Fwd: Elephants: 'Slaughter' fear over poaching rise

[Guest guest]

'Slaughter' fear over poaching

rise

By Andrew Luck-Baker , Science reporter, BBC News

The number of African elephants killed illegally

for their ivory is rising steeply.

A poaching surge in the past five years is raising fears of a

re-run of the catastrophic slaughter of

elephants in the 1970s and 1980s.

During that period, referred to by some as the "ivory

holocaust", Africa's elephant population plunged from

an estimated 1.3 million animals to 500,000.

One team of scientists argues that, today, about 38,000 elephants

across sub-Saharan Africa are dying

annually at the hands of poachers to feed the growing demand for

ivory carvings and trinkets in eastern

Asia.

If that poaching rate is correct and is sustained, the elephant

would become extinct across most of sub-

Saharan Africa in fifteen years.

The calculation on which this figure is based is questioned by a

number of other experts on the illegal

ivory trade. They believe the overall slaughter rate is

considerably lower.

Rocketing prices

Nonetheless, 20 years after the international trade in ivory was

made illegal, there is widespread concern

over the escalating problem.

According to Tom Milliken of the wildlife trade monitoring

organisation, TRAFFIC: "Since 2004 there's

been a rapidly increasing trend in the illegal ivory trade. And

this is very worrying because it follows on

from a progressive decline in the ivory trade."

In the last five years, the price of ivory has sky-rocketed.

There are reports of Asian dealers paying well in excess of

US$1,000 per kilo - such is the demand from

the

burgeoning population of consumers in China, for example, who can now afford

ivory products.

 

A

combination of the soaring value and the fact that wildlife crime is a low

priority for most law

enforcement

agencies means that ivory poaching and trafficking has attracted the interest

of international

criminal

syndicates.

According

to Sam Wasser of the Centre for Conservation Biology at the University of

Washington, Seattle:

"This

has created a situation where organised crime has gotten very heavily involved

in the illegal trade.

In

fact, if you look at all wildlife crime - not just ivory - there are tens of

billions of dollars being made

annually."

Elephant

populations around Africa face an uncertain future

The

slaughter of elephants is at its most rampant in the forests and bush of

Central Africa, in countries

such

as the Democratic Republic of Congo where civil war, corruption and poor

standards of governance

make

the animals particularly vulnerable. However, poaching rates are also rising in

southern and East

African

countries.

Patrick

Omondi, who is head of species conservation at the Kenya Wildlife Service, said

that the number

of

elephants killed for their tusks in his country more than doubled between 2007

and 2008. The latest

figures

for 2009 suggest it may double again by the close of this year.

2009

has also seen a string of spectacular seizures of contraband ivory made by

authorities in eastern

Asia.

In March, Vietnamese customs discovered a shipping container with 6.3 tonnes of

tusks in Hanoi.

Within

six weeks, another 3.5 tonnes was seized in Manila in the Philippines and another

illegal shipment

of

one tonne was picked up in Bangkok, Thailand. The combined weight of just these

consignments

represents

about 2,000 dead elephants.

Speaking

on the BBC Radio 4 programme Last Chance for Africa's Elephants?, Peter Younger

of the

wildlife

crime unit at the global police agency, Interpol, said: "These three

seizures over that short a period

of

time are the largest seizures I've seen since I've been in this business."

They

had been shipped out of Africa from Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania, though the East

African country is

not

necessarily the country where the elephants were poached.

Once

ivory has been trafficked out of the continent, it is often impossible to

identify where the tusks were

originally

poached.

According

to Sam Wasser, the lack of this information has kept the criminals several

steps ahead of law

enforcement

and allowed intense elephant killing to go unchallenged in areas where

anti-poaching

measures

are not adequately enforced.

In

a bid to fight back against the illegal trade, Professor Wasser has led the

development of a DNA

forensic

technique which pinpoints the origin of seized ivory.

Over

the last decade, hundreds of elephant dung samples have been collected and sent

to his lab from all

over

sub-Saharan Africa.

DNA

from each has been analysed. The team have focussed on 16 specific genes from

the elephant

genome

and plotted how the specific genetic code of each one varies from location to

location. This gives

them

a map of elephant genetic variation across the sub-continent.

Being

an overgrown tooth, an elephant tusk also harbours the animal's DNA. So when

Sam Wasser's

team

receives a piece of seized ivory - either raw or carved - they pulverise it to

a powder and then

chemically

extract the DNA within. The make-up of the 16 genes is then compared to the

dung DNA

database.

'Organised crime'

Because

populations of elephants living near each other are more genetically similar

than populations

further

apart, a statistical analysis allows the Seattle lab to say where the poached

ivory originated -

sometimes

to within several tens of kilometres.

According

to Professor Wasser, this method is much less cumbersome than other ivory

genetic marker

techniques.

He

also said that his DNA tests on impounded ivory shipments have revealed new

information on the way

the

criminal syndicates of poachers and illegal dealers are operating.

The

findings are contrary to a widely-held belief of law enforcement agencies, he

told the BBC.

"They

thought that the dealers who were shipping them were cherry-picking across

Africa: taking bits of

ivory

from here and there, putting together a big consignment together and sending it

out. We find that's

not happening

at all," said Sam Wasser.

hammer

these populations over and over again - the same population. So they are doing

major, major

devastation.

"

For

example, analysis of samples from two large illegal shipments in 2006 suggested

that the Selous

Game

Reserve in southern Tanzania had become a hotspot of intense poaching. These

seizures were

5.2

tonnes of ivory in Taiwan and 2.6 tonnes caught in Hong Kong.

Another

Hong Kong seizure in 2006 contained 3.5 tonnes of tusks, hidden behind a false

wall in a

shipping

container. It had left Africa from the port city of Douala in Cameroon.

Follow-up

investigations revealed a second and third container with similar secret

compartments. Both

had

chips of ivory on their floors. All three were owned by a Taiwanese national living

in Cameroon.

Customs

documents suggested at least 11 shipments to ports in East Asia. Although all

the illegal exports

came

out of Cameroon, the Seattle DNA tests showed that most of the ivory originated

from the southeast

of

neighbouring Gabon. According to Sam Wasser: "There wasn't a lot of

indication of heavy

poaching

in Gabon so this exposed Gabon as a very significant poaching area."

Forensic

techniques such as the geographic DNA test can help to reveal regions where

anti-poaching

measures

need to be beefed up. They can also aid the investigations of how the big time

ivory traffickers

are

operating.

However,

many of the interviewees who spoke to BBC Radio 4 are daunted by the scale and

international

nature

of the criminality involved. At Interpol, Peter Younger argues that much more

concerted cooperation

among

African and Asian countries is necessary.

"In

this particular area of crime, we're losing because the people we are tasked to

deal with are much

more

co-ordinated than we are. We have a mechanism to co-operate. Interpol is the

only international

police

agency, but there are other platforms. We are just not using them enough."