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Poaching in Liberia's Forests Threatens Rare Animals
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Liberia's forestry authority said poachers have overrun the country's national parks and are killing elephants, chimpanzees and other protected species for sale on the bushmeat market.
Liberia's Gola forest preserve is part of a vast rainforest that once stretched across this part of West Africa but now covers just patches of Liberia and neighboring countries.
The head of conservation at the government Forest Development Authority (FDA), Theo Freeman, said poachers are now threatening the existence of several rare animal species living in the Gola and Sarpo national parks. "There are people who have decided to just get in the forest and hunt everything they come across," he said.
"The hunting also goes on for those species that are fully protected like the leopards, the pygmy hippopotamus, the elephant, the crocodile, jentik duikers, and what have you," Freeman said. "We had about seven species of monkey. They are killing everything."
Freeman said hunters sell the animals as bushmeat, which is often exported to neighboring Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast, despite a ban on the cross-border sale of wild animals. "Where we are now is highly commercial. You see truckloads of dried meat, bushmeat endangered or not endangered, coming from rural areas to town," he added.
Freeman said snaring and wire traps are the methods of choice. He said gunfire draws too much attention.
"A single man in a village who have about 200 or 300 [traps], he sets these things and he won't have a chance to visit the traps throughout the day, or sometimes two or three weeks," Freeman said. "We go on the back roads and we see these things and the animals are dead. You see the bones. Some are getting rotten. It is a very cruel way to hunt."
Rural communities have traditionally hunted and eaten wild animals. However conservationists have long condemned the commercial bushmeat trade as one of the primary threats to African wildlife. Still, the trade continues to thrive in West and Central Africa, in part due to poverty.
Liberian hunter Ben Varney said he cannot find any other way to support his five children. "No job in the country. I need to kill these animals to feed my family," he said.
"If the government provides job, we will leave the forest. But for now, this is the only place we depend on to supply our needs," Varney added. "I kill the animals, sell them, to send my children to school and feed my family."
In Liberia, it is illegal to kill protected species like chimpanzees and elephants. However, current laws are weak and vague, making prosecution difficult. Forest rangers are not allowed to carry guns and it is difficult for them to patrol such large expanses of territory.
Freeman said the FDA drafted a revised law that would strengthen punishments for illegal hunting. However the legislation continues to languish in the president's office.
Meanwhile, he said the hunting continues to push endangered species closer to extinction.
Source: http://www.voanews.com
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South Africa: Number of Rhinos Poached Rises to 210
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Pretoria — The number of rhinos poached in South Africa since the beginning of the year has risen to 210, the Department of Environmental Affairs said.
Of the total number, the Kruger National Park has lost a "disturbing" total of 127 rhinos since January 2012.
"Government views the poaching of this national treasure in a very serious light and continues to prioritise our fight against this crime through coordinated, joint efforts," said the department.
However, it said it was encouraging that the number of arrests continued to increase, with the arrests for 2012 now totalling 128. Sixty-seven arrests have been made in the Kruger Park.
In her Budget Vote earlier this month, Water and Environmental Affairs Minister Edna Molewa said the ongoing poaching of rhino was a source for great concern to government and the various stakeholders.
She said government would continue to implement the various initiatives, as well as place added measures to address the matter.
The on-going scourge underscored the importance of SADC collaboration on the development of Transfrontier Conservation Areas. "The resolution is not managing through fences, but to continue the southern African initiative of cross-boundary conservation partnerships," she said.
South Africans are urged to report incidents of rhino poaching or any tip-offs that could lead to arrests and prevention of illegal killings to 0800 205 005.
http://www.buanews.gov.za
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SA mulling rhino-horn trade, says minister
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SOUTH Africa is considering whether to approach the international community with a proposal to trade in rhino horn, Environment Minister Edna Molewa told MPs on Wednesday.
Opening debate in the National Assembly on her department's budget, she said this included engaging "major role players, including international and regional partners (and) potential consumer states".
Ms Molewa's remarks come 10 months ahead of the 16th congress of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites), set to take place in Bangkok, Thailand, in March next year.
According to reports, South Africa is sitting on an estimated 20-ton stockpile of rhino horn — some of it in private hands and some stored by conservation authorities.
The price of the horn, should the Cites moratorium on trade be lifted, has been estimated at more than R500000 a kilogram.
Ms Molewa has declined to say how much rhino horn is held by government-managed parks and reserves.
"Due to security risks, the department cannot publicly announce the amount of stocks being held by these agencies," she said earlier this year.
On Wednesday, she said her department was involved in an "extensive" preparatory process ahead of the Cites congress.
"This will include discussions on whether or not to approach the international community with a proposal to trade in rhino horn," she said.
On the rhino poaching crisis in South Africa, Ms Molewa said 199 rhinos had been killed so far this year.
"We are very, very deeply concerned," she told the House.
Earlier, briefing journalists at Parliament, the minister said South Africa would not table a document at the next Cites meeting calling for the rhino-horn trade moratorium to be lifted.
"No, not this time around," she said. "We are still considering all options, as well as probabilities towards that direction. We have not decided yet. Let it be clear. We are still doing some very serious work in analysing whether we need to move in that direction or not."
Among the things that needed to be done before trade could resume, she said, was "to ensure we get to know who the partners are on the other side".
Policies had to be put in place "that do not allow any shenanigans to operate in the system", Ms Molewa said, adding: "There are just too many things to do before we can place the discussion before the conference of parties. We are not yet there."
http://www.businessday.co.za
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Kenya: Stiffer Sentences Will Help Save the Elephant
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Two months ago ivory poachers caught in West Laikipia in the act of hacking out the tusks of a newly killed elephant were found guilty and fined Sh15,000. This happened in the same court that sentenced a livestock thief to seven years imprisonment for the crime of stealing one sheep. And it happened all on the same day.
Wild animals in Kenya are under significant and increasing threat, with some credible organizations estimating national wildlife losses of more than 70% over the last 30 years. Yet current laws permit such light sentencing for wildlife crime that they provide little or no deterrent to increasingly sophisticated poaching rings. This is despite of the fact that wildlife underpins the Kenyan tourist industry. A weak legal system is literally permitting the 'goose that lays the golden egg' to be slowly killed.
In particular the threat to rhinos and elephants has now reached unprecedented levels. Fuelled by demand from the Far East, particularly China, for ivory and horn, conservationists across the country, from the Masai Mara to Marsabit, are struggling to stem the tide.
In response to major rhino losses during 2011, the Kenya Wildlife Services, senior government and the private sector collaborated effectively to deal with this threat. Killing rhinos quickly became a very risky activity for poachers, with a good number shot dead in the act. Consequently known poaching rings shifted their attention to elephants and their ivory.
In contrast to rhinos elephants are much more numerous, range over wide unprotected areas and are therefore much more difficult to protect. Nevertheless in some areas of northern Kenya where known populations have been monitored closely for many years, the proportion of illegally killed elephants (as a percentage of all recorded elephant deaths) has now reached over 70%, way beyond the point of 'sustainable off-take'. Their ivory is being purchased by brokers, for as much as Sh20,000 per kilogram in places such as Isiolo, and shifted across the border to countries such as Somalia before export to the Far East.
Perhaps not surprisingly many of the perpetrators are known, especially those operating within the close knit community conservancies of northern Kenya.
However, despite the best efforts of the KWS and local community scouts, the local police forces appear apathetic and unwilling to become involved. This may be because they know that apprehending poachers is a waste of their time, unlikely to be treated seriously by the courts and certainly not taken seriously by the laws of the land. Alternatively, given the large amounts of money now involved in the illegal ivory trade, perhaps they are being induced to turn a blind eye? Thus the killing continues.
So how are we to stop this onslaught? Like many things in life, success will be dependent upon the successful implementation of many different actions. Clearly Kenya must do all that it can to deal with the supply side, including the urgent introduction of much stiffer penalties for wildlife crime. We must support our over-stretched enforcement officers, ensure that magistrates treat wildlife crime with the seriousness it deserves and act to interdict known criminal syndicates dealing in illegally harvested wildlife products.
We must also start to address the demand side, although herein there lies a major problem. At least for ivory it is known that the primary source of demand is China, a country with huge economic power that is playing an increasingly significant role in Kenya and across Africa. Possibly fearful of upsetting or embarrassing the Chinese, it would appear that the Kenyan government may be reluctant to make an issue out of the ivory trade and the damage this is doing to Kenya's elephant populations and ultimately the national tourism industry. However this is an approach that makes little sense.
Unbeknown to many, China has some of the strictest wildlife legislation in the world. For example killing one of the few remaining elephants in China currently carries a penalty of life imprisonment. So the Chinese clearly do take wildlife crime pretty seriously! Perhaps more importantly, we should realize that China needs Kenya every bit as much as Kenya needs China. Look no further than the recent discoveries of oil in Turkana and the recent commissioning of the so called LAPSSET corridor. Thus it should be possible for the Kenya government to deal with the Chinese on an equal footing, something that needs to start happening soon if our elephant populations are to be saved from annihilation in the next few years.
Of course dealing with demand for ivory from China doesn't address demand from the Vietnamese elite for ground rhino horn as a cure for hangovers. So perhaps it would interest our Vietnamese readers to know that recent scientific evidence appears to show a link between rhino horn consumption and autism, and that at least 90% of the "rhino horn" that is sold in Vietnam is in fact fake, being made primarily from the horns of water buffaloes.
Richard Vigne is CEO of the Ol Pejeta Conservancy
Source: http://www.the-star.co.ke
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AZA Zoos Unite to Address Human-Wildlife Conflict in Africa
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Human-wildlife conflict is a serious obstacle to wildlife conservation worldwide. As human populations increase, development expands, and the global climate changes, people and wildlife are forced into greater direct competition for shrinking resources.
Recognizing the critical need for wildlife professionals to address escalating conflict between humans and wildlife, four AZA-accredited zoos – Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, Denver Zoo, and Houston Zoo – supported the participation of 15 wildlife conservation professionals from eight African countries in "conflict transformation" training. The program was designed and led by the Human-Wildlife Conflict Collaboration (HWCC).
"The training was a real eye-opener for solutions to current issues we face every day," said Shivani Bhalla, a training participant from the organization Ewaso Lions. "15 of the 26 participants, like me, would not have been able to attend this important training without the support of the U.S. zoos."
The 15 participants included conservationists working to save lions, Grevy's zebras, elephants, rhinos, mountain gorillas, wild dogs, cheetahs and chimpanzees. Each of the participants face serious daily challenges, such as preventing the illegal killing of lions and elephants in northern Kenya – conflict which is the direct result of increased ethnic violence.
Often described as the "missing link in conservation", HWCC's approach to transforming conflict between people and wildlife through capacity building can protect increasingly threatened populations of wild animals, as well as the people who live near them. The HWCC's training addressed theory, principles and practice of transforming complex conflicts into sustainable solutions for people and wildlife. It also provides tools for wildlife professionals on the front lines of conservation in Africa to determine root causes of conflict, build a foundation for trust and respect among stakeholders, and unearth fertile ground for cultivating sustainable solutions.
Within less than one week of completing the training, the participants were already reporting progress in resolving long-standing conflicts. Said one participant from Uganda, "the training opened up my mind and created a sense of direction to mitigation measures I am implementing in my conservation area."
The Human-Wildlife Conflict Collaboration launched in 2006 when more than 50 conservation professionals representing 40 organizations gathered in Washington, D.C. For more information, contact Francine Madden, HWCC Executive Director, at: francine@humanwildlifeconflict.org
Image: African elephant at a game fence. Copyright Tim Lewthwaite.
www.humanwildlifeconflict.org
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