory shall be permitted for a period of 20 years.
To ensure that where a) destinations for live animals are to be appropriate and acceptable and/or b) the purpose of the
import is to be non-commercial, export permits and re-export certificates may be issued only after the issuing
Management Authority has received, from the Management Authority of the State of import, a certification to the effect
that: in case a), in analogy to Article III, paragraph 3 (b) of the Convention, the holding facility has been reviewed by
the competent Scientific Authority, and the proposed recipient has been found to be suitably equipped to house and care
for the animals; and/or in case b), in analogy to Article III, paragraph 3 (c), the Management Authority is satisfied that
the specimens will not be used for primarily commercial purposes.”
Recommendation
This Proposal by Kenya and Mali aims to introduce a 20-year moratorium on trade in raw or worked ivory from the four
countries whose elephant populations are currently listed in Appendix II, with exceptions for the CoP12-approved oneoff
sale of raw ivory from Botswana, Namibia and South Africa (as well as hunting trophies from those three countries,
but not Zimbabwe). The Proposal also aims to repeal part of the current annotation which permits Namibia to export
ekipas (a type of traditional ivory carving) and Zimbabwe to export worked ivory products for non-commercial
purposes. The Convention permits any Party to propose amendments to the Appendices, enabling Parties to respond to
changing situations, hence TRAFFIC considers it neither appropriate nor legally tenable to limit the rights of Parties to
submit Proposals at subsequent meetings of the Conference of the Parties. Furthermore, the Proposal would result in
more stringent conditions being applied to elephant populations that do not meet the conditions for inclusion in
Appendix I than for those elephant populations that are presumably of higher conservation concern and listed in
Appendix I.
REJECT
CoP14 Prop. 7 [United Republic of Tanzania] Transfer of the population of African Elephant Loxodonta africana
of the United Republic of Tanzania from Appendix I to Appendix II with an annotation that reads as follows:
“For the exclusive purpose of allowing:
1) trade in registered stocks of raw ivory in whole tusks and pieces;
2) trade in live specimens for non-commercial purposes to appropriate and acceptable destinations;
and
3) trade in hunting trophies for non-commercial purposes.”
Outcome: Proposal has been withdrawn

SADC does not support ban on ivory trade

2007-05-02T07:54:00.000+02:00

Southern Africa: SADC Environment Ministers Plot Strategy

Mmegi/The Reporter (Gaborone)
April 30, 2007
Posted to the web May 1, 2007
Thato Chwaane

With environmental degradation threatening international peace, food security and over all economic development, southern African ministers met in a bid to thrash out remedial measures. Southern African Development Community (SADC) acting executive secretary Toao Caholo said in Gaborone that the region had no choice but to face the issues head on. Speaking at the first meeting of the SADC ad hoc committee of ministers responsible for the environment and sustainable development held at Boipuso Hall over the weekend, Caholo said there was pressure on the environment manifested in the form of land degradation, global, water contamination and other forms of environmental problems. He said 50 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the region was derived from primary products, which included fisheries, forestry, wildlife, mining and agriculture. He said these had sustained the region for generations but with an estimated 230 million people there had been a rise in demands and services. He said SADC proponents saw regional integration and cooperation on the environment and natural resources as part of a solution to the problems. He said they needed to collaborate in managing the environment and embrace the Transfrontier Conservation Areas (TFCAs) approach.

Delegates at the meeting unanimously urged SADC member states to support the proposals from the region on sustainable utilisation of elephants and products during the upcoming Convention on the International Trade In Endangered Species (CITES) meeting. They called on the region to oppose the counter proposal of Kenya and Mali for a 20-year ban on trade in live elephants and elephant products. They said member states should oppose the proposal by Kenya to repeal the annual hunting quotas for black rhinos allocated to Namibia and South Africa during the previous CITES meeting. Ministers also endorsed the SADC Elephant Conservation and Management Strategy as a tool for supporting the conservation and utilisation of elephant populations.

Ministers and officials attending the meeting came from Angola, host country Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The meeting was partly meant to monitor progress and provide direction on SADC's environmental and sustainable development issues.

Environmental Investigation Agency says...

2007-04-25T03:00:00.000+02:00

Campaign Update: 05 April 2007

THE ELEPHANT DEBATE AT COP14: THE NEED TO THINK BIG

As the elephant debate heats up for COP14 and the one-off ivory sales loom, levels of illegal ivory trade continue to rise, prompting new calls for the adoption of an holistic approach to elephant conservation and ivory trade

In June 2007, the 14th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP14) to CITES (Conference on the International Trade in Endangered Species) takes place in The Hague, the Netherlands. The meeting promises to be wrought with contention over the ivory trade issue, as Botswana, Namibia and South Africa seek the final go-ahead to sell their ivory stockpiles to CITES-approved trading partners. In addition, all three countries have submitted new proposals in a bid to further relax current restrictions on international trade in ivory and other elephant products.

At present, only Japan has been approved as a designated buyer, subject to the provision of a satisfactory progress report on the implementation of their domestic ivory trade controls at the next CITES Standing Committee meeting. This takes place immediately prior to COP. The only other outstanding condition of the ivory stockpile sales related to the submission of MIKE (Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants) data from a number of Asian sites. This was reportedly submitted at the end of 2006, making it extremely likely that the sales will be given the go ahead at the forthcoming meeting.

China is also seeking approval as a designated buyer and, although the CITES Secretariat highly commended China’s new domestic trade laws in 2005, they have so far refrained from recommending them as a trading partner. China is lobbying hard for this decision to be overturned, anxious not to be excluded from the imminent sales.

All this is taking place against a backdrop of a steady increase in global levels of illegal ivory trade. According to EIA’s records, since the last COP in October 2004, over 32 tonnes of ivory has been seized in more than 150 incidents worldwide, representing in excess of 5,000 poached elephants. Of these, the vast majority have been intercepted en route to South East Asia, where market demand for ivory continues to flourish. A recent report by Professor Samuel Wasser of the University of Washington in Seattle states that between August 2005 and the same month in 2006, over 23 tonnes was seized alone. Enforcement agencies typically put the percentage of ivory seized over that which goes undetected at between 10-20%, which means that the true number of elephant being poached is far greater.

A second emerging and equally alarming trend relates to the increase in the quantities of ivory being seized in individual incidents. Since 2005, there have been at least seven seizures of between 1.8 and 6 tonnes of ivory (listed below). Not only does this indicate the existence of significant black markets in South East Asia, including China and Japan, it also implies the presence of sophisticated and well-resourced criminal networks, responsible for procuring, trafficking and – in many cases - laundering the illegal ivory onto legal markets. Demand for ivory in South East Asia is increasing, with a kilogram reportedly now fetching up to USD $750 in China. Clearly, ivory trafficking is a highly profitable business and, given the current low detection rates and lack of enforcement, the incentive to stop is virtually non-existent.

Large seizures since 2005

September 2005: 6,000kg of ivory seized in the Philippines on a shipping container reportedly originating from Zambia; the vessel had departed from Tanzania
May 2006: 1,800kg seized in China
May 2006: 3,900kg intercepted in Hong Kong SAR on board a ship from Cameroon
May 2006: 4,000kg confiscated in Zimbabwe, allegedly destined for China
August 2006: 2,800kg seized in Japan on board a ship from Malaysia
July 2006: 3,060kg intercepted in Taiwan, originating from Tanzania
July 2006: 2,158kg confiscated in Taiwan, again originating from Tanzania

EIA believes that the forthcoming ivory sales only threaten to exacerbate the current negative situation. Botswana, Namibia and South Africa were granted permission to sell their ivory stockpiles (20, 10 and 30 tonnes respectively) in 2002 having demonstrated to the satisfaction of the CITES parties that their elephant populations are healthy and well protected. According to the data provided, elephant numbers in these countries have grown dramatically in recent years, so much so that Botswana and South Africa have recently mooted the possibility of reintroducing culling as a means to control population levels.

However, it is clear from the increasing reports of poaching and ivory seizures that the international illegal trade continues to pose a serious threat to elephants worldwide. This is particularly true of those occurring in countries other than Botswana, Namibia and South Africa, which are often poorly resourced and unable to provide the necessary levels of protection. For example, the forest elephants of Central and Western Africa are currently being hit hard by poaching, as once remote areas of habitat are progressively opened up to logging and road-building activities. The limited availability of data makes the full impact of this trend difficult to quantify, but a new report by Steven Blake et al (available at www.biologyosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=getdocument&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0050111) succinctly illustrates the precarious situation faced by such forest dwelling pachyderms.

The current situation suggests the need for a holistic, pan-African and long-term approach to elephant conservation and the ivory trade issue, rather than one which focuses on the status of distinct national populations (elephants are migratory animals so, apart from those living in fenced wildlife areas, frequently transgress international boundaries anyway). Such an approach is reflected in the proposal submitted by Kenya and Mali to COP14. This calls for a 20-year moratorium on all ivory trade in order to allow sufficient time to assess any impacts of the forthcoming sales, particularly in terms of poaching and illegal trade. Needless to say, their proposal will be vehemently opposed by the pro-trade lobby, and may even be perceived as too ‘extreme’ by some of the more moderate parties, including the EU. In addition, the CITES Secretariat has already stated that a 20-year ban would be impossible to guarantee, as parties are permitted to submit amendments to proposals at any time.

Nonetheless, what is certain is that current international trade regulations and global enforcement capacity is not enough to deter illegal traders and prevent thousands of elephants from being killed every year to feed the increasing market demand for ivory. And this demand is only likely to be stimulated further by the forthcoming sales, placing an added strain on the already limited resources of those countries struggling hardest to protect their elephants from the poacher’s gun.

EIA will be attending COP14 in June in order to lobby against any further relaxation of the ivory trade ban. Look out for further updates on the website nearer the time.

Investing in elephant futures

2007-04-17T07:38:00.000+02:00

(Originally published in The Observor some ten years ago)

Should Africa's elephants be harvested for their ivory, or should they be left to live their lives in peace? The question is nothing like so simple as at first it may seem. One issue that seems to have been overlooked in debates on the ethics of international trade in ivory is the basic biology of the elephant. Because of the rate at which elephants' tusks grow, it may make economic sense for dealers not to buy ivory today, but to invest in "elephant futures" and thus conserve the great beasts of Africa.

Everyone who loves animals would like the elephants to be left " in peace". But it is clear, first of all, that populations of elephants, left to themselves, swell and collapse like those of lemmings - albeit on a timescale of decades or centuries. When elephants had the entire continent to roam in, then fair enough: such space could absorb the enormous ecological shock of their peaks and troughs. But, if they are confined to national parks, as they are now, then they are bound to run into ecological disaster unless their numbers are regulated. So if we care about the elephants' long- term survival we have to be prepared to cull them. And if they have to be culled anyway, then why not take their tusks to pay local people to maintain the parks? Local people are important: and all wildlife is doomed - probably - unless local people acquiesce in its protection.

Others point out, again with justice, that if there is a legitimate trade in ivory based on elephants culled systematically (from parks) then an illegitimate trade could ride on its back: based on
poached elephants. Africa's elephants have declined from an estimated 1.2 million at the end of the 1970s to 600,000 by the end of the 1980s, and 80 percent of the ivory that has appeared on the market in the past decade has been poached. The only way to cut out the poaching is to eliminate the ivory trade altogether. It was this argument that recently prompted the Kenyan government to order a vast cache of tusks to be burnt. Some people just feel a general disgust for the trade. Dr John Leger, a South African conservationist, said: "Ivory belongs in the same league as ashtrays made from the hands of gorillas."

On purely rational grounds, it seems impossible to choose between the two strategies. Any decision seems bound to be based either on guesswork or on simple emotion; and although emotion is a sine qua non, it should not be the sole guide to action.

Yet there is a possible compromise. It derives from work at Dr John Beddington's Renewable Resources Assessment Department at Imperial College, London. For it could be in everybody's interests, when harvesting ivory, simply to let the animals die of old age and to take tusks only from animals that have died a natural death. It should pay the harvesters of ivory assiduously to protect tuskers throughout their lives, and to ensure that they live as long as possible. Then, when the animal finally dies (after a peaceful life), the financial reward would be enormous. Thus, the demands of commerce and of humanitarianism would be reconciled.

This notion is based on the biology of the elephant. Most of an animal's physical attributes - its ears, its liver, and its brain - reach a certain size as it matures, and then stop growing. They may even shrink in old age. But the teeth of some animals continue to grow throughout life, and so it is with elephants' tusks.

Furthermore, the growth of elephants' tusks is exponential." Exponential" does not mean "fast",
as the sub-editors of The Economist apparently suppose. It means that the rate of growth increases as time passes. Thus a 30-year old, and the 50-year old's might be twice as big as the 40-year old's. The bull that ran its biblical span of threescore years and ten should be marvellously endowed.

The argument also works the other way round. Suppose, for example, that you decide the first year to harvest a certain weight of ivory from a particular elephant population. You do this, sensibly enough,

by killing the elephants with the largest tusks. But if you decide the following year to harvest the same amount again - having established a market in the first year to harvest the same amount again - having established a market in the first year - then you will find that you have to kill more elephants than you killed the first year, because those that are left have smaller tusks. The following year the position will be worse, because those that are left will have much smaller tusks. Such a harvesting policy - taking more and more animals, of younger and younger age, each year - sounds insane. Nevertheless, says Dr Beddington, this is precisely what has been happening among many African herds, which is why the decline is not only continuing, but accelerating.

Suppose now, though, that you are a Japanese dealer in ivory (it is, after all, the Japanese who account for most of the trade). You could simply arrange with your African contacts to go and kill elephants. But if you were astute, you would realise that if you waited a year, or five, or 10, you could harvest enormously more than if you struck immediately. It could pay you, in fact, not to buy ivory, but to buy futures in ivory. Of course you have to make a living in the meantime. But as the growth rate of the ivory is exponential, and the interest rate on borrowed money is not, it could well pay you, even in naive cash terms, to borrow money for the immediate protection of the elephants - provided only that you are guaranteed to take possession of the tusks eventually. And again, because the rate of growth of the ivory is exponential, this waiting strategy would become more and more attractive with each passing year. It would pay you, indeed, to keep it up until the friendly animal finally keeled over, a happy and fulfilled septuagenarian.

Such a strategy would raise new problems. Big old animals are obstructive: it would put an enormous strain on parks (and on fellow elephants), if all the old males were encouraged to stay on. But when they are old they are largely solitary; and it would not be inhumane to keep them apart corrals. The younger herd of the forest would then be regarded (by the commercial dealers) as seed corn for the future. Of course, the argument that a legitimate trade would open the door for an illegitimate trade would still apply. However, if the ivory trade was run on these rational lines, and if the price of ivory was maintained, there would be so much money in the business that it would profit the traders to pay today's poachers to act as guardians; and there is no finer gamekeeper than an erstwhile poacher.

John Beddington's general aim at Imperial is to "found workable technologies upon sound ecological principles". Here is one possibility.

Colin Tudge presents BBC radio's science programme, "Spectrum". He is writing a book on animal conservation, "Last Animals at the Zoo", to be published by Century Hutchinson.

Another two elephant killed in West Petauke GMA of Zambia...

2007-04-07T04:49:00.000+02:00

The Natural Resources Chairman of the Luembe Community Resource Board reports today that a gang of elephant poachers were arrested by the Nyimba ZAWA Unit a few days ago in the West Petauke Game Management Area, and two pairs of tusks and meat confiscated. Three more poachers are therefore in the Nyimba jail awaiting trial. Community investigations continue into the role of the Nyimba ZAWA Unit and ZAWA and village guards in the current wave of elephant slaughter. ZAWA HQ have yet to report on progress in this regard, although they promised to do so.

Zambia Wildlife Authority Elephant Policy...

2007-04-07T04:47:00.000+02:00

Elephant management strategies
The strategies recognize the elephant’s economic potential at local and national levels in terms of creation of employment and income generation, through consumptive and non-consumptive uses. It should be noted therefore, that in this context, elephants have an incomparable economic potential than all the other species of wildlife currently being utilized in Zambia (save for the black rhino). It also has the potential to out compete several other land use options, given a level playing field.

In order for Government to realize maximum economic potential from the elephant, it is critical that species protection through effective management and cooperation with local communities are enhanced. This requires a succinct policy and subsidiary legislation to support management strategies. This initiative, therefore, constitutes the first effort to develop specific guidelines on how elephant will be managed in Zambia and is being issued for four main reasons as follows:
That the Government of the Republic of Zambia considers elephant as an economic asset in terms of non-consumptive and consumptive tourism, but has not been given due prominence in the past so that it can compete with other land use options; Proper management of the species is critical so that it realizes its full potential to generate significant income for the nation and local community in particular; Proper ivory management system will enable government to dispose of the ivory stockpile to raise forex for the nation and income for ZAWA and local communities who often lose their crops to elephants; As a keystone species in the environment and critical to the maintenance of biodiversity

The summation of the above issues and problems have raised national debate and present new challenges that must be addressed continuously.

Zimbabwe: States to Hold Preparatory Meeting Ahead of Cites

2007-04-03T06:55:00.000+02:00

The Herald (Harare)
April 2, 2007
Posted to the web April 2, 2007
Harare

ELEPHANT range states from southern Africa are holding a preparatory meeting on the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species in Botswana next week. Botswana, South Africa, Namibia, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe are expected to come up with a common position ahead of the proposal by Kenya and Mali to ban all trade in elephant products. If adopted, the proposal would seriously affect hunting in Botswana, South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe. A Zimbabwean delegation headed by Secretary for Environment and Tourism Mrs Margaret Sangarwe will present its submissions on the wildlife hunting situation in the country. "The main focus will be on elephant hunting and the effects this proposal will have on the sector if it sails through during the Cites meeting," Mrs Sangarwe said.

More from the ele killings fields of Zambia...

2007-04-03T01:59:00.000+02:00

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.

Zambia’s Elephant Sport Hunting Regulations

2007-03-31T05:29:00.000+02:00

Elephant killed near tourists in Zambia...

2007-03-30T03:10:00.000+02:00

It was reported by a tourist lodge manager that two elephant were killed within a hundred yards of tourists in Zambia's Lower Zambezi National Park. Zambia Wildlife guards arrived, sprayed the area with gunfire and picked up two tusks which the poaching gang had been carrying

Zambia’s raiding elephant…. by Peter Nyalugwe

2007-03-30T03:03:00.000+02:00

In our Nyalugwe chiefdom in the Eastern Province of Zambia, our people suffer from animal attacks on people and from crop damage. Complaints being made are not attended to by the Zambia Wildlife Authority (ZAWA) wildlife officers and village scouts of our Community Resource Board. Elephants, wildpigs, baboons are the most notorious animals to crop damage. One day a baboon walked away with a 25 kg bag of mielie meal to the bush thinking that was maize whilst chasing the other flock of the mammals. This happened at the Kasolo streams in my brother’s (Chief Nyalugwe) chiefdom. I witnessed this incident. During the 2006 and 2007 farming season none of the villagers had tasted a mango fruit because of the very notorious animals. Elephants again terrorized villagers from their granaries in search of food. There are two big bull which have brought havoc to the Nyalugwe community i.e. starting from the villges called Chamilala, Kasansamula, Nkondasoka, Kasolo gardens, Nylaugwe Palace, Kautukilo, Mzenje, Mankomba, Chilanga Gardens.

The community around the Nyalugwe Palace never sleep in their house, when the sun sets and a partial darkness i.e. around 1800 hrs the very elephants arrive then they sleep. This time the breating of drums and all sorts of irregular noise prevails i.e. chasing them away. Meanwhile ZAWA office of Nyimba sector have brought some bags of chilly for making buffer fences which another process of chasing them away from the community. A named resident of Mankhomba village was attacked (Astone Daka) around 0400 hrs whilst trying to sleep in his house thinking that the elephants have gone away which resulted in drama situation of him and the wife came out in adam suit. The very animals abruptly damaged his house due to the maize smell in their house. The couple were assisted with their neighbours to dress themselves. Another incident happened at Miss Lineli Mumba of the next village named Mzenje was equally the same. On the same day of 18 March 2007. This matter was reported to ZAWA Nyimba sector but no action has taken place.

There is also the increase in the killing of elephant for ivory. From observations, this is caused by poverty, corruption, availability of illegal weapons and lack of enforcement resources. To this regard you will found a village scout going for patrol without a uniform , boots, and a bag. Carrying their rations . This has made no different with civilians or villagers. They carry with them weapons for controlling the situation. I appeal to the responsible authoritites to motivate scouts with full kit as proper officers on duty.

Meanwhile the office of the Vice President thorugh the District Copmmissioner jof Nyimba district has assisted the community with some relief foood i.e maize and wheat which being distributed by ADRA. Remember ZAWA doesn’t compensate affected victims, even though it is their animals which damage our land and property.

An elephant bull was killed near the Chilinga reserve a few days ago by five villagers. ZAWA recovered some meat but the ivories have gone.

DRAFT STATEMENT ON E.S.H BY THE S.L.C.S

2007-03-17T01:27:00.000+02:00

DRAFT STATEMENT ON ELEPHANT SPORT HUNTING BY THE SOUTH LUANGWA CONSERVATION SOCIETY
The purpose of this document is a reaction to the recent proposals made by the
Zambian Wildlife Authority (ZAWA), to open up Elephant Sport Hunting (ESH) in
the country, reversing a ban that was placed on this activity in 1982. This statement
will seek to
• Prove that this decision is not based on sound wildlife management
principles.
• Suggest alternative methods of
o Promoting elephant conservation.
o Reducing Human/Elephant Conflict (HEC) and increasing the
benefits of elephant ownership to the local community.
o Increasing revenue from the wildlife estate.

BACKGROUND
ZAWA has produced a document entitled “Draft Guidelines for Elephant Sport
Hunting (ESH)”. (Appendix I)
This document describes a fundamental change in ZAWA policy, and sets out the
basic guidelines on which they will base a new means of generating revenue by the
re-opening of elephant on Trophy Hunting License in Zambia.
SECTION 1 Quota Licensing and Hunting
• Stipulates that ESH will not include problem animals shot on control but
that should such animals occur in a GMA designated for ESH, at the right
time of year and be of desired trophy size the Professional Hunter (PH)
may shoot them if it is convenient.
• Four GMA’s are indicated (Upper Lupande, Lower Lupande, Rufunsa and
Chiawa) and the hunting concessionaire in each of these areas will be
allocated 50% of the quota at the ‘current fees for elephant stipulated in
the current Statutory Instrument’.
• The remaining 50% of the quota will be auctioned (with the Legal License
Fee as a reserve price) to hunters from concessions with no quota and the
successful applicants will be permitted to hunt elephant in the GMAs listed
above.
The assumptions made in the above statements are that
o ESH quotas will in effect be in addition to the considerable number of
animals killed on control each year and will not be restricted in any way to
‘problem animals’.
o The “Quota” is a figure derived from sound data on the national elephant
population, based on accepted monitoring and management practices.
o At some time in the last two years an SI has been passed by GRZ
reinstating elephant as a trophy animal and setting a License Fee.
o Animals of the desired trophy size exist in the GMAs designated for ESH.
1
SECTION 1 Ownership, Export and Disposal of Remains Procedures
• Outlines the procedures by which ivory from trophy animals shall be
measured, details recorded on a ‘special form’ and surrendered to the
nearest Area Management Unit. Having been recorded in the local Ivory
Register it will be sent on to Chilanga (within 7 days) where it will be
marked in accordance with CITES requirements.
• The ivory will then be entered in the Special Register at Chilanga.
• At the time of export the hunter will be issued with a certificate of
ownership.
• ZAWA shall assist in the acquisition of an Import Permit from the
importing country.
• When the trophy leaves one of the four designated international airport
exit points the ivory will be compared with the details listed on the original
‘special form’ that was filled in (in the field after the animal was killed).
The assumptions made in the above statements are that
o Zambia has made application to CITES for the consideration of a noncommercial
ivory export quota.
o That the targeted importing country (USA) will agree, after taking
advise from CITES, to issue non-commercial ivory import licences for
the trophies arising from ESH.
o There has been a revolutionary change in the control of ivory stock at
Chilanga since the findings of the Panel of Experts who made an
assessment in 2002 and found a deplorable level of record keeping.
(CoP12 Doc 66 Annex 4- p8)
o The Authorities represented at the points of export are qualified to
verify the authenticity and identity of the trophy against records.
o That the original document recorded in the field still exists at the time
of export.
SECTION 1 Benefit Sharing and Conservation
• An elephant account will be set up and audited.
• 50% of proceeds from ESH will remain with ZAWA and 50% will be
disbursed to the local community in the relevant GMA at the end of the
hunting season.
• Not less than 50% of the meat shall remain with the local community
in the GMA.
The assumptions made in the above statements are that
o ‘Proceeds’ means statutory Licence Fees or possibly the value
achieved by auction.
o Not more than 50% of the meat will remain the property of the hunting
client or hunting company or ZAWA.
2
In addition to the above information the Director General (ZAWA) has been minuted
in a stakeholders meeting (19/09/04) as stating that.
• The total national quota for ESH shall be 20 (Twenty) animals. These
shall be allocated
o 6 Upper Lupande
o 6 Lower Lupande
o 4 Chiawa
o 4 Rufunsa
• The Licence Fee that it is hoped will be achieved is USD$10,000 per
animal.
• There is to be no differentiation between male and female animals in
price, since this would be gender insensitive.
• No minimum or maximum trophy sizes have been set.
• The figure represents less than 0.75% of the national population and as
such requires no special permission from CITES for hunting to take
place.
• The export of non-commercial ivory, as trophies does not require
CITES approval.
• The importation of non-commercial ivory, as trophies, into the hunting
client’s country does not require CITES approval, merely an import
license from the receiving country.
ZAWA Policy and Elephant Management.
ZAWA’s VISION
To achieve excellence in wildlife estate management by developing innovative
approaches and partnerships that encompass best practice, with complete
transparency and integrity.
ZAWA’s MISSION STATEMENT
To contribute to the preservation of Zambia’s national heritage, ecosystems and
biodiversity for present and future generations through the careful conservation of
Zambia’s wildlife.
We shall use these core statements as a baseline policy for ZAWA’s activities.
As a last point of reference of ZAWA’s Elephant management policy we shall refer to
the document Prop.12.9 Considerations for Proposals for Amendment of Appendices I
and II (Appendix II) which was submitted to CITES in 2002. This document reflected
a change in Zambia’s elephant policy and was an attempt to gain permission from
CITES to
a) trade in raw ivory under a quota of 17 tonnes of whole tusks owned by
the ZAWA obtained from management operations;
b) live sales under special circumstances.
3
The reasons given for this proposal can be assumed to be the same reasons for Zambia
now attempting to reinstate ESH, as since 2002 there has been no amelioration, in the
conditions affecting the following three factors which dictate elephant policy
i. Elephant population Monitoring and Management.
ii. HEC and Local communities in elephant areas.
iii. ZAWA Revenue Generation
If these three factors are assumed to be the same key, driving forces which have
caused ZAWA to reach the pro-ESH decision, we have a useful response in the
“Report of the Panel of Experts on the African Elephant on the review of the Proposal
submitted by Zambia to transfer its national population of Loxodonta Africana from
Appendix I to Appendix II “(CoP12 Doc.66 Annex 4) (Appendix III). There have
been no significant changes in conditions i-iii since the findings of this Panel and
CITES’ subsequent rejection, of Prop 12.9.
Let us examine the claims made by ZAWA to justify Prop 12.9 and the findings of
the Panel of Experts in response. We will then examine these same claims under
current conditions.
i) Elephant Population Monitoring and Management.
The following claims were made with regard to the elephant population and its
monitoring and management.
a) POPULATION MONITORING
ZAWA CLAIMS
-“The national elephant surveys conducted between 1992 and 1996 estimate a
national population between 22,000 and 25,000 animals. From the early 1990’s the
numbers have stabilized and shown trends of increasing”
-The following Table 1.0 was produced
Area 1992 1994 1996
1.0 LUANGWA VALLEY 9605 15469 16550
2.0 KAFUE SYSTEM 10263 4792 4980
3.0 LOWER ZAMBEZI SYSTEM 359 32 218
4.0 OTHER AREAS 2240 7 770
TOTAL NATIONAL ESTIMATE 22467 21000 22518
-“However, elephant population has stabilized. The stability in population could be
the only possible gain (of the ivory ban) though population structure is skewed in
favour or sub-adults and juveniles. A sure indicator for growing population.”
4
PANEL’S RESPONSE
-“Since…..1998, Zambia’s own capability to monitor its elephant population has been
virtually non-existent”
-Due to resource limitations, no national surveys were conducted after 1996.
However, for the two largest (and therefore most important) subpopulations in the
country, i.e. those in the Luangwa Valley and the Kafue Region…..(the results) were
made available for inspection by the panel.”
-“…since the mid-1990’s, the population for the Luangwa Valley has remained more
or less stable, between 10,000 and 14,000 animals.”
-Other findings are shown below.
Kafue Region. 1992……….10,263
1997………..5200
2001………..4000
* representing a reduction in the population of 61%
-“…the national elephant population may have slowly declined from 20-33,000
animals in the early 1990’s, to 16,000-29,000 in the late 1990’s, to 12,000-25,000 in
2002.”
-“Although the current level of ivory offtake from natural mortalities and control
work is low, and therefore sustainable, the fact that the overall population is not
increasing (and could be decreasing) suggests that there is an important illegal offtake
that accounts for a substantial amount of the ivory that could in theory be produced by
a population of this size. The panel estimates that this accounts for some 800 animals
a year”
-“In view of these factors, it must be concluded that the overall level of offtake is not
sustainable”
CURRENT SITUATION
Assuming the population has remained stable at the maximum estimate of 25,000
animals since 2002 until the current time and that the growth rate is 4%pa, a Zambia
is still losing animals at a rate of 1000 per year.
The stockpile of ivory in storage at ZAWA HQ in 2002 was recorded as 17,713.96
kgs with an average tusk weight of 4.23kg. Assuming two tusks per animal this
represents 2094 animals, accumulated in ten years (1992-2002). This figure represents
209.4 animals per year accounted for, which leaves 790.6 animals unaccounted for
and the result of illegal offtake.
Using the same rationale the stockpile of ivory now in storage is estimated by ZAWA
to be over 20,000kgs which means that a minimum of 2,286.04 kgs has been
5
accumulated in two years. This represents 135 animals per year accounted for by
ZAWA.
Given the expected increase of 1000 animals per year it appears that illegal offtake,
estimated using the same methods as the Panel of Experts is still running at around
800 (865) animals per year, which must still be considered as “not sustainable”.
b) LAW ENFORCEMENT.
ZAWA CLAIMS
-“Introduction of stringent penalties for illegal use of elephant and its products”
-“In enforcing the law, ZAWA has adopted a zero tolerance policy to all incidences of
poaching, violation of the wildlife Act is prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law
including the confiscation of any equipment used in the commission of the offence.”
-“In the last decade (1992-2002) poaching for ivory in Zambia’s Protected Areas
appears to have decreased considerably. Between 1980 and 1990 there were more
reported incidences compared to the last decade. Although statistics mat not be
readily available, field reports and aerial observations indicate a reduction in poaching
trends”
-“The decline in poaching for ivory incidences can be attributed to the improved
strategies and effective law enforcement operations in the Area Management Units.”
-With reference to the adoption of the Monitoring of the Illegal Killing of Elephants
(MIKE) programme it was stated in 2002 that
“The programme is now well established in South Luangwa National Park and is
expected to include surrounding GMAs soon”
-The following “Record of elephants killed by poachers in the last nine years.” Was
submitted to CITES
Year 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 2000 2001 2002
Number killed by poachers 27 22 18 18 16 16 13 0
PANEL’S RESPONSE
-“Effectively, for a period of almost 10 months in 2000, there was virtually no law
enforcement in the majority of Zambia’s conservation areas.”
-“…during the above 10 month transition period, it was estimated that 156 elephants
were killed in an area of about 2,560km2 in the central Kafue alone.” (Jachmann
2000)
-“The current situation suggests that there has been a drastic decline in the
effectiveness of anti-poaching activities”
6
-“The consequence of these actions has been a substantial increase in the level of
poaching of all species.”
-“…the Panel concluded that the current anti-poaching measures were not effective.”
-“The Zambian Wildlife Authority is currently investigating the role of Zambian
nationals and ivory sourced within Zambia relating to the recent seizure of 6.5 tonnes
in Singapore. There have been seven arrests to date including an unspecified number
of ZAWA staff members.”
-“It is quite clear that the current anti-poaching measures are not effective”
CURRENT SITUATION
The figures submitted to CITES as national elephant poaching statistics bear no
resemblance to actual figures recorded by Area Management Units and NGO’s as
demonstrated in the table below which indicates poached elephants in the South
Luangwa National Park and bordering Upper and Lower Lupande GMAs.
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004
ZAWA report to CITES
National animals2002
16 13 0 - -
Aerial Count of
elephant carcasses
SLNP/Lupande GMAs
- - 71 - -
SLAMU reported to
ZAWA 2003
SLNP/Lupande GMAs
46 22 22 15
SLAMU records 2004
corroborated by SLCS
SLNP/Lupande GMAs
- - - - 35
The figures for 2002 would suggest that ZAWA’s Proposal to CITES to have the
national elephant population down-listed to Appendix II may not have been based on
figures compiled with complete transparency and integrity.
Following the June 2002 Singapore seizure spearheaded by the Environmental
Investigation Agency and reported in the ‘Back in Business’ report and the EIA
newsletter ‘The Investigator’ (Issue 10 Winter 2002) netted 6.5 tonnes of illegal ivory
representing (at the same average tusk weight we have used thus far) 768 animals.
Some of this ivory was marked with ZAWA identification numbers strongly
suggesting that it originated from the ‘secure’ stockpile held at Chilanga. This,
coupled with the fact that not a single member of ZAWA’s personnel who were
implicated in the investigation was prosecuted or even relieved of duty since that
time, once again raises the question of complete transparency and integrity in
ZAWA’s practices.
The last column of the above table gives figures for poached elephants in the SLNP
and Lupande GMA’s for 2004 (up to 03/10/04). These records derive from SLAMU
7
and have been checked against the reports made and held by the SLCS and found to
have no significant differences.
They detail, in many cases with GPS co-ordinates, 35 incidents of elephant poaching
so far this year. If poaching continues at this rate we will, by the end of the year have
equalled the poaching rate of 2002 (46 animals) a period when “there was virtually no
law enforcement in the majority of Zambia’s conservation areas.”
This is a clear indication that despite increased patrol activities and a massive
expenditure, the effectiveness of ZAWA’s law enforcement program in the Area
Management Units has not improved.
In the population estimates for SLNP and Lupande GMAs (aerial census 2002
ZAWA/WWF/SARPO) the following were recorded
• Elephant Bulls
o Lower Lupande…………………..47
o Upper Lupande…………………...26
o SLNP……………………………..190
TOTAL…………...263
• Elephant Cows
o Upper & Lower Lupande…………902
o SLNP……………………………...4268
TOTAL……………5170
These figures represent a discrete sample for a particular time, and are not significant
in themselves but suggest the following
• The population is roughly skewed in favour of female animals.
• The number of bulls at any one time in the Lupande GMA’s is a very small
percentage of the total population.
• Since ESH quotas do no specify sex, age or trophy size and the likely targets
will be old males with significant ivory, the actual quota of 12 animals for
Lupande GMA’s represents an unacceptably high percentage of the number of
bull elephants that might be expected to occur in the GMA’s at any time.
The following concerns regarding elephant populations and behaviour have also been
raised by various stakeholders.
1. Professional hunters themselves have expressed the opinion that the
population has not sufficiently recovered from the recent high levels of illegal
offtake, nor are there sufficient if any trophy animals in the population to
warrant the reinstatement of ESH (Appendix III Statement from Luawata
Conservation)
2. Personal communications with tourism operators throughout the
SLNP/Lupande GMA range suggest that bull elephants with even entry level
trophy ivory are absent or scarce across most of the SLNP and surrounding
GMA’s.
3. Behavioural evidence suggests that older bulls in a population perform an
important disciplinary role with younger animals and that the absence of older
bulls could lead to higher rates of delinquency, crop raiding and HEC in the
SLNP and GMA’s.
8
4. Hunting in the GMA’s will cause elephants to move away from the riverine
area and into areas that are less efficiently patrolled placing them under threat
from illegal hunters. This will reduce the population of bull elephants to a
much greater degree than the removal of a relatively low number under ESH.
The above concerns cannot be supported by any known scientific data but are
nonetheless relevant since this is the very data that should be made use of by
ZAWA in order “To achieve excellence in wildlife estate management by
developing innovative approaches and partnerships that encompass best
practice.”
The fact that the decision to reinstate ESH is not based on a scientific data means
that it has no justification on the following grounds.
• The actual size of the population is not known (viability).
• The carrying capacities for the area designated for ESH are not known.
(sustainability)
• The illegal offtake from the population is not known.(sustainability)
• The illegal offtake from the population is not controlled.(sustainability)
• There is insufficient data on the occurrence of ESH trophy animals.
• There is no data on the effects of removing such animals on the population
as a whole or on the behaviour of the remaining animals, especially with
reference to a negative impact on HEC.
Given the above we can discount the ESH Proposal as a scientific imperative or an
example of excellence in wildlife estate management or best practice.
The proposal must now be examined for validity on the remaining grounds.
ii) HEC and Local communities in elephant areas
iii) ZAWA Revenue Generation.
ii) HEC and Local Communities in Elephant Areas.
Using Prop.12.9 Considerations for Proposals for Amendment of Appendices I and II
(Appendix II) once more as the last point of reference.
ZAWA CLAIMS
-“Elephants….must return demonstrable tangible economic benefits to landowners or
communities sharing habitat with them”
-“Their (resource-poor local communities) primary concern is to fight the injustice
that elephants inflict on them in the destruction of their livelihood by loss of crops and
human life”.
-“The funds would be used to develop strategies to protect crops in the elephant range
areas.”
-“A changed perception about elephants would enable the community to tolerate and
accept to coexist with them.”
9
-“Communities are distanced from gaining tangible economic benefits from the
animals”
-“It is these same people (rural households) whom should make their lands safe for
elephants while accepting their dangers and risks of living with these large and
sometimes destructive animals”
-“the contributions from the utilization of a species that is known for its devastating
effects were long overdue”
-“The policy statement expresses the government’s intention to regulate use of
elephant by such means and measures that will ensure its long-term survival, by
providing for human benefit particularly to local communities, and enjoyment of the
elephant by the public in such a manner and by such means as will not deplete their
populations but leave them for the enjoyment and benefit of future generations.”
PANEL’S RESPONSE
-“Currently local communities often regard elephants as pests that should be
destroyed, at least in the territories of the communities, especially when their crops
and lives are put at risk. ZAWA has indicated that some of the money from the sale of
the ivory stockpile would be paid to the local communities. This would help to
improve the tolerance of elephants by demonstrating that they have a financial value.”
CURRENT SITUATION
The SLCS agrees with all the statements made by ZAWA in their 2002 Proposal and
with the response of the Panel of Experts. However it is not supported that the only
way to achieve the objective of “A changed perception about elephants” or to improve
the tolerance of elephants” within local communities is through ESH.
ZAWA was established under the 1998 Act, with responsibility for national parks,
ecosystems, biodiversity and GMAs. In particular, it is responsible for the following
• In partnership with local communities, to share the responsibilities of
management in GMAs
• To encourage general development in National Parks,
GMAs…including the development of facilities in accordance with
management plans
• To enhance the economic and social well-being of local communities
in GMAs
• To prepare and implement management plans for National Parks,
GMAs… in consultation with local communities
• In partnership with communities, to grant hunting concessions to
hunting outfitters and photographic tour operators in GMAs
• To assist and advise the CRBs
• To pay out money - to a CRB, from license and concessions fees
obtained, and according to regulations issued by the Minister
• ZAWA may delegate any of its functions to the CRB
10
In 2003 hunting revenue to ZAWA from Lower Lupande GMA amounted to a total of
around USD $156,000. The community was supposed to be given 40% of this
revenue as described in the Act (see above). However they have not been given any
part of the concession revenue and the share of Game Licence fees that the Kakumbi
CRB received amounted to a mere USD$ 8,000 which gave a figure of some USD
$2.50 per household.
Nationally CRB’s are involved in litigation with ZAWA to redress what they feel has
been a misinterpretation of the Wildlife Act. This situation is a poor example of
“partnerships that encompass best practice, with complete transparency and
integrity”
ZAWA’s ESH proposal under the same conditions would nett Kakumbi CRB some
USD $30,000 which if distributed in the same way would represent less than USD
$10 per household as a one off annual payment. This figure cannot realistically be
expected to support any of ZAWA’s claims (above) with regard to “changed
perspectives” “tolerance” and “coexistence”. Any payoff, especially such a negligible
one, will do nothing to change the feeling within the community that “the only good
elephant, is a dead elephant”(pers com) and will undermine years of work and
millions of dollars spent in the education and sensitizing of local communities to
conservation issues. In brokering the consumptive use of the communities’ keystone
species for such a pitifully small return ZAWA is failing completely to address the
real issue of sustainable poverty alleviation as funds will still be insufficient to
“develop strategies to protect crops in the elephant range areas”
However there is hope that such strategies will continue to be investigated by ZAWA,
NGO’s and the Community and that donor funding encouraged by non-consumptive
community based trends will affect a long term solution.
The following observations have been made by Mike Jones a technical consultant
who has been working with ZAWA in Lupande
“I am currently working with WWF on HEC in Lupande using chilli-based
methods. So far the results are mostly positive and we will be doubling our input over
the next growing season. In our efforts, we have two major problems to cope with:
1) Many of the villagers would prefer elephants to be shot because (a) they are afraid
of elephants, with good reason (4 deaths this year alone); and
(b)they need animal protein which is in short supply in Lupande because of the Tsetse
Fly.
2) If chilli-based or other methods are to provide a permanent solution to HEC, they
have to be adopted by the villagers and implemented by the villagers. We have to be
careful not to give them the solution, but to lead them to the point where they discover
and implement the solution themselves This approach takes time but it will pay off in
the end.
11
Donors of all kinds are showing a lot of interest in HEC and it seems to me that we
need to find a way of coordinating and focusing that interest in Lupande. HEC can
then be tackled, not just in terms of keeping elephants out of crops, or shooting
elephants, but as a way of engaging villagers in economic activity that is financed
from tourism based sources. The primary need for most people in Lupande is food
and jobs and conservation efforts have to address those needs if wildlife is to be
conserved.
I am also working with WWF on land use planning and personally find the arguments
for changing land use from sport hunting to photo-safari along the Luangwa quite
compelling. Unfortunately land use in Lupande is a highly complex and political
affair so this too is a slow process. What I initially envisaged as a simple technical
exercise is likely to take a long time as the conflicting interests of Chiefs, District
Council and ZAWA, not to mention hunters, tour operators and everyone else, are
reconciled.”
ZAWA’s stated aim ‘to facilitate the active participation of local communities in the
management of the wildlife estate’ should look at long term solutions to empower
local communities and convey the responsibility of ownership of natural resources
such as elephant. This will ultimately be achieved by the formation of joint-venture
conservancies which place resource ownership firmly in the hands of the community
and give wildlife usage and ownership rights to such joint-ventures, and which
therefore will naturally conserve wildlife. This long term partnership of communities
and investors could ultimately lead to the GMA’s being independently funded through
tourism, hunting and game ranching and represents the sustainable road to poverty
alleviation. Sadly this will require ZAWA to relinquish some of its control over the
GMA’s, a situation which they have anticipated in the Wildlife Act and are dealing
with, but are ultimately reluctant to accept as evidenced by the comments of the
Director General (19/09/04 Mfuwe)
-The DG stated that the whole GMA is a government game farm and the locals get
their meat from hunting and proceeds from hunting. There is no way a game farm
run by any other party could be allowed in a GMA
Despite this opinion there exists a ZAWA Draft Policy on Private Wildlife Estates
(May 2003)
This draft policy on PWEs is presently under discussion, and, provided ZAWA is able
to consult the private sector and Game Producers Association of Zambia (GPAZ)–
and most importantly the Chiefdoms, the CRBs, the Investment Centre and other
Ministries, a progressive policy could be in place to encourage investment in the
development of conservancies and privately-owned game ranches. The document is
summarized below:
i) General points:
• The importance of PWEs is recognized in the war against rural poverty
• ZAWA will support PWE establishment and will provide the animals
for restocking at a fee.
• ZAWA wish to enter into partnerships with PWEs, communities and
the private sector
12
ii) Private estate classification
• Game ranches: fenced, private, not greater than 5 000 ha
• Communal –Private Conservancy: joint venture, fenced, not greater
than 30 000 ha.
• Communal Wildlife Conservancy: community owned, fenced or not,
not greater than 50 000 ha.
iii) Some of the guidelines suggested for PWE applications are:
• Application for a PWE to be made to ZAWA on the prescribed form
• Detailed business plans must be submitted
• Approval of a PWE will be given only after a feasibility study &
inspection
• ZAWA will co-ordinate PWE development with the other Ministries
and stakeholders
iv) PWE restrictions
• Restrictions on the placement of fences in relation to rivers
• Where existing properties are too close to rivers, and unable after an
ecological study (ES) to alter the boundary, ZAWA will not delegate
ownership, but instead will award ‘user rights’; and will set an off-take
quota
• All PWEs must be fenced unless an environmental study (ES) suggests
it is not in the biodiversity interest
• ZAWA will ensure that PWEs have management plans that provide
off-take restrictions and quotas
• Professional hunters and capturers require to be registered with ZAWA
• Only a percentage of live capture are to be allowed for export
• No medium to large scale PWE will be allowed within 10km of built
up area (i.e. a town)
• Export is prohibited in endemic species e.g. Kafue & black lechwe
• Various restrictions are suggested on the import, care and release of
species, most of them following international regulations (CITES and
IATA etc)
v) PWE conditions
• Private operators to submit annual returns to ZAWA not later than 15
Feb. of every year.
• Transfer of ownership to be with the approval of ZAWA, but only after
a game inventory is taken
• A change of land-use requires ZAWA’s approval
• CITES regulations to be followed
vi) ZAWA delegation of responsibilities
• Ecological studies & supervision of game capture may be delegated to
an agent
Thus a framework is already under construction which in a relatively short time, could
offer real poverty alleviation and ownership benefits to local communities on a
13
sustainable basis. It is ZAWA’s reluctance to accept the community’s customary
rights which necessitates such drastic, financially inadequate, short term measures as
ESH. Which CRB struggling to get off the ground under the current climate that
exists in most rural, wildlife areas would refuse the chance to earn a few thousand
dollars? It is irresponsible of ZAWA to support such limited, short term rewards at the
higher cost of long term sustainable alternatives.
iii) ZAWA Revenue generation.
ZAWA CLAIMS
-“No licensed hunting would be permitted in the immediate future. Any hunting
allowable would be for the purpose of management operations only”
-“elephants are of high value and manifest themselves with high costs. They should
correspondingly be of high benefit to landowners especially local communities.”
-“Currently, ZAWA’s capacity to continue managing the wildlife estate, effectively is
constrained by financial resources.”
-“Zambia’s Tourism is mainly wildlife based. Elephants along with other big game,
make up the main attraction that mostly interest tourists.”
-“The policy statement expresses the government’s intention to regulate use of
elephant by such means and measures that will ensure its long-term survival, by
providing for human benefit particularly to local communities, and enjoyment of the
elephant by the public in such a manner and by such means as will not deplete their
populations but leave them for the enjoyment and benefit of future generations.”
PANEL’S RESPONSE
-“ZAWA does not have the financial means to manage its wildlife resource, which
includes effective law enforcement and monitoring.
-“there is no indication that Zambia is interested in any form of consumptive
utilization of elephants either in the short or in the long term.”
-“The financial resources of ZAWA are extremely limited and consequently it is not
able to carry out its mandate. It has to rely heavily on donor support and support from
local communities in the Game Management Areas. Any major income for ZAWA
will improve its ability to fulfil its role”
CURRENT SITUATION
There can be no doubt that ZAWA is engaged in a difficult and ambitious undertaking
and that the aim to be self sufficient create tremendous financial pressures.
Using the SLNP/Lupande GMA’s as an example once more we note the following.
14
Over the last two decades in the SLAMU area the tourism sector and ZAWA have
engaged in an ongoing and hitherto unresolved debate over tourism vs. hunting as the
key revenue earners. It cannot be denied that in the SLNP GMA’s tourism does not
generate direct funds for ZAWA that are passed on to the community, however
earnings from Park Entry, Drive Levies and Lease Fees in 2003 comprised virtually
all of the 71% of the budget requirements for SLAMU which were generated in the
area and which funded all SLAMU’s management activities both inside the SLNP and
the GMA’s.
Earnings of K4 065 billion (71%) arose from tourism and other sources in SLAMU
while NORAD provided K1 668 billion (29%) in form of revenue grant and GRZ
failed to provide the promised support of K984 million. This gave the total figure
earned by SLAMU of K5 733 billion which was spent on all activities including
Ecosystem Monitoring and Management
Law Enforcement
CBNRM
Infrastructure
Equipment and Vehicles
Procurement and Distribution
Stores Management
Commercial and Tourism Development
Personnel and Administration
These facts serve to reinforce findings made and submitted to CITES in 1994
(Coppinger J. updated Mwanza.I 2000/2001Appendix IV) that Photographic Safaris
generate far more income per square kilometre (USD $ 39,866/sq km) and are thus of
more benefit to the inhabitants of that range, than Hunting Safaris (USD $ 88/sq km).
This is illustrated by the fact that the ZAWA revenue from a handful of operators in
the SLNP in 2003 provided almost 71% of the budget for management of not only the
SLNP but the 4,500 sq km of the Lupande GMA’s.
The potential revenue that may be generated for ZAWA from ESH in the Lupande
GMA’s is USD $60,000. This figure represents some 7% of the operational
expenditure of SLAMU for 2003.
Tourism revenue to ZAWA in the same year generated some USD $900,000. It would
be in the interests of everyone if revenue from tourism could be increased by $60,000.
Park Entry figures for International tourists in 2003 show a revenue of USD $453,595
which represents 22,680 Park entries at $20pp. Plans to increase the Park Entry fee for
internationals from $20 to $30 for 2005 have been unveiled. At the 2003 levels of
entry this would realise USD $680,400 an increase of some 50% in Park Entry
revenue and representing 27% of 2003 SLAMU expenditure. This represents a major
increase in revenue for ZAWA and makes sound economic sense.
The potential negative impact on tourism in Zambia from the introduction of ESH can
only be guessed at. However in the SLNP/Lupande GMA’s if we take 2003 figures
for revenue from tourism at $900,000 and increase the Park Entry Figure to $30pp
then the figure of $60,000 for ESH represents around 5% of the projected revenue
from tourist. This effectively means that if one out of every twenty people planning to
15
visit the SLNP changes their mind because of ZAWA’s decision to conduct ESH, the
financial benefit to SLAMU of the scheme will be lost entirely.
There are numerous alternatives to assist ZAWA’s cash flow problem. These include
• Revitalising existing and underutilized tourism sites in the Parks and GMA’s.
• Opening up new areas of the Park and GMA’s for tourism (the latter on a
Community Based system)
• Restructuring resident hunting licence fees so that they represent realistic
meat/trophy value but are still affordable to the relatively affluent Zambian
residents who utilise them (this is not aimed at district or chiefdom quotas for
actual GMA residents who should continue to benefit from subsidised
licences).
• Restructuring international trophy licence fees making more abundant plains
game species more attractive to foreign hunters and more competitively priced
in the sub-region and by introducing a sliding scale for certain animals to be
made available on supplementary licences at a reduced price
o e.g Allow a second buffalo or hippo to be taken at 20% lower than the
first. This would generate significant extra revenue at little cost to
populations of animals such as hippo where culling is planned anyway.
• Reduce ZAWA’s expenditure in the GMA by adopting Private Wildlife Estate
Policy and encouraging community led private sector partnerships in wildlife
management and sustainable utilization projects. If ZAWA is not spending
money on infrastructure and management of large areas of the GMA then it
does not have the critical imperative to earn money from these areas at high
cost to its international conservation credibility and reputation. Adopting such
strategies would encourage huge donor support.
• Consult more openly, seek and take notice of stakeholders’ advice in the areas
of operation. This would ensure that available funds are spent more wisely.
o e.g Current plans to spend USD $5.6 Million on roads in SLNP only
one of which is justified for law-enforcement purposes. The other two
will fail to generate significant revenue for SLAMU in terms of
increased tourism, will contribute significantly to poaching and will
cause degradation and disturbance to areas of the Park which are
already generating proven income for ZAWA, thus overall having a
negative impact whilst spending the equivalent of some 40 years worth
of revenue from ESH.
CONCLUSIONS
ZAWA’s VISION
To achieve excellence in wildlife estate management by developing innovative
approaches and partnerships that encompass best practice, with complete
transparency and integrity.
With reference to the above and with consideration of the following factors
o Promoting elephant conservation.
o Reducing Human/Elephant Conflict (HEC) and increasing the
benefits of elephant ownership to the local community.
o Increasing revenue from the wildlife estate.
16
The SLCS observes that
1) ZAWA’s ESH Proposal is made without the benefit of sufficient scientific
data on the national elephant population.
2) That the management of this population and the control of factors such as
illegal hunting are not adequate to justify further offtake from the population.
3) That the benefits in revenue to ZAWA do not justify such a radical change in
policy on elephant conservation nor the damage this will do to Zambia’s
image in the wider donor, conservation and eco-tourism communities.
4) That the benefits in revenue to local communities are insufficient to offer any
real poverty alleviation, hunger relief, compensation for or reduction in
Human/Elephant conflicts and that a more far sighted strategy is desirable.
5) That the negative impact on non consumptive eco-tourism which currently is a
significant source of both ZAWA and GRZ’s revenue, and the possible loss of
earnings associated with this, have not been adequately considered.
6) That the proposal is designed to circumvent CITES conditions and is
damaging to Zambia’s status as a signatory to CITES. There is concern that
this may actually jeopardise any long term hopes of ever being able to utilize
the national population or any ivory or other wildlife products generated from
it even under legally sanctioned and controlled practices.
7) That the proposal seeks to use the needs of the community to promote a
scheme which will have only minor short term, tangible benefits to them
instead of encouraging strategies which might empower the local communities
at a the possible cost to ZAWA of surrendering their own perceived ownership
of the wildlife estate.
8) That the proposal does not consider the actual ESH market and has proven the
occurrence of sufficient trophy animals to ensure a successful marketable
product. This will damage Zambia’s image as a hunting destination.
9) That the resource is being sold too cheaply and that the revenue generated will
not be justified by the benefits to ZAWA or the local communities or negative
impact on tourism and national image.
10) ZAWA has a poor track record in revenue sharing with local communities and
whilst this situation still exists it is unwise to enter into further arrangements,
especially over such a valuable resource.
11) Other avenues of revenue generation for both ZAWA and the communities
have not yet been exhaustively pursued.
12) There is nothing to suggest that ESH in Zambia does indeed represent best
practice or excellence in wildlife estate management.
CONCLUSION
i) The ESH Proposal cannot be justified as an elephant population management tool.
ii) The ESH Proposal will not provide local communities in elephant areas sufficient
revenue to implement long term solutions to poverty or food shortage, nor will
HEC be reduced.
iii) The ESH Proposal will not result in significant ZAWA revenue and thus will
not contribute to elephant conservation management programs
ESH will merely act as a temporary placebo for ZAWA to placate local communities
and defer the real issue of the ownership and preservation of the wildlife estate
17
DEFINITIONS AND ABBREVIATIONS
Biodiversity Biological diversity: the variations in biological
organisms at ecosystem, species and gene level
Customary Authority Chiefdom
Ecosystem A dynamic complex of plants, animal and microorganism
communities an their non-living environment
interacting as a functional unit
Game Commonly hunted animal species
Natural resources Land and its biological resources: the soils, the
vegetation and the fauna…
Strategy A set of chosen actions to support the achievement of a
specified development goal
CBNRM Community Based Natural Resources Management
CRB Community Resource Board declared under the Zambia
Wildlife Act of 1998 No. 12 Part 3 (6)
CITES Convention on the International Trade in Endangered
Species of Fauna and Flora
EIA Environmental Investigation Agency
ESH Elephant Sport Hunting
GMA Game Management Areas declared under the Zambia
Wildlife Act No. 12 Part 5 of 1998
GPAZ Game Producers Association of Zambia
GRZ Government of the Republic of Zambia
HEC Human/Elephant Conflict
MIKE Monitoring of the Illegal Killing of Elephants
NGO Non Government Organization
PWEs Private Wildlife Estates
SLAMU South Luangwa Area Management Unit
SLCS South Luangwa Conservation Society
ZAWA Zambia Wildlife Authority
Appendices
Appendix I Draft Guidelines for Elephant Sport Hunting (ESH). (ZAWA)
Appendix II Prop.12.9 Considerations for Proposals for Amendment of Appendices
I and II (ZAWA)
Appendix III Report of the Panel of Experts on the African Elephant on the review
of the Proposal submitted by Zambia to transfer its national population
of Loxodonta Africana from Appendix I to Appendix II “(CoP12
Doc.66 Annex 4)
18
Appendix IV Statement from Luawata Conservation on proposed ESH
I have been asked my opinion on the proposal to re-open an elephant hunting quota in
Lupande GMA.
I am a working Professional Hunter with over 30 years experience in the field. I have
an intimate knowledge of the Luangwa Valley where I have spent most of my life. In
the 70's I hunted elephant in Zambia, Congo (then Zaire) and the Sudan and I can
truthfully claim to be the most experienced (legal) elephant hunting guide in Zambia
today.
Thanks to ZAWA's conservation efforts it has been encouraging to observe the
recovery of the elephant population since the decimation of the 80's. This is
particularly true over the last three or four years, where the increase seems to have
been most noticeable.
However, there are very few adult bulls and absolutely no old bulls who are carrying
any significant ivory.
It is my opinion that it is premature to allow the few bulls that there are to be hunted,
particularly at this critical time in their recovery. Until such time as there is sound
scientific evidence that the population has returned to an acceptable mature male to
female ratio, I feel it would be irresponsible to encourage any further offtake of an
already imbalanced population.
Sincerely,
Adrian Carr
Appendix V Game Viewing Safaris-Their Potential and Relationship to Safari
Hunting with Insights from Lumimba. (Coppinger J. updated
Mwanza.I 2000/2001)
Additional References
Chipuna Conservancy Handbook
JOINT-VENTURE CONSERVANCY DEVELOPMENT FOR CHIEFDOMS
(Chipuna Group: ProjectsAfrica & Gamefields International)
The Investigator’ (Issue 10 Winter 2002)
19

Zambia tourism industry upholds elephant sport hunting position...

2007-03-15T02:35:00.000+02:00

At a meeting on the 15 March 2007, the Tourism Council of Zambia (TCZ) upheld its previous resolution that all sport elephant hunting be banned in Zambia; one of its members, the Professional Hunters Association of Zambia, lending full support to the TCZ position. Despite this, and with a similar stand having been taken by the Natural Resources Consultative Forum of Zambia - a forum established by Government to advise it on the environment and natural resources, the Zambia Wildlife Authority and its parent body, the Ministry of Tourism, Environment and Natural Resources, oncemore made available 20 elephant for sport hunting in 2007; a quota it now intends increasing by offering the sport hunting of crop raiding elephant - something not allowed in the Statutory Instrument on Elephant Sport Hunting, which specifically excludes crop raiders from sport hunting. Recently the Zambian Government requested that the US Fish and Wildlife Service allow the import to the United States of sport hunted ivory and other elephant trophies.

Zambia is currently in the throes of a massive assault on its elephant population, the continuation of a 34 year unchecked kill which, between 1994-2004 alone, saw 130 tonnes of ivory being handled by a single syndicate on its route through Malawi to the Far East. Recently, DNA analysis carried out by the University of Washington reveals that six tonnes of this syndicates ivory was taken mainly from Zambia, with the Zambezi and Luangwa Valleys being the main source - the area where the sport hunting permits are given effect. Recently ivory poachers, comprising officers of the Zambia Wildlife Authority and villagers have been apprehended or are under investigation for elephant poaching within a safari hunting concession in the Luangwa. Recently elephant, with their tusks and trunks removed, have been seen floating in the Luangwa and Kafue rivers.

This support for a ban to be placed on elephant sport hunting, and the evidence of the current crisis, makes clear that the Kenya/Mali position at the forthcoming CITES COP meeting in June will be carried, with many in conservation realizing that the sale of the South African, Namibian and Botswana ivory stocks to a corrupted and unregulated Far East market will place Africa's elephant in total jeopardy.

TRAFFIC clarify the elephant sport hunting issue...

2007-03-09T08:15:00.000+02:00

From a very early date, CITES has allowed trade in hunting trophies of
species listed in App. I (see Resolution Conf. 2.11 (Rev.). This is
based upon the belief that in some cases hunting can enhance the
survival of a species. For example, white rhino in South Africa, even
when they were on App. I were hunted and the species has made a recovery
and is now listed in App. II. This reasoning behind the acceptance of
sport hunted trophies from App. I species is obviously contentious, but
it has a longstanding history within CITES.

African elephants, since their inclusion in App. I in 1989, have
continued to be sport hunted since that time. Indeed, Tanzania, who led
the fight to have all populations included in App. I, arguing that they
suffered uncontrollable poaching and had nearly lost all of their older
males with large tusks. No sooner had the gavel come down on their
successful bid to put all elephant populations in App. I, the Tanzanians
then led a fight to ensure that it's quota for 100 sport hunted
elephants was left in tact. They achieved both results at the same
meeting!

Thus, Zambia is a beneficiary of these developments. The process for
establishing quotas for African elephant trophies is found in the
section entitled 'Regarding quotas for and trade in raw ivory' in
Resolution Conf. 10.10 (Rev. CoP12). If Zambia is going to increase
their quota it will be under this procedure. You will see that under
paragraph d) the CITES Secretariat has some oversight responsibilities
and can, if there is cause for concern, not communicate the quota to the
Parties.

I therefore think that if civil society in Zambia wishes to question
the Zambian quota the best way forward is to submit relevant information
and assessment to the CITES Secretariat to form the basis of concern and
further investigation.

I hope this clarifies the procedure. You should be able to access the
relevant CITES Resolutions on their website at www.cites.org
Tom Milliken

Using DNA to track the origin of the largest ivoryseizure since the 1989 trade ban

2007-03-02T07:16:00.000+02:00

Samuel K. Wasser*†, Celia Mailand*, Rebecca Booth*, Benezeth Mutayoba‡, Emily Kisamo§, Bill Clark¶,
and Matthew Stephens ***Center for Conservation Biology, Department of Biology, and Department of Statistics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195; ‡Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Department of Veterinary Physiology, Biochemistry, Pharmacology, and Toxicology, Sokoine University of Agriculture, Morogoro,
Tanzania; §Lusaka Agreement Task Force, Nairobi, Kenya; and ¶Interpol Working Group on Wildlife Crime and Department of Law Enforcement, Israel Nature and Parks Authority, Jerusalem 95463, Israel

Author contributions: S.K.W. and M.S. contributed equally to this work; S.K.W., E.K., and
B.C. designed research; S.K.W. and B.M. performed research; C.M., R.B., and M.S. analyzed
data; and S.K.W., B.C., and M.S. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
This article is a PNAS direct submission.
Freely available online through the PNAS open access option.
Abbreviations: CITES, Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild
Fauna and Flora; MCMC, Markov Chain Monte Carlo.
†To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: wassers@u.washington.edu.
**Present address: Departments of Human Genetics and Statistics, University of Chicago,
Chicago, IL 60637.
© 2007 by The National Academy of Sciences of the USA
4228–4233 PNAS March 6, 2007 vol. 104 no. 10 www.pnas.org cgi doi 10.1073 pnas.0609714104

Edited by John C. Avise, University of California, Irvine, CA, and approved December 26, 2006 (received for review November 2, 2006)
___________________________________________________________________

The illegal ivory trade recently intensified to the highest levels ever
reported. Policing this trafficking has been hampered by the
inability to reliably determine geographic origin of contraband
ivory. Ivory can be smuggled across multiple international borders
and along numerous trade routes, making poaching hotspots and
potential trade routes difficult to identify. This fluidity also makes
it difficult to refute a country’s denial of poaching problems. We
extend an innovative DNA assignment method to determine the
geographic origin(s) of large elephant ivory seizures. A Voronoi
tessellation method is used that utilizes genetic similarities across
tusks to simultaneously infer the origin of multiple samples that
could have one or more common origin(s). We show that this joint
analysis performs better than sample-by-sample methods in assigning
sample clusters of known origin. The joint method is then
used to infer the geographic origin of the largest ivory seizure since
the 1989 ivory trade ban. Wildlife authorities initially suspected
that this ivory came from multiple locations across forest and
savanna Africa. However, we show that the ivory was entirely
from savanna elephants, most probably originating from a narrow
east-to-west band of southern Africa, centered on Zambia. These
findings enabled law enforcement to focus their investigation to a
smaller area and fewer trade routes and led to changes within the
Zambian government to improve antipoaching efforts. Such outcomes
demonstrate the potential of genetic analyses to help
combat the expanding wildlife trade by identifying origin(s) of
large seizures of contraband ivory. Broader applications to wildlife
trade are discussed.

The illegal trade in elephant ivory has once again escalated to
the devastating levels that occurred before the 1989 Convention
on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild
Fauna and Flora (CITES) ivory trade ban (1–5). Between
August 2005 and August 2006, there have been 12 major seizures
of African elephant ivory being shipped to the Far East, totaling
23,461 kg, plus 91 unweighed tusks. Most of this ivory was
deemed to be from freshly killed elephants (B.C., unpublished
observation). It is commonly assumed that customs intercepts
10% of all contraband (e.g., drugs, weapons, pirated compact
discs). We conservatively assume that this percentage is also the
case for ivory; most enforcement agencies do not ‘‘target’’ ivory
as they do drugs or weapons, and technological advances (such
as drug scanners and detection dogs) do not help with interception
of contraband ivory. Thus, the above 23,461 kg should
correspond to 234,610 kg of smuggled ivory from 23,000
elephants killed this past year. Knowing the origin of ivory in
such large seizures enhances understanding of where elephants
are being slaughtered and routes by which the contraband ivory
is smuggled. Law-enforcement efforts could be fruitfully focused
with such information. It also creates accountability that compels
nations to be more responsive to poaching in their country.

We previously described a method to infer the geographic origin
of individual samples of African elephant DNA (6). Here, we
extend the approach to multiple samples and apply this method
to infer the origin of the largest seizure of contraband ivory since
the 1989 ivory trade ban (the second largest seizure in the entire
history of the trade).

In late June 2002, an investigative team consisting of officers
from the Zambia Wildlife Authority, the Lusaka Agreement
Task Force, and the Anti-Corruption Bureau of Malawi uncovered
vital information concerning the shipment of a 20-ft
container packed with 6.5 tons of contraband elephant ivory in
Malawi, destined for the Far East. (Based on the above assumptions,
this would have resulted from poaching of between 3,000
and 6,500 elephants.) The container had been shipped via South
Africa to Singapore, where it was seized later that month. The
seizure contained 532 tusks of widely diverse sizes and weights.
The average weight of tusks was 11 kg, substantially larger than
the average tusk in the current ivory trade. The seizure also
contained 42,120 ‘‘hankos,’’ believed to have been manufactured
in Malawi. Hankos are round ivory cylinders, 6.5 cm in length
and 1.5–2 cm in diameter, cut from the solid portion of the tusk.
Some Asian communities carve their personal seal on the end of
these cylinders to be used as a prestigious stamp (7). The hankos
alone in this shipment were worth an estimated $8.4 million
(U.S.), and represented 20% of Japan’s annual hanko trade
(B.C., unpublished observation). The enormous size of this
consignment indicates the existence of an elaborate network in
the Far East that is capable, with a single delivery, to receive and
launder tens of thousands of hankos and hundreds of tusks into
existing legal markets.

Investigative work revealed that the ivory had been carried
from Zambia into Malawi in small lots, before shipping, but it
was unknown whether the ivory came from Zambian elephants.
Our analysis tested two broad competing hypotheses for the
origin of the seized ivory:

Hypothesis 1. The ivory originated from within, or in close
proximity to, Zambia and/or Malawi, the original shipping
locale. This hypothesis would require minimal preshipment
transport (smuggling), but the size of the seizure would suggest
that poaching intensity in this region was substantially greater
than previously believed or acknowledged.

Hypothesis 2. The ivory originated from numerous locations
across forest and savanna Africa, with stockpiles smuggled into
Malawi before shipping. This hypothesis, which suggests the
existence of a relatively sophisticated and widespread organizational
network, was supported by several factors, including the
large volume of the shipment, the considerable mean and
variation in tusk size, and extensive poaching in the nearby
Democratic Republic of Congo†† and Selous Game Reserve in
Tanzania.

Results
We selected 67 of the 532 tusks for DNA analysis, using a
stratified sampling scheme aimed at maximizing the chances of
acquiring tusks from multiple locations (see Materials and Methods).
Amplification success varied greatly across samples; a total
of 13 tusks had all 16 loci amplify successfully, and 23 tusks had
at least 14 loci amplify successfully, whereas 18 tusks had no loci
amplify successfully. In total, 37 tusks (55%) amplified at seven
or more loci and were included in the subsequent assignment
analysis [the cutoff of seven loci being chosen for consistency
with the way the reference database was assembled (6)]. Among
these 37 samples, the average number of successful loci was 13.5.
Hankos were excluded from these analyses because initial attempts
to amplify DNA from hankos were unsuccessful. Hanko
samples are derived from the core of the tusk and were subsequently
found to require a decalcification step before their
extraction; analyses of the hankos are ongoing.

DNA obtained from the tusks was compared with a reference
database of DNA samples of known geographic origin. The
reference data were from Wasser et al. (6), augmented with 165
samples from Zambia, Malawi, and Southern Tanzania. The
combined samples provided an updated reference database of
525 samples (see Materials and Methods). Initial comparison of
alleles obtained from each tusk against reference allele frequency
distributions for forest vs. savanna elephants suggested
that all of the tusks were most likely derived from savanna
elephants [likelihood ratios in favor of savanna origin, computed
as in Wasser et al. (6), ranged from 2.5 104 to 9.1 1010].
We developed a statistical assignment method to infer the
most likely savanna locations of the sampled tusks. Existing
assignment methods estimate the likely source of each tusk
independently, assuming the tusks were independently and
uniformly sampled from some set of possible sources. This
assumption is problematic here because it implies that the tusks
likely originated from a wide range of locations, essentially
ignoring the possibility that they came from a restricted region
(hypothesis 1). Our approach (see Materials and Methods) extends
the smoothed continuous assignment method for individual
DNA samples from Wasser et al. (6) to analyze multiple tusks
simultaneously, allowing that they may have arisen either from
a wide range of locations or from one (or a few) narrow
geographic region(s).

Fig. 1 A–D illustrates the improved performance that can be
achieved by analyzing multiple samples simultaneously rather
than one sample at a time. Specifically, the figure compares
results from our approach, which jointly analyzes multiple
samples, with results from sample-by-sample analysis using the
method described in ref. 6. We applied both methods to groups
of samples known to originate from Malawi (n 18) (Fig. 1A),
Zambia (n 29) (Fig. 1B), and the Selous Game Reserve in
Southern Tanzania (n 12) (Fig. 1C), with each analysis
constituting a random sample of half of the samples available
from its respective origin, and to a group of samples from
__________________________________________________________________________________________
††Mubalama, L. (2005) Rapport sur L’Enquete du Marche D’Ivoire la ville de Kinshasa, March
9–19, 2005, Wildlife Conservation Society and Monitoring of Illegal Killing of Elephants,
Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo.
A
B
C
D
Footnote: Fig. 1. Comparison of results from the new assignment method for jointly
analyzing multiple samples (Left) with those obtained by independently analyzing
each sample by using the assignment method from Wasser et al. (6) (Right).
Results obtained for a batch of samples ofknownorigin from Malawi (A), Zambia
(B), and Selous Game Reserve in Tanzania (C) and for dung and tissue samples
originating from across savanna Africa (D) are shown. Circles show the estimated
location of origin of each sample, whereas crosses indicate locations of reference
samplesfromsavanna habitats used tomakethe assignments. In A–C, s are used
to indicate the actual locations of the samples of known origin.
Wasser et al. PNAS March 6, 2007 vol. 104 no. 10 4229 POPULATION
BIOLOGY
____________________________________________________________

numerous locations scattered throughout savanna Africa
(n 37, chosen to match the number of tusks analyzed from the
Singapore seizure) (Fig. 1D). The remaining halves of samples
from Zambia, Malawi, and Selous contributed to the reference
samples for these analyses. When applied to a batch of samples
originating from a limited geographical region (Fig. 1 A–C), our
joint analysis method is able to recognize this fact and produces
estimated locations of origin that are both accurate and compact.
In contrast, estimates from independent analysis of each sample,
although centered on approximately the correct location, are
considerably more diffuse and tend to (wrongly) suggest that the
samples came from a relatively wide geographic region. Conversely,
when applied to samples that actually originated from a
wide geographic region (Fig. 1D), our joint analysis method is
also able to deduce this from the data and produces estimated
locations of origin that are very similar to those from the
sample-by-sample analysis.

We applied the new joint analysis method to 37 tusks acquired
from the Singapore seizure. The results (Fig. 2 Left) suggest that
the tusks originated from a relatively restricted part of southern
Africa, concentrated near Zambia, lending support to hypothesis
1. The tusks were genotyped on the same platform and at the
same time as the reference samples from Malawi, Selous, and
Zambia and at a different time and platform than the majority
of the other reference samples from East and Savanna Africa.
We therefore checked to determine whether our results were not
unduly affected by unidentified systematic differences between
the way different reference samples were treated, by reanalyzing
the tusk DNA without the additional reference samples from
Zambia, Malawi, and Selous. The results (Fig. 2 Right) were
similar to those obtained with the additional reference samples,
with estimated tusk origins being slightly more diffuse and
centered slightly farther south.

Discussion
Using DNA, it is possible to determine, with near 100% accuracy,
whether an individual sample originated from a savanna or
forest elephant (6). The DNA from all of the tusks that we
examined from the Singapore seizure pointed to a savanna origin
for these samples. This simple inference alone immediately rules
out many countries that are habitat for forest elephants (Loxodonta
cyclotis); it also lends some support to the hypothesis that
the tusks may have originated from a restricted geographic
region rather than from a pool of many stockpiles from across the
continent. More sophisticated analytic methods, able to accurately
determine the likely geographic origin of DNA samples on
a finer scale, point to a relatively narrow band of Southern
Africa, centered on Zambia, as the likely source of tusks in this
seizure. The estimated locations of origin for the tusks spread
east and west from Zambia and may include regions of Mozambique
and savanna Angola from which no reference samples are
yet available. Reference samples from these locations could
increase the precision of these estimates and help to confirm or
rule out these countries as possible contributors to the seizure.
The 37 tusks analyzed here represent a subset of tusks that
produced the most complete genotype data. Although visual
inspection revealed no obvious systematic differences between
these tusks and others that failed to yield such complete data (see
Materials and Methods), it is difficult to entirely rule out the
possibility that the seizure could contain some tusks of different
origin that failed to produce good genotype data.
These caveats notwithstanding, the analysis of available DNA
data from these samples has greatly facilitated law-enforcement
efforts. As described in hypotheses 1 and 2, authorities strongly
suspected that this ivory had multiple origins, including forest
habitat. Our results caused law enforcement to substantially
narrow the area of origin and the trade routes being investigated.
These results also had a number of consequences for Zambia.
The seizure immediately followed Zambia’s application to
CITES for a one-off sale of their ivory stockpiles at COP12
(Conference of the Parties). That application maintained that
only 135 elephants were known to have been illegally killed in
Zambia during the previous 10 years, woefully shy of the
3,000–6,500 elephants we estimate to have been killed in Zambia
surrounding the seizure, let alone during that entire 10-year
period. Subsequent to being informed of our findings, the
Zambian government replaced its director of wildlife and began
imposing significantly harsher sentences for convicted ivory
traffickers in its courts. However, one still has to wonder whether
this will be enough.

Virtually no one has been prosecuted for this case. Moreover,
just 3 years after the Singapore seizure, when we were in the thick
of our DNA analyses, another 6 tons of ivory was seized in the
Philippines en route from Zambia. (That ivory was subsequently
stolen from the warehouse that Philippine customs had contracted
to hold the contraband.) This begs the question: How can
a poor country like Zambia, with only token international
assistance, have the physical capacity to act effectively against
________________________________________________________________________________________
Tusks from Seizure
with additional reference samples

Fig. 2. Assignment results for 37 tusks from the Singapore seizure. The estimated locations of origin (circles) of the 37 tusks analyzed are shown. (Left) Results
using the additional reference samples from Zambia, Malawi, and Selous. (Right) Results without these additional reference samples. Crosses are the same as in Fig. 1.
4230 www.pnas.org cgi doi 10.1073 pnas.0609714104 Wasser et al.
_________________________________________________________________________________________

criminals exploiting the dynamic market demands of the financially
robust Far East?

Wildlife trade represents a serious and growing area of
organized crime that can irreparably damage a country’s ecosystems
and economy and has demonstrable links to other
serious crime. The illegal ivory market exemplifies this. Elephants
are a keystone species, whose loss significantly alters
natural habitat. The ivory trade has corresponded with massive
declines in elephant numbers ( 50% continent-wide and up to
90% in some areas), including areas where habitat loss (the other
most likely cause of decline) has remained unchanged (8–11).
Moreover, the illegal trade this year has seen its largest increases
ever, based on marked increases in seizures without any commensurate
increases in the capacities of the seizing agencies
(B.C., unpublished observation). Much of this increase in trade
is being driven by wholesale prices of high-quality ivory in China
and Japan (12), which have risen from $100 per kilogram in the
late 1990s to $200 per kilogram by 2004 to a now staggering $750
per kilogram (B.C., unpublished observation). This disproportionately
large 3.5-fold rise in the past 2 years has raised concern
that commodity speculators may be buying up much of the ivory.
Certainly, these trends suggest that the market is being heavily
stimulated, adding to current fears that China’s growing demand
for illegal ivory could jeopardize elephants throughout Africa
and Asia (5, ††).

Given that syndicated ivory crime has reached such international
scale, we suggest that the most effective way to combat this
trade is to prevent the ivory from ever entering the international
market. Genetically tracking the origin of large ivory seizures can
help by identifying poaching hotspots, focusing urgently needed
policing of elephant poaching and associated trafficking in
contraband ivory. This approach places emphasis on saving
elephants before they are killed. By identifying common patterns
among large seizures, such as homogeneity of origin and proximity
to original shipping locale, our methods could also highlight
likely smuggling routes (e.g., major roads, train routes, or
nearby ports) and suggest how illegal ivory is being moved to
global markets outside Africa. These effects should also increase
tusk seizure rates, further helping to stop the trade before it
leaves Africa. Strategic changes in these smuggling patterns over
time could also be detected, as could changes in the quantity and
distribution of ivory from specific locales in the world’s major
ivory markets. Monitoring such changes, coincident with CITES
trade decisions, could provide critically needed tools to determine
whether sanctioned sales influence poaching rates across
the continent.

Although our methods can enhance the effectiveness of law
enforcement in wildlife trade, what is really needed is to combine
this with a major reinfusion of law-enforcement aid at the scale that
coincided with the 1989 ivory ban. For this reinfusion to occur,
industrialized nations need to be reeducated about the seriousness
of the poaching problem to encourage their governments to once
again provide this needed law-enforcement support. The United
Nations has declared many of Africa’s natural resources to be
‘‘World Heritage,’’ and the rest of the world needs to help protect
this shared heritage. To ensure that such aid is not endless,
law-enforcement aid needs to be coupled with education aimed at
reducing demand in the Far East and at engendering respect for
natural resources in Africa. Improved management is also needed
in Africa to restore the historical abilities of elephants to selfregulate
their population sizes and reduce elephant/human conflict.
Ironically, stopping poaching may help reduce such conflict, if
elephants can once again be made to feel safe enough to remain in
protected areas (13). Stopping poaching will also prevent loss of
tourism in wildlife-rich countries, along with the disproportionately
large amounts of foreign currency it generates.

The international community virtually stopped ivory poaching
once (14), and it can stop it again. The enhanced lawenforcement
effort that coincided with the 1989 ban dramatically
suppressed the illegal ivory trade. However, believing that the
problem was solved, western aid was largely withdrawn by 1993.
Law enforcement rapidly declined in poor African countries, and
poaching began to steadily increase all over again (14). A more
comprehensive approach is needed this time, one that combines
law enforcement with DNA analyses, education, and improved
management. We have to act now, before it is too late. We hope
that the results of this study will encourage such timely conservation
efforts, thereby helping to curb a criminal trade that is
once again imperiling elephants.

We also believe that these techniques can prove useful for
other species that are substantially represented in the wildlife
trade. The ability to acquire DNA from feces, coupled with new
methods that markedly enhance fecal sampling rates over large
remote areas (15), makes this approach highly feasible for a
diverse array of at-risk species.

Materials and Methods
(not included here)

More on the Singapore ivory and a secret resignations??

2007-03-02T05:17:00.000+02:00

The first big test of Wasser's system took place in the port of Singapore in 2005. Acting on a tip, customs agents opened a set of shipping crates and found a stunningly large cache of stolen ivory.
"Six and a half tons of ivory," Wasser says. "It was the largest seizure since the ban and actually the largest ever in history."
Wasser says it is possible that 6,000 elephants were killed to fill the seized crates. But smuggling experts couldn't [track] down the site of the mass slaughter. The crates had come from Zambia but Zambian officials swore that poaching was extremely rare inside their borders. They claimed that only 135 elephants had been killed in their borders in the last 10 years, Wasser says.
Wasser traced the DNA fingerprints of those tusks and proved the Zambian officials wrong.
"We can actually pinpoint based on the combinations of genes falling together," Wasser says, "where the ivory came from, and that turned out to be Zambia."
The chief of the Zambian wildlife department was so embarrassed by Wasser's findings that he quit his job. Wasser's work has not yet led to arrests, but there are signs that it is forcing some big changes.
Several countries are now getting tough on ivory poachers, says a co-author of the paper, smuggling expert William Clark of Interpol. One of the most recent busts took place in Zambia, where an Asian businessman was caught buying tusks.
"He pleaded guilty and he was sentenced to five years hard labor," Clark says. "That's a serious punishment for someone from an industrialized Asian country — going to a Zambian prison."

U.N. Conservation Body Says Africans Split over Ivory Trade

2007-03-01T01:21:00.000+02:00

February 28, 2007 — By Bradley S. Klapper, Associated Press

GENEVA -- African countries are divided over banning or controlling international ivory trading, but need to reach a common position if they are to ensure the survival of the continent's elephants, a U.N. panel said Wednesday.

David Morgan, chief scientific officer at CITES, said African countries have filed three ivory proposals before the U.N.-sponsored conservation body's conference this June in The Hague, Netherlands, where 169 nations will debate new bans and quotas for trade in endangered species.

"This demonstrates the divisions that still exist between African countries on the way to go forward for the conservation of African elephants," Morgan told reporters in Geneva, where the body responsible for monitoring the 1973 U.N. Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species has its headquarters. "As long as Africa is divided, the chances of success are not so high. We really need an African position on elephants."

Signatories of the convention debate new rules every three years. The meeting in June will debate nearly 40 new proposals for protecting wildlife species including pink coral, Latin American rosewood and cedar, Brazilian lobsters, and bobcats and leopards.

Trade in ivory, which comes from elephants in southern African herds, was banned by the body in 1989. Over the last decade, CITES has twice permitted one-off sales from the tusks of animals that died of natural causes or were subject to emergency culling in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe.

These countries and Tanzania are now asking for the right to resume controlled sales. Kenya and Mali, on the other hand, are seeking a 20-year ban on all trade in raw or worked ivory.

Conservationists argue that any ivory trading threatens elephant populations by creating commercial incentives for poachers. Advocates of the sales say that trading in ivory from well-managed herds can benefit local populations and help pay for conservation efforts.

But some African countries have been hugely successful in managing their elephant populations, leading to the new problem of how to manage growth that is spilling out of national parks.

On Wednesday, South Africa's environment minister proposed contraception and some culling to slow his country's elephant boom. While Marthinus van Schalkwyk stressed there would be no mass slaughter, the suggested measures highlighted South Africa's difficulty in maintaining 20,000 elephants without disrupting delicate biodiversity at its wildlife reserves.

Botswana, which has by far the biggest elephant population with an estimated 165,000, is the only country seeking a specific quota for ivory at the CITES meeting. It is asking that countries allow it to make a one-off sale of 40 metric tons (44.8 tons) and export a further eight metric tons (nine tons) of ivory per year.

More on Zambia elephant sport hunting...

2007-02-28T05:23:00.000+02:00

At a meeting between the Zambia Wildlife Authority (ZAWA) and safari hunting operators on 23 February, 2007, ZAWA stated that they wished to make changes to the Statutory Instrument No. 40 of 2005 (The Zambian Wildlife (Elephant) (Sport Hunting) Regulations, 2005) so that parts of elephant - other than their tusks, could be exported. I pointed out that the Natural Resources Consultative Forum - supported at the time by the hunting industry, had advised that elephant should not be hunted in Zambia for a variety of reasons, and that this advice had been ignored in 2005 (9 killed) and in 2006 (15 killed), and now in 2007 it was expected that much of the quota of 20 animals would be killed. The Director-General, who had previously given his word to me that no elephant hunting permits would be issued without stakeholder consultations, said that more than 20 elephant a year needed to be killed so as to provide income for communities, and that the 100 or so animals shot to protect crops should be sport hunted so as to provide additional benefits. Doubtless this will require the Statutory Instrument to be altered i.e. section (2) (a) "The hunting of elephants for sport shall not include the hunting of elephant for purposes of controlling problem elephants."

Some operators - whom had previously supported the hunting ban, requested that they be allowed to hunt elephant in their areas, asking that CITES agree to increased offtakes, and that they be allowed to bring clients in as soon as crop raiding occurred. The fact that much of the crop raiding is carried out by non trophy bull elephant, and that it takes place in the rains when much of Zambia is impassable, escaped the meeting, as is the escalating wave of elephant poaching currently taking place in the country.

African carnage -- 1 year's seized ivory likely came from 23,000 elephants

2007-02-28T05:17:00.000+02:00

African elephants are being slaughtered for their ivory at a rate unprecedented since an international convention banning ivory trade took effect in 1989, a University of Washington biologist says.

The problem is so serious that the giant creatures might be on the path to extinction unless western nations reinstate strong enforcement efforts that all but halted black-market ivory trade in the four years immediately after the ban was enacted, said Samuel Wasser, director of the UW Center for Conservation Biology. He is the lead author of a paper detailing the problem published the week of Feb. 26 in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and he argues the continued loss of elephants will have serious consequences.

"Elephants are majestic animals and are not trivial to the ecosystem. They are a keystone species and taking them out significantly alters the habitat," he said. "It has ripple effects on lots of different species."

For the year ending in August 2006, authorities seized more than 23,400 kilograms, or nearly 24 tons, of contraband ivory, Wasser said. But the paper notes it is commonly assumed that customs agents typically detect only about 10 percent of contraband, so the actual amount of poached ivory probably is closer to 234,000 kilograms. That means more than 23,000 elephants, or about 5 percent of Africa's total population, likely were killed for that amount of ivory.

China's burgeoning economy is a major force driving the black-market ivory trade, escalating prices and attracting organized crime, Wasser said. In 1989 a kilogram of high-quality ivory sold for $100 on the black market. That rose to $200 in 2004 but by last year had ballooned to $750 per kilogram.

"If it really is organized crime that's driving this, then the only hope we have of stopping it is to stop the ivory at the source, to not let it into the international market. Because once it's in the international market, the trade is very hard to stop," Wasser said.

He and colleagues at the UW are working with other scientists and law enforcement agencies, primarily Interpol, to track the source of poached ivory. In June 2002 authorities in Singapore seized a 20-foot container packed with 6.5 tons of contraband ivory bound for the Far East from Malawi. It was the second-largest seizure of contraband ivory on record, the largest since the 1989 ban took effect, and represented ivory from 3,000 to 6,500 poached elephants. Authorities assumed the ivory had been collected from many different places, especially from forest elephants, but the assumption proved to be incorrect.

Over several years, Wasser and his colleagues have collected genetic information from a variety of populations by sampling tissue and dung from known populations, then compiled the information into a DNA-based map showing genetic differences between elephant populations. Using that information, the scientists grouped the tusks by common characteristics and then sampled randomly from those groups. They examined 67 tusks from the 532 seized in Singapore and showed that the ivory came from elephants on Africa's broad savannahs, not in forests. Further testing showed the ivory came from a small area of southern Africa, most likely centered on Zambia. Law enforcement agencies have identified many participants in the poaching, yet not one person has been prosecuted, Wasser said.

The tusks in the seized shipment weighed an average of 11 kilograms apiece, more than twice the weight normally seen in the market, indicating they came from a large number of older elephants. The shipment also contained 42,000 hankos, small blocks of solid ivory used to make signature stamps, or chops, that are widely used in the Far East, particularly in China and Japan.

Wasser noted that shortly before the seizure, Zambia had petitioned for permission to sell its ivory stockpiles internationally, stockpiles that were supposed to have existed before the international ban took effect in 1989. But the application said only 135 elephants were known to have been killed illegally in Zambia in the previous 10 years, far fewer than would have had to be slaughtered to produce the ivory in just the single seizure in 2002.

The paper's co-authors are Matthew Stephens, formerly of the UW and now at the University of Chicago; Celia Mailand and Rebecca Booth of the UW; Benezeth Mutayoba of the Sokoine University of Agriculture in Tanzania; Emily Kisamo of the Lusaka Agreement Task Force in Kenya; and Bill Clark of the Interpol Working Group on Wildlife Crime and the Israel Nature and Parks Authority. The work was funded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service African Elephant Conservation Fund, the International Fund for Animal Welfare, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Center for Conservation Biology.

The authors wonder how a poor nation such as Zambia, with only slight international assistance, can fend off organized criminals fueled by the booming Far East economy, and they argue that Western nations must resume efforts to halt ivory trafficking. They note that western nations contributed heavily to enforcement efforts when the international ban took effect in 1989, and in the next four years poaching was virtually eliminated. But the success apparently left a sense that the problem was solved and the nations withdrew their funding.

Wasser and colleagues want to see reinstatement of strong enforcement, and also want to see education programs established to teach people in Africa to better manage their wildlife and persuade people in Asia not to use ivory, much of which is obtained illegally.

"If people really realized what is happening they would be ashamed to be part of the crisis," he said. "We don't want to spend our time catching criminals, we want to stop the crime from happening. That's the most effective enforcement you can do."
###

Embargoed by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences For release at 5 p.m. EST, 2 p.m. PST, Monday, Feb. 26, 2007

For more information, contact Wasser at (206) 543-1669 or wassers@u.washington.edu

Arrests made in record Japan ivory haul...

2007-02-10T07:30:00.000+02:00

Saturday, 10 February 2007, 1:05 pm
Press Release: CITES
9 February 07

Arrests have been made in the record-breaking elephant ivory seizure case of this past August in Osaka, Japan. The confiscated ivory totalled nearly three tons, costing the lives of hundreds of endangered African elephants. Two suspects have just been taken into custody for their alleged violation of the international trade ban on ivory.
While claims have previously been made by the CITES (Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species) Secretariat that Japan no longer has significant involvement in the ivory trade industry, this 2.8 ton seizure clearly disproves such statements. “IFAW encourages the strictest penalties for those convicted in this crime. The poaching of elephants has spiralled out of control in recent years and international law must be strictly enforced,” said Rebecca Keeble, IFAW Asia Pacific Campaigns Officer.

Given that the seizure took place in August 2006, the official reporting, which occurred in October, raises major concerns about the forthrightness of Japanese authorities. The failure to promptly disclose these events occurred at a time that was all too convenient for Japan, just up for their consideration to become a trading partner by CITES for ivory stockpiles. With the seizure under wraps, Japan was approved as a trading partner.

“This behaviour cannot be ignored, and the trading partner status of Japan must be reconsidered by CITES standing committee,” said Ms Keeble.

Fuelled by a growing demand for ivory in Asian regions, the wholesale price of ivory in Japan and China has skyrocketed in recent years, going from $100/kg in the late 1990’s to the current staggering $750/kg.
The ivory found in this shipment is enough to create approximately 80,000 “hankos”, which is equivalent to roughly 40% percent of Japan’s annual consumption. Hankos are traditionally used by the Japanese to seal letters, and are representative of a certain status within society. Between March 2005 and August 2006, over 26 tons of ivory has been seized, the highest ever in such a period since the 1989 CITES ban went into effect (which was later resanctioned). This single seizure has been identified as the largest ivory seizure ever in Japan.

China and its influence on the illegal trade in ivory

2007-02-05T07:23:00.000+02:00

China was identified in the 2005 CITES Secretariat Technical Mission Report as the single most important
influence on the increasing trend in illegal trade in ivory since 1995 (SC53 Doc. 20.1 Annex). Evidence and
intelligence indicates that citizens of China based in Africa are engaged in illegal trade (SC 54 Doc.26.1 Rev.
1). The table in Annex 1 shows that since CoP13, 6.2 tonnes of illegal ivory was seized in China and Hong
Kong (with a further 5.2 tonnes seized in Taiwan). A further one tonne was seized in Zimbabwe (partly from
government owned stockpiles), reported to be destined for China, while Chinese dealers were reportedly
caught in Zimbabwe with another 7 tonnes; China is also reported to be a destination for illegal ivory being
smuggled through South Africa.

CITES Convention for June 2007...

2007-02-04T06:22:00.000+02:00

1
CONVENTION ON INTERNATIONAL TRADE IN ENDANGERED SPECIES
OF WILD FAUNA AND FLORA
__________________________
Fourteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties
The Hague (Netherlands), 3-15 June 2007
Interpretation and implementation of the Convention
Conservation of elephants and trade in elephant specimens
ILLEGAL IVORY TRADE AND CONTROL OF INTERNAL MARKETS
1. This document has been prepared by Kenya and Mali.
Introduction
2. This document is intended to support CoP14 Prop. XX submitted by Kenya and Mali on the African elephant
and outlines proposed submissions to the 14th Conference of the Parties to CITES (CoP14) to assist with
control of the ivory trade. These include a 20 year moratorium on trade in raw and worked ivory and
strengthened CITES requirements for ivory trade controls through amendments to Resolution Conf. 10.10 (Rev.
CoP12). It is intended to support and strengthen the Action Plan for the Control of Trade in African Elephant
Ivory, which Kenya and Mali fully support.
3. The illegal trade in ivory and uncontrolled domestic markets for ivory around the world present a considerable
problem, not only for the long term survival of many elephant populations, but also for wildlife law enforcement
authorities in range States and consumer countries. Since the last Conference of the Parties to CITES, CoP13
in Bangkok in October 2004, there have been a significant number of large seizures of ivory. The estimated
total amount of ivory reported seized since CoP13 is 41,043 kg (see table in Annex 1). Note that this is higher
than the figure quoted in CoP14 Prop. XX because in the short time since preparing the proposal two more
large seizures have been reported, one in Vietnam and one in France. On the basis of these seizures it is
estimated that somewhere in the order of 20,000 or more elephants have been poached annually since Cop13
to supply illegal ivory markets (see below).
4. At the 54th CITES Standing Committee meeting (SC54) in October 2006, the Director of ETIS (Elephant Trade
Information System) confirmed an “upsurge of seizures” in the last year. He also emphasized an increase in
organized crime and reported that government stockpiles were disappearing in some countries; this is also
confirmed in the Central African Elephant Conservation Strategy1.
5. An investigation in China in May and June 2006 found that the price of ivory on the illegal market was
US$560-750 / kg, representing up to a three fold increase in two years2. In Sudan and Egypt there has been a
twofold to fourfold increase in recent years. Further rises in ivory prices will continue to increase the incentive
for those involved in poaching and the illegal sale of ivory.
6. Thus demand for ivory has increased significantly since CoP13. Continued debate in CITES about re-opening
trade serves to fuel this demand, bringing with it increased enforcement challenges, particularly for elephant
range States. Such challenges demand fresh approaches. One such approach is DNA profiling, which has been
used to analyse the 6.5 tonnes of ivory seized in Singapore in 2002 (the results indicating that the majority of
the ivory was from elephants in Zambia (SC54 Doc. 26.1 (Rev. 1)).
7. Meanwhile, an essential element of any system to control ivory trade is the ability to monitor the flow of ivory
and to trace worked ivory back to the tusk or original piece of raw ivory and the country from which it
originated. This will require each State, particularly those with elephant populations on Appendix II and those
designated as ivory importing countries, to introduce a computerised registration system, by which all tusks
and cut pieces are marked and recorded on a database that is compatible with the databases of other Parties.
8. A moratorium on ivory trade would allow time - free from effects of any further CITES decisions on ivory trade
- to bring illegal trade under control; to develop new methodology (e.g. using DNA profiling) to meet the
considerable enforcement challenges facing African (and Asian) elephant range States; to allow for the proper
development of a standardised computer-based registration and tracking system; to determine the effects of
1 Strategy for the Conservation of elephants in central Africa, 2005 (Anon). http://www.iucn.org/themes/ssc/sgs/afesg/tools/
2 Ivory Market in China: China Ivory Trade Survey Report, IFAW, Jun 2006.
CoP14 Doc. XX
2
the one-off stockpile sale agreed to conditionally at CoP12; to determine and address the factors that are
driving the expanding illegal market; and to provide time to refine MIKE (the programme for Monitoring Illegal
Killing of Elephants) so that it can become an instrument more capable of detecting problems with poaching at
an early stage.
9. Meanwhile, Resolution Conf. 10.10 (Rev. CoP12) on trade in elephant specimens needs to be amended and
improved. Originally concluded at CoP10 in Harare, it is widely recognized that the Resolution is flawed. The
requirements it lays out for controlling internal trade in ivory are not adequate. Nevertheless these requirements
provide the measure for determining – under the Action Plan for the Control of Trade in African Elephant Ivory -
whether domestic ivory markets outside Africa comply with CITES.
Ivory seizures and poaching
10. The significant number of large seizures of ivory since CoP13 illustrates that demand for ivory has increased
substantially in the last two years. Clearly, many thousands of elephants are dying annually to supply the illegal
ivory markets. Among the most recent seizures are 3,000 kg in Osaka, Japan, in August 2006 and 1,500 kg in
France in November 2006, while over 5 tonnes were seized in two shipments in Taiwan in July 2006 (see
table in Annex 1 which summarizes information reported on these seizures at the time of writing). The ivory
seized totals 34,108.5 kg3 plus a further 155 tusks (of unspecified weight). A report distributed at SC54 in
October 2006 records another 5,639 kg and 197 tusks seized in many small seizures,4 bringing the total
reported in less than two years to 39,747.5 kg and 352 tusks, an estimated total of 41,043 kg.5 This is the
highest amount of ivory reported seized during any period between CITES conferences since African elephant
populations were listed on Appendix I in 1989. Using an average tusk weight of 3.68 kg6 and 1.88 tusks per
elephant,7 these seizures equate to 5,932 dead elephants. If enforcement authorities seize 15% of illegal
shipments of ivory (a generous estimate), the figures indicate that nearly 274 tonnes of ivory were in trade and
that approximately 39,550 elephants (or possibly more considering the need to supply the domestic markets)
have been poached since CoP13.
11. A report for CoP12 on data gathered by ETIS stated that 150 countries were implicated in the illegal ivory trade
(CoP12 Doc. 34.1). Analysis of ETIS ivory seizure data demonstrated that illicit ivory trade is most directly
correlated with the presence of large-scale, unregulated domestic ivory markets, which exhibit a poor degree of
enforcement effort. At CoP13, it was reported that illicit trade in ivory continued to be most directly related to
the presence of these markets in Asia and Africa (CoP13 Doc. 29.2). Furthermore, the ETIS report stated that
“to some extent, such markets have become more active since 1997” (notably, the year three populations of
African elephants were downlisted to Appendix II). The report concluded, inter alia, that “Cameroon, China, the
Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, Nigeria and Thailand are most highly implicated in the illicit
trade in ivory, and have held this distinction since CoP12.”
12. At CoP12, ETIS data showed a declining trend in ivory seizures from 1989 to 1994, followed by a period of
stability from 1994 to 1998 and an increasing trend from 1998 to 2002. The report linked the increasing trend
with the emergence of demand for ivory in China rather than the one-off sale of ivory that took place in 1999.
This finding was contested by the Executive Director General of the CITES Management Authority of China
who stated that many Chinese people misunderstood the decision to allow a one-off sale of ivory, and that the
apparent legality of ivory on sale in some elephant range States gives the wrong signal to Chinese people
working or touring in those countries.8 At CoP13, based on more than 1,000 additional ivory seizures reported
since CoP12, analysis of the ETIS data showed a decline from 1989 to 1994 and then a gradual increase from
1995 to 2002 (data from 2003 was considered deficient). It “continue[d] to confirm the findings of the ETIS
analysis to CoP12 that identified China as the single most important country in the ivory trade today”. (CoP13
Doc. 29.2).
13. The increasing trend in illegal ivory trade presents a clear threat to elephant populations, particularly in areas
most vulnerable to poaching. Section 5 of CoP14 Prop. XX documents recent heavy poaching in DRC,
particularly Salonga, Kahuzi Biega, Virunga and Garamba National Parks and Okapi Fauna Reserve. Widespread
and uncontrolled poaching has been reported in and around Zakouma National Park in Chad, while a recent
census found no elephants in Nigeria’s Sambisa Game Reserve (a MIKE site), where elephants had been subject
to heavy poaching in the three years before the survey.
3 Note that further verification is merited as to whether the 7 tonnes reported in illegal trade in Zimbabwe in May 2006 has been seized.
4 Ivory Update, compiled by Born Free Foundation and SSN for SC54, 2-6 Oct 2006.
5 Using an average tusk weight of 3.68 kg (Hunter, N., Martin, E. and Milliken, T. Determining the number of elephants required to supply
current unregulated ivory markets in Africa and Asia, Pachyderm No.36, Jan-Jun 2004).
6 Ibid.
7 Parker, I.S.C., and Martin, E.B. How many elephants are killed for the ivory trade, Oryx 16 (3): 235-239, 1982.
8 Chen Jianwei. Letter to TRAFFIC, 14 Oct 2002.
CoP14 Doc. XX
14. At a symposium on elephant conservation in Accra, Ghana in August 2006,9 participants from wildlife
authorities reported that poaching was the main cause of decline for elephants in Central African Republic
(CAR), Cameroon and Ethiopia and a serious threat in Niokolo Koba National Park in Senegal, as well as in
Benin and Niger. Organised poaching syndicates also pose a challenge in Malawi. In Liberia, with the end of the
civil war, poachers were reported to have returned to the bush. Poaching was confirmed to be a problem in
Kakoum and Mole national parks in Ghana.
15. Poaching also presents an on-going threat in east Africa. In Kenya, despite an elaborate enforcement network,
a total of 212 elephants have been confirmed poached to obtain their ivory since CoP13: 91 in 2004, 68 in
2005, and 53 from January to November 2006. Between January 2004 and November 2006, a total of
2,180.65kg of ivory and 55 pieces have been seized in Kenya. In 2006 alone, up to September, there were 54
seizures of ivory totalling 907.1 kg and 18 pieces. Since 2002, there have been three major seizures of ivory
shipments originating from Tanzania: more than 5 tonnes in July 2006 in Taiwan; almost two tonnes in Hong
Kong in October 2003; and 3.2 tonnes recovered in Dar es Salaam in January 2002 (see Annex 2 Table B of
CoP14 Prop. XX).
16. Elephants in Zambia have come under heavy pressure from poaching. Six tonnes of ivory seized in the
Philippines in January 2006 is believed to have come from Zambia. The country has also been confirmed as the
source of 6.5 tonnes of ivory shipped from South Africa and seized in Singapore in 2002. The same route has
allegedly been used 19 times before, involving 123.5 tonnes of ivory between 1994 and 2002, possibly also
originating from Zambia.10

Why elephant should not be hunted in Zambia...

2007-02-02T10:39:00.000+02:00

As the Natural Resources Consultative Forum advisory note on sport elephant hunting sent to the Minister of Tourism, Environment and Natural Resources goes some way to explaining, elephant should not be hunted in Zambia for the following reasons:
1. We lack the necessary scientific information on populations to support it
2. Zambia does not maintain proper records of poached elephant (MIKE: Monitoring of the Illegal Killing of Elephant), nor are elephant protected
3. CITES refused Zambia permission to sell its stockpile of ivory or to change the endangered status of elephant in the country
4. The application to CITES to hunt 20 elephant a year was based on the fact - according to government, that some specific elephant were raiding village gardens and therefore needed to be controlled. CITES apparently agreed to this ludicrous claim, though I have not yet been able to confirm that they gave permission for the kill
5. Elephant permits were issued for three areas, one of which has some 30 or so lodges. Icon bulls, the basis of much of our photo and eco tourism, have already been shot within this area - the Zambezi tourist area.
6. The Us Fish & Wildlife Service refuse to allow elephant ivory in to the country; America being our main source of hunting clients, solidarity is therefore required.
7. Elephant poaching is ongoing, and in one part of the Luangwa river government wildlife scouts are part of a poaching syndicate and are currently being investigated
8. No arrests have been made as a result of the Singapore seizure of 6 tons of ivory which came from the Luangwa; and now that we know that another 123.5 tons (14, 500 elephant) went out through the same route between 1994-2002, the failure to investigate points to major failings in the investigative machinery.
9. The hunting fraternity voted for the ban
10. Given all of this, our ratification of the Biodiversity Convention requires us to invoke the precautionary principle and ban any hunting

ZAMBIA JUMBO JUMBLE…by I.P.A. Manning

2007-02-01T05:43:00.000+02:00

The newspapers here in Zambia are full of the horrors of corruption - the cancer which renders development impossible and which has reduced this country – now in the top-ten hit parade of world corruption, to a pale shadow of what it once was. They also, in a marvelous example of their editorial capacity to hold two contradictory views simultaneously, blame the West (the imperialists) for our poverty, despite a recent report from Transparency International Zambia revealing that since independence only 16% of national government expenditure went on health, education, agriculture and local government – surely a heinous and deeply shameful shortfall of funds needed to alleviate the woeful plight of the poor; and, to add salt to the wounds, over the last 20 years almost a years’ worth of that expenditure was stolen or unaccounted for.

And there is a continuing 33 year long tide of corruption in our magnificent wilderness, our native black rhino killed, our wildlife slaughtered daily for the bushmeat trade, including, our elephant. Once it was for their tusks only, many thousands killed since1973, and now DNA analysis revealing that between 1994 - 2002, 123.5 tons of ivory - the equivalent of 14,500 elephant, were taken from the Luangwa Valley of Zambia and shipped by a single syndicate through Malawi and on to the Far East. Not surprisingly, with such a lamentable conservation record since then, Zambia is not allowed by CITES to sell its ivory stockpile (if still there), though since 2005, CITES, apparently persuaded by a Minister of Tourism, Environment and Natural Resources’ ludicrous assertion that they had identified 20 crop raiding elephant and that these should be killed on sport hunting permits, allowed it to issue 20 permits annually for elephant sport hunting, though the US Fish & Wildlife Service bars them from entry into the USA, the source of most hunting clients. Zambia of course needs money to run its statutory body responsible for wildlife; hence, you might conclude, it needs to sell some elephant permits – though the $100,000 share to the Government hardly pays for two vehicles. But the sad fact is that the Minister, advised by his head of the Zambia Wildlife Authority (ZAWA), has ignored the advice of the Zambia Natural Resources Consultative Forum – a cross-sectoral body drawn from Government departments, civil society and the donors (suppliers of 50% of Zambia’s financial needs) - which includes hunting organizations in its membership, to ban elephant hunting until such time as elephant populations and their management allow for it.

And undertakings given on 3 January at a meeting convened by the Minister with the private sector and rural community representatives - supposedly to rectify past mistakes and to consult widely with them on all issues, have fallen asunder; this followed by the lie that elephant hunting permits would not be issued unless all the people and organizations involved were consulted, and certainly not, said Dr Saiwana of ZAWA, before a ministerial visit to the Safari Club International hunting convention in Reno at the end of January.

But there was more to come on that trip to America, the Minister visiting the US Fish & Wildlife Service and lobbying not only for the ivory of the 20 elephant to be allowed in, but for increased numbers as well, he looking enviously at Zimbabwe and the 500 or so elephant it is culling (so he says), saying that Zambia’s paltry quota of eight elephant are far too few, neglecting to mention that elephant on the Zambia side are not part of the Hwange/Chobe population, and that those that are there form the basis of a thriving tourism business on the Zambezi, some of them already shot not far from the lodges.

The present Minister of Tourism etc, Kabinga Pande - guided by the dictates of politics and economics rather than wildlife management, is hard on the spoor of the previous Minister who stated that only the 20 identified crop-raiding bulls would be hunted, although the Statutory Instrument No 40 of 2005 made clear that the ‘hunting of elephants for sport (a) shall not include the hunting of elephant for purposes of controlling problem elephants’. And this SI states that nothing less than an elephant carrying 33 pounds of ivory side may be taken, thus opening the door for the killing of young breeding bulls. And what of the communities this is supposed to benefit. Evidence is to hand that communities within hunting concessions are owed a fortune by ZAWA, many of them unable to pay village scouts, encouraging them to poach the very animals they are charged to guard. One community with whom I work, with the help of the ZAWA crimes investigation unit - once it became clear we would brook no alternative, is playing a large part in bringing to book a poaching syndicate run by wildlife police officers. They shot two matriarchal herds of elephant and took the meat to the nearest roadhead where it was collected by their senior officer and transported into town in the Government pick-up.

The Minister of Tourism etc, Pande, in pursuit of economic justification, states that the 115 elephant shot as a result of village garden raiding in 2006 would have brought in $10,000 each ($1,115 000). But he clearly is unaware that a large percentage of these animals were females carrying small ivory. Not much of a trophy there. Well if we take the 14,500 elephant which were removed without let or hindrance from those charged to protect them, following the Pande formula they would have brought in $145, 000,000. And a thorough investigation of the disribution of the meat from garden raiders and elephant shot by safari hunters will surely reveal that little of it went to the villagers on whose lands the animals fell.

But it is the continuing slur on foreign investors in the safari industry, repeating in the press non-proven charges of the electronic calling of lion to the hunter’s rifle, which flies in the face of undertakings given at the truce meeting that the dirty linen would not be washed in public. And the Minister's charge that some of us send e-mails to America saying that safari hunting in Zambia is corruptly handled, is true. It would be silly to do so were it not true, and were one not able to prove it.

And today comes news of the issuing of a deportation notice by the Minister of Home Affairs against the safari operator, Ross Michelson - like me, one of those accused of calling lion with ‘louder speakers‘ but not yet found guilty in the courts (difficult when two of the three of us so charged had not been in the area where the crime was supposed to have been committed), something in defiance of habeus corpus, whose origins lie in our Magna Carta of 1215. His ‘sin’, and mine, is that he fell foul of a syndicate of anti-western imperialists; and mighty powerful they are here. And in my case, according to the present Director of Research of ZAWA, I am also inciting the local community against ZAWA. Well, as an old Game Department man here, I am merely carrying on a tradition of local villagers empowerment, kicked off by the doyen of conservationists, Norman Carr, and my friend and former colleague, Barry Shenton, in 1949/50. It is a fine and worthy tradition to follow.

Conservationists are dumbfounded by all this, donors alarmed and bunching like buffalo when a lion is about - for they know they control the purse strings, and the soldiers of civil society are both contemptuous and ashamed of what is happening. And the latter are a growing force, buoyed by their victory in defeating ZAWA and the Ministry in their proposed sale of Mosi oa Tunya National Park land and the building there of an 18 hole golf estate.

And what be the life of a paleface conservationist investor here: phone tapped, threats of deportation, ‘action targeted’, defamed, sullied and abused. Well, it be ‘faga moto’ and tilting at the windmill.

As a woman once said to me in Ireland, “It’s hard to know where you’r goin’ when you’r lost!”

Lusaka, Zambia.
31 January 2007
Chartered Wildlife Biologist
Steering Committee Member: The Natural Resources Consultative Forum of Zambia
Corporate Member: Business Action for Africa.
Foreign Investor and MD: Mbeza Safaris Ltd
Member: Professional Hunters’ Association of Zamb

Pande speak on elephant management...

2007-01-30T07:16:00.000+02:00

Zambia’s favourable climate attracts American tourists
From BWALYA NONDO in Nevada, USA

ZAMBIA’S favourable geo-political climate has stirred interest in a number of Americans to visit and sample the various tourism attractions. Some American citizens who thronged the Zambian stand at the on-going Annual Hunters Convention taking place in the American desert city of Reno, at the Spark Reno Convention Centre said, they were interested in coming to Zambia being one of the safest tourism destinations in the world. Peter Morris, a professional hunter and conversationalist underscored the importance of peace and political stability as key factors that determined the development and growth of tourism as an economic sector in any country. Mr Morris pledged to use his professional affiliation to help market the Visit Zambia Campaign across the United States.

American citizens’ interest to visit Zambia was aroused more by Tourism, Environment and Natural Resources Minister, Kabinga Pande’s, speech to the convention, urging them to consider Zambia a safe safari-hunting destination. Mr Pande said the Zambian Government recognises the high economic value of wildlife resources and that tourism had been rated second most important economic sector, of which safari hunting was an integral part.
The minister said Government had linked poverty reduction in hunting areas to wildlife conservation. He said revenues collected from safari hunting were shared equally between local communities and the Zambia Wildlife Authority (ZAWA). Mr Pande said safari hunters coming to Zambia would therefore contribute greatly to the enhancement of the rural economy especially in the development of social services. He said Government had put in place various mechanisms to add value to hunting expeditions.

On elephant hunting, the minister said Zambia decided to introduce this as sport hunting on pilot basis in Chiawa and Rufunsa Game Management Areas that border Zimbabwe. He said this decision was arrived at after observing that there was hunting of elephants in Zimbabwe and not in Zambia. This was despite managing the same animal population that kept crossing the borders.

The minister was grateful to Safari Club International for organising the convention that accorded Zambia an opportunity to market its safari hunting and tourism attractions. The weeklong convention has attracted 19,000 delegates from around the world.

Feeding from the cooking pots of the community...

2007-01-30T07:06:00.000+02:00

Kalaluka Mulyokela

As long as ZAWA still remain a parastatal institution feeding from the cooking pots of the community, it will remain a liability to conservation efforts in the country and beyond than a prime mover of objective and sustainable natural resources management practices and innovations.

A promise made in public having been abrogated in order to create some friendship with individuals and give ZAWA a breath to pay some credit is the most terrible betrayal of trust among parties, collaborators and sympathisers. ZAWA will never commit itself to any truth as long as they are dripping with the desire to make money for their senior staff and settle what they owe people. It is a very shamefully situation that the donor agents have continued to go to bed with ZAWA while deliberately failing to put enough conditions and ask for tangible and projected results of the use of their money.
Professional judgment and management of wildlife is no longer the main focus but the commercial benefits gained in such a program. Have a look at what happened in the Legacy Deal. If ZAWA was ready to lease the 218 hectares of the prime area of the Park here in Livingstone for an initial $9 million and a further $ 2 million per annually, what is so special about 10 elephants selected without scientific or any elaborate research based on many considerations let alone the concern of other partners. They went even further to quickly review the draft management plan and zoned the 218 hectares as a high level use area with full support of "top and learned senior management of ZAWA. Elsewhere heads would have rolled but at ZAWA some people have built empires and dynasties run purely as an individual wish. Shame on Govt and its misinformed technocrats at ministry level.
ZAWA has completely lost direction and unless the influence of political rhetoric is stopped, by the time the alarm of misuse of public resources will have been sounded, it will be like closing the stables when the horses would have escaped.

If you check in today's Post newspaper, you will see adverts asking the public to apply for hunting licenses in GMAs. If you as a forum asked for the animal census on which the quotas will be based, you will be given none. Most likely they will be based on hunting success. We all know that this is not the best data on which to base hunting quotas. Even the minister had said it that unethical methods were used by even safari operators who he even threatened to deal with. What other atrocities are been committed by unaccompanied individual hunters in GMAs. Dry season drinking points have become target spots for most people hunting in GMAs
Today ZAWA game guards in Mazabuka have been turned into fish scouts, they are used by some farmers locally to clean their cattle farms of their own staff who poach for the pot once in 365 days while the Lechwe in Lochnivar are slaughtered at will by poachers. The list is endless and for those with the passion to see sanity return to ZAWA there is only one term to use that is "wildlife management in Zambia has go to the dogs and Government has NO will to say the least"

Can the National Consultative Forum address such concern for the people of Zambia and World over before its role becomes synonymous with any compromised line ministry department. Please pass this to people that will have the nerve to find a common ground for our wildlife including donors.

Conservation Force going awry...

2007-01-29T12:57:00.000+02:00

Elephant Hunting Is Fully Open In Zambia / Getting A Handle On “Sustainable Use”
(posted August 2005)

Zambia has most definitely opened safari hunting of elephant as planned. The hunting is limited to only a few areas this safari season, but that is a beginning. We have been after Zambia to open elephant hunting for more than a decade. Some readers may remember that I began the Zambia Initiative within Safari Club International in the middle 90’s to rebuild Zambia’s failing safari industry. That initiative was successful, but we were unable to persuade the Zambian officials to add elephant hunting to their safari menu. Periodically, the authorities have continued to consult Conservation Force about opening elephant hunting and this season have finally begun some limited elephant hunting.

Conservation Force has met recently with Zambia’s management and with CITES permit authorities and has pledged to assist all US hunters with their trophy import permit applications as a free legal service until they are approved and accepted routinely. We are, in fact, already assisting all of the known US hunters. Their permits have been filed. We’ve also met face to face with the US Fish & Wildlife Service as a facilitator to expedite the necessary information exchange between that agency and Zambia for issuance of elephant trophy import permits. The necessary intergovernmental correspondence between the USF&WS and Zambia is ongoing.

Under the USF&WS regulations adopted in the early 90’s, the USF&WS must make two findings before issuing an elephant trophy import permit. First, under CITES, it must determine that the trophy import is for a "purpose" that is not "detrimental". Second, under the US Endangered Species Act (ESA), it must determine that the underlying hunting benefits, or enhances, elephant conservation. In making the second determination under the ESA, the Service essentially re-makes the biological non-detriment determination made by the exporting country (Zambia) and additionally must be provided hard evidence of conservation enhancement. Permit applicants should collect and furnish the USF&WS evidence of the abundance of elephant where they hunt, the effect of their hunting on reducing or controlling poaching, all related revenue directed towards conservation of the elephant, community programs and incentives derived from the hunting and other benefits. Remember that the renowned CAMPFIRE PROGRAM in neighboring Zimbabwe that began in the early 1990’s rested on elephant safari hunting. Sixty-eight percent of the revenue of that program was derived from the safari hunting of 54 elephants per year. The pre-existing poaching was largely eliminated and the number of elephants killed in problem animal control was greatly reduced. We wish Zambia every bit the same success, though their initial elephant hunting is limited to problem animals in a small number of indigenous communities.

Zambia Minister lobbies for elephant hunting with US Fish & Wildlife Service

2007-01-28T12:40:00.000+02:00

Zambia lobbies US over elephant trophy hunting
From BWALYA NONDO (Public Relations Officer, Zambia Ministry of Tourism, Environment & Natural Resources), Nevada, USA
The Daily Mail 27 January 2007

ZAMBIA has launched a campaign to lobby the United States government to recognise elephant trophy hunting as key to the conservation of the earth’s largest mammal. The American government does not allow its citizens to participate in elephant safari hunting in Zambia, and advances the Convention on Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) banning, dealing in ivory among others, as the reason for its position. Zambia has since met the United States Fisheries and Wildlife Services authorities to argue that increased quotas for trophy hunting in selected areas with trans-boundary elephant populations, was necessary. These areas include the Zambezi valley, where the elephant population was shared by Zambia and Zimbabwe. Zambia considers a quota of eight for the Lower Zambezi, far below the limit settings recognised for elephant trophy hunting quotas.

Minister of Tourism, Environment and Natural Resources, Kabinga Pande, who is leading a delegation of Government, Zambia Wildlife Authority (ZAWA), and Zambia National Tourist Board (ZNTB) officials to the annual hunters convention in the American desert city of Reno, said he was concerned that while Zimbabwe was allowed a gigantic 500 quota in the shared trans-boundary elephant population for sport-hunting, Zambia was restricted to a paltry 20, annually. Speaking when he met United States Fisheries and Wildlife Services, director, Ken Stensil, at the Reno Convention Centre, Mr Pande observed that sport-hunting had the potential to bring large financial benefits to the country and empower local communities economically and motivate them to participate in conservation projects. He said sport hunting would also go a long way in easing animal-human conflicts in game management areas and therefore enhances conservation of animals such as elephants. He said sport hunting was a conservation tool that would help Zambia plough back proceeds into the community. He regretted that in the past, the government has been subsidising conservation of elephants through funds raised from other species when the elephant could itself contribute to its own management. Between 2001 and 2005, 115 elephants were killed on control programmes, resulting in a loss of US$1.1 million in licence fees. If the same animals were hunted for trophy, communities would have realised US$575,000 for investment in various socio-economic areas to reduce poverty. Mr Pande said although many elephants were killed on control programmes every year, the only benefit to the community was meat. He said it was for this reason that communities supported the resumption of trophy hunting.

The United States was an important market for Zambian trophies and appealed to authorities to rescind the decision not to allow their citizens to bring trophies from elephant-hunting safaris. Mr Pande also cautioned the American government to be wary of some safari hunters who were maligning the Zambian government through e-mails, suggesting that safari hunting in Zambia was corruptly handled.

And Mr Stansell assured the Zambian delegation that US authorities would study the Zambian case. He appealed for more information to enable the American authorities appreciate Zambia’s elephant situation clearly. The five-day convention organised by Safari Club International, has attracted 19,000 delegates from around the world.

ZAMBIA: OF TRUCES, BROKEN PROMISES AND ELEPHANT

2007-01-28T12:34:00.000+02:00

On 3 January 2007, a truce between Government and the hunting safari industry – including all of the tourism and conservation community, was brokered by the Minister of Tourism, Environment & Natural Resources, Kabinga Pande, at a meeting in Lusaka. The Zambia Wildlife Authority (ZAWA) Director-General, Dr Lewis Saiwana, admitted past mistakes and requested future cooperation, and the Minister promised a future open door policy, requesting that the campaign against Government cease and that the factional fighting besetting the industry should be resolved. On Monday 15 January, 2007, Ian Manning and Rolf Shenton, steering committee members of the Natural Resources Consultative Forum of Zambia (NRCF) – a cross-sectoral forum of all the stakeholders in the environmental and natural resources field, met with the Chairman of the ZAWA Board, Walusiku Lisulo, who stated that ZAWA would fully consult all stakeholders in the future. This undertaking was confirmed by Dr Saiwana, who added that no elephant hunting permits would be issued without full consultation with all concerned, and that a full round of stakeholder meetings would be held in February 2007 on the return of the Minister, the Chairman and the DG from their attendance at the forthcoming Safari Club International meeting in Reno, USA. The NRCF had in January 2006, invoked the precautionary principle, and with the agreement of the hunting fraternity of Zambia, advised the Minister that no elephant hunting should be allowed until the necessary supporting scientific information was to hand. This had been ignored by the Ministry and ZAWA in 2006, assurances obviously now being sought that this would not happen again.

On Tuesday 16 January, the licensing office of ZAWA phoned safari operators to announce that an auction of elephant hunting permits would be held at ZAWA HQ on Friday19 January, 2007. On Wednesday 17 January, Manning e-mailed and had delivered by courier to Dr Lewis Saiwana, Walusiku Lisulo, and the public relations officer of the Ministry, Bwalya Nondo - the latter promising to place the letter in the hands of the Minister, a letter querying the auction. No reply was forthcoming.

On Friday 19 January 2007 - in a repeat of the auction of 2006, and witnessed by a safari operator’s representative, ten elephant for sport hunting were put up for auction at a reserve price of $10,000 each, two elephant permits being purchased by Mr Doug Reynolds of Royal Zambezi Safaris, to be killed in the Chiawa concession, an area adjoining a photo tourism hotspot. Rashid Randera of Baobab Safaris and Nyampala Safaris, who in 2006 had purchased eight elephant permits, attended the auction, did not take part in the public bid, but met with the auctioneers prior to the auction. No other operators, Reynolds and Randera apart - as in 2006, attended. An opportunity was given to the acting Director General of the Zambia Wildlife Authority, Isaac Longwe, to comment on the auction. He has so far not done so.

Ian Manning
23 Janaury, 2007.

Zambia Natural Resources Consultative Forum advises against elephant sport hunting

2007-01-28T12:11:00.000+02:00

NATURAL RESOURCES CONSULTATIVE FORUM MEETING TO DECIDE ON THE CONTINUANCE OF SPORT ELEPHANT HUNTING IN ZAMBIA

And to provide advice to the

PERMANENT SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF TOURISM, ENVIRONMENT AND NATURAL RESOURCES

10 JANUARY 2006

INTRODUCTION
A meeting was held at 1430 hrs on 10 January 2006 to discuss the question of Elephant Sport Hunting (ESH) in Zambia so as to prepare an urgent Advisory Note for the Permanent Secretary and the Minister in the light of their forthcoming attendance at the meeting of the Safari Club Convention in Reno, Nevada, USA starting on 18 January 2006, a convention where the elephant quota for 2006 would be sold by Zambian Safari Operators and their agents. Regrettably the Acting DG ZAWA declined to attend in person or to send a competent officer (a preliminary meeting of the NRCF Steering Committee had been held the previous week to discuss the matter with the Acting DG ZAWA, the latter declining to attend)

The meeting overwhelmingly agreed that given the absence of the necessary base-line data (see below – prepared for the meeting) from ZAWA on which clear advice may be tendered to the Permanent Secretary, that the precautionary principle should be invoked and ESH banned for 2006, and until such time as ZAWA provided the essential inputs

The Chairman NRCF however ruled that the MTENR should be advised of the situation but that a meeting with ZAWA should be held after SCI Reno to decide on the formulation of the Advisory Note.

NRCF, as far as those present was concerned, therefore rests on the horns of a dilemma.

1.0 BACKGROUND

In 2005 the Zambia Wildlife Authority (ZAWA) issued a quota of 20 elephant for sport hunting by foreign clients in the Chiawa, Rufunsa and Lower Lupande hunting concessions; 10 to be utilized by the concessionaires of those areas, the remaining 10 to be auctioned to other safari operators – the proceeds to be deposited in an elephant conservation fund and shared with affected communities. The quota was issued by ZAWA in response to complaints by local communities of elephant damage to crops, and of loss of life . The DG ZAWA stated that 20 problem bull elephant had been identified by his officers and that these would be shot, and that measures would be taken to assist communities in improving their capacity to defend themselves against raiders. The Tourism Council of Zambia (TCZ), the Safari Hunting Operators of Zambia (SHOAZ), the South Luangwa Conservation Society (SLCS) – which produced an analysis of the issue, in particular a response to ZAWA’s Draft Guidelines for Elephant Sport Hunting (ESH)”, and Conservation Lower Zambezi (CLZ) opposed the hunting of elephant on the grounds that elephant were being poached , that populations had not yet recovered from the hunting ban of 1982, and that the few bull elephant in these areas were of considerable value to the non-consumptive tourism industry. Numerous international elephant conservation organizations also opposed the move. In 2004, ZAWA had applied to the Conference of the Parties (COP) of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora (CITES) for the ivory taken from the 20 elephant to be exported to CITES signatory countries. This application was granted. ZAWA’s application for elephant to be downlisted to Appendix 2, enabling it to sell its stockpile of 17 tons of ivory, was refused. At least one international organization supported the introduction of elephant hunting and had negotiated with the US Fish & Wildlife Service for ivory from the 20 hunted elephant to be imported into the USA. This was, however, refused. ZAWA, through the NRCF held a consultative meeting on the elephant hunting proposal, but had already announced the issue of the hunting quota.

2. Policy and Zambian International Treaty Obligations

Zambia Draft National Policy on Environment (May 2005) •The wildlife resource is generally under severe and increasing pressure due to increase in human population and loss of habitat as a consequence of expanding human settlements and conversion of habitat to available land. • Depletion in most places of wildlife due to illegal harvesting a consequence of high poverty levels. • Deforestation and uncontrolled hunting is leading to a widespread depletion of all of wildlife • Loss of biodiversity through weak management of protected areas. • Community-based management still weak and not yet widely practiced. • Potential for tourism development jeopardised through reduction in large mammal populations and degradation of habitats in some places. • River flow changes through hydro-power dam regulation causing reduced production of floodplain wildlife. • Development of mechanisms for re-investment and revenue sharing with the poor.

CITES Convention Guided by way of non-detriment finds and ultimately by the application of the precautionary principle
1992 – Burnt 6.5 tons of ivory. Paid for by Elefriends +
2002 – Application for transfer of elephant to Appendix 2 refused
2004 – Application to sell 17 tons refused
2004 – Application for parties to import ESH products from Zambia ?

Biodiversity Convention: Where knowledge is lacking, guided by the application of the precautionary principle
The African Convention on the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (2003) -an AU mirror of the Biodiversity Convention

Lusaka Agreement 2002 - 68. The Zambia Wildlife Authority is currently investigating the role of Zambian nationals and ivory sourced within Zambia relating to the recent seizure of 6.5 tonnes in Singapore. There have been seven arrests to date including an unspecified number of ZAWA staff members.
2005 - Lusaka Agreement Task Force currently investigating 6 tons of illegal ivory confiscated in Singapore 2002 – now moved to Nairobi, believed to come from Zambia.
African Elephant Conservation Act: A U.S. federal law that reaffirms the endangered status of African elephants and allocates money toward conservation efforts US law recognizing endangered status of African elephant

3. Precautionary Principle Guidelines
Guideline 1: INCORPORATE Incorporate the Precautionary Principle explicitly into appropriate legal, institutional and policy frameworks for biodiversity conservation and natural resource management. Elaboration: Application of the principle requires a clear legal and policy basis and an effective system of governance. It also requires the establishment and maintenance of adequately resourced institutions to carry out research into risk and uncertainty in environmental decision-making.
Guideline 2: INTEGRATE Integrate application of the Precautionary Principle with the application of and support for other relevant principles and rights.
Guideline 3: OPERATIONALISE Develop clear and context-specific obligations and operational measures for particular sectors and contexts, or with respect to specific conservation or management problems.
Guideline 4: INCLUDE STAKEHOLDERS AND RIGHTHOLDERS Include all relevant stakeholders and rightholders in a transparent process of assessment, decision-making and implementation
Guideline 5: USE THE BEST INFORMATION AVAILABLE Base precautionary decision-making on the best available information, including that relating to human drivers of threats, and traditional and indigenous knowledge
Guideline 6: CHARACTERISE UNCERTAIN THREATS Characterise the threat(s), and assess the uncertainties surrounding the ecological, social and economic drivers of changes in conservation status.
Guideline 7: ASSESS OPTIONS Identify the available actions to address threats, and assess the likely consequences of these various courses of action and inaction
Guideline 8: ALLOCATE RESPONSIBILITIES FOR PROVIDING EVIDENCE Allocate roles and responsibilities for providing information and evidence of threat and/or safety according to who is proposing a potentially harmful activity, who benefits from it, and who has access to information and resources
Guideline 9: BE EXPLICIT Specify that precautionary measures are being taken and be explicit about the uncertainty to which the precautionary measures are responding.
Guideline 10: BE PROPORTIONATE In applying the Precautionary Principle adopt measures that are proportionate to the potential threats
Guideline 11: BE EQUITABLE Consider social and economic costs and benefits when applying the Precautionary Principle and where decisions would have negative impacts on the poor or vulnerable explore ways to avoid or mitigate these
Guideline 12: BE ADAPTIVE Use an adaptive management approach, including the following core elements: • monitoring of impacts of management or decisions based on agreed indicators; • promoting research, to reduce key uncertainties; • ensuring periodic evaluation of the outcomes of implementation, drawing of lessons and review and adjustment, as necessary, of the measures or decisions adopted; • establishing an efficient and effective compliance system.

4. A Few Multi-National Organizations Position on Zambia ESH

Conservation Force: Has been supporting ZAWA in ESH
Save the Elephants Organization: Opposed to ESH, advocating non-lethal Green Hunting
Bloody Business.com: Opposes hunting, states CITES will monitor the Zambian ESH (World Peace Herald 23 May 05)
Born Free Opposes
IFAW Opposes
US Fish & Wildlife Service: Does not allow imports of ESH from Zambia
Under the USF&WS regulations adopted in the early 90’s, the USF&WS must make two findings before issuing an elephant trophy import permit. First, under CITES, it must determine that the trophy import is for a "purpose" that is not "detrimental". Second, under the US Endangered Species Act (ESA), it must determine that the underlying hunting benefits, or enhances, elephant conservation. In making the second determination under the ESA, the Service essentially re-makes the biological non-detriment determination made by the exporting country (Zambia) and additionally must be provided hard evidence of conservation enhancement. Permit applicants should collect and furnish the USF&WS evidence of the abundance of elephant where they hunt, the effect of their hunting on reducing or controlling poaching, all related revenue directed towards conservation of the elephant, community programs and incentives derived from the hunting and other benefits