Rob Crilly, The Times 2 May 08;
Rangers in the Democratic Republic of Congo believe that rising demand for ivory in China is to blame for an unprecedented wave of elephant poaching in one of the country's war-torn national parks.
Fourteen elephants have been slaughtered in as many days as government soldiers and militias use ivory to raise money for guns. Conservationists believe that the ivory is being smuggled from Virunga National Park through Uganda and Burundi en route to China.
The concerns came as South Africa lifted a 13-year moratorium on elephant culling, aimed at tackling a surge in population numbers, despite the protestations of animal rights activists.
Alexandre Wathaut, provincial director of the ICCN, the Congolese wildlife authority, said that a solution to the region's political instability was crucial to protecting the elephants. “This is the worst month we have seen in a long time in terms of recorded elephant deaths,” he added.
The DRC has been racked by years of civil war. A United Nations peacekeeping force has helped to bring a degree of stability to much of the country but the east remains in the grip of fighting between militias and government forces. They have turned Virunga - home to a population of extremely rare mountain gorillas - into a battleground. Populations of hippos, elephants and antelope in the park have been all but wiped out as gunmen killed them for food. Ten gorillas were killed last year.
Part of the park is under the control of the rebel commander Laurent Nkunda, making it inaccessible to rangers. Now a report by the conservation charity WildlifeDirect says that the militias, which include armed Hutu groups responsible for the Rwandan genocide, have killed 14 elephants for their tusks in a two-week period.
Four were killed by the FDLR militia, comprising members of the former Rwandan Interahamwe, five by the Congolese military, three by the local Mai-Mai militia, and two by villagers. It is a high toll for a population estimated in 2006 to be no more than 350 but is probably far less.
Emmanuel de Merode, director of WildlifeDirect, said that the elephants were the victims of international pressures. “The upsurge in elephant killings in Virunga is part of a widespread slaughter across the Congo Basin and is being driven by developments on the international scene: the liberalisation of the ivory trade, being pushed by South Africa, and the increased presence of Chinese operators on the ground, who feed a massive domestic demand for ivory in their home country,” he said.
A report last year suggested that as many as 23,000 elephants were being skilled across the continent to meet soaring demand from a growing Chinese middle class. Much of it ends up in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, where it is turned into chopsticks bought by Chinese oil workers.
White gold
23 tonnes of ivory seized on its way to the Far East between August 2005 and August 2006
$750 estimated price per kilogram of black-market ivory in China and Japan
7 kilograms of ivory are yielded by an average elephant’s tusks
500,000 estimated population of wild African elephants, down from 1.3 million in 1979
Sources: University of Washington; Times archives
Congo Elephants Killed As Ivory Demand Jumps - Group
Joe Bavier, PlanetArk 2 May 08;
KINSHASA - Soldiers, rebels and villagers in Democratic Republic of Congo killed 14 elephants in as many days in Africa's oldest national park to meet rising Chinese demand for ivory, a conservation group said on Thursday.
Besides a dwindling population of a few hundred elephants, eastern Congo's Virunga National Park is home to bands of Congolese army soldiers, Mai Mai warriors-turned-militia and Rwandan Hutu rebels after years of regional warfare.
All three groups, as well as local villagers, killed 14 elephants in the park between April 14 and 27, WildlifeDirect.org said in a statement, citing information from Congo's state conservation agency.
"The upsurge in elephant killings in Virunga is part of a widespread slaughter across the Congo Basin," Emmanuel de Merode, director of WildlifeDirect.org, said.
"(It) is being driven by developments on the international scene: the liberalisation of the ivory trade being pushed by South Africa, and the increased presence of Chinese operators on the ground, who feed a massive domestic demand for ivory in their home country," he said.
Asia is recognised as a major market for poached ivory.
Numbers of Chinese labourers and traders in Africa have risen in recent years, including Congo where China is investing huge sums in mining and has military units serving with the world's biggest United Nations peacekeeping force.
South Africa has long urged a relaxation of the ivory trading prohibition and lifted a ban on elephant culling on Thursday after years of debate on how to control fast-rising populations which have come into conflict with humans.
Congolese General Vainqueur Mayala, the army's top commander in North Kivu, said he had not been informed about the accusation that his troops had killed five of the 14 elephants.
"I will consult with my special services to see how we can find a solution. They will have to carry out an investigation on the ground, but that shouldn't take too long," he told Reuters.
Poaching of gorillas and elephants has long been a problem in Virunga, but April saw a sharp rise in elephant killings, Alexandre Wathaut, provincial director for Congo's conservation authorities in North Kivu province, told Reuters.
The tusks had been hacked from 13 of the carcasses. Six villagers were caught red-handed and detained with the tusks of the 14th, WildlifeDirect.org spokesman Pierre Peron said.
The killings could threaten the viability of Virunga's elephant population, WildlifeDirect.com said.
The park's elephant population shrank by 90 percent between 1959, a year before independence from Belgium, and the most recent survey in 2006, which found there were just 350 left.
Numbers are thought to have fallen further, unlike populations in Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa which have flourished since a 1989 ban on international ivory trading.
That ban was extended by nine years last year under a deal that allowed a one-off sale of government ivory stocks.
(Writing by Alistair Thomson; Editing by Pascal Fletcher)
Fourteen elephants killed in eastern DR Congo: activists
Yahoo News 1 May 08;
Rebels and villagers have killed 14 elephants in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in the past two weeks, a wildlife group said Thursday.
Since April 14, Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda killed four; Congolese FARDC and Maimai rebels killed eight and local villagers killed two elephants in Virunga National Park, the Nairobi-based WildlifeDirect said in a statement.
"This is the worst month we have seen in a long time in terms of recorded elephant deaths," said Alexandre Wathaut, the provincial director for the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature (ICCN).
"ICCN is making official representations to the Congolese military and to the militia for this slaughter to stop. We call on the international community to engage in solving the region's political problems, for the sake of the local population as well as for Virunga's unique wildlife."
Wildlife Direct chief Emmanuel de Merode said relaxing of global ivory trading rules and arrival of Chinese merchants in the lawless Great Lakes region has worsened poaching.
"The upsurge in elephant killings in Virunga is part of a widespread slaughter across the Congo Basin, and is being driven by developments on the international scene: the liberalisation of the ivory trade, being pushed by South Africa, and the increased presence of Chinese operators on the ground, who feed a massive domestic demand for ivory in their home country," he added.
Elephant populations in Virunga National Park have fallen from 3,500 in 1959 to about 350 in 1996.
"The death of 14 elephants therefore has a considerable impact on the viability of the local elephant population."
The killings were announced on Thursday as South Africa lifted a 13-year moratorium on elephant culling, raising concern of a return to the international trade in ivory seen in the 1970s and 1980s, the group said.
The South African government earlier this year authorised the killing of elephants from May 1 as a last resort in limiting the numbers of the African elephant that have more than doubled since culling was halted in 1995.
Apart from elephants, rare mountain gorillas were killed last year in Virunga, one of Africa's largest parks, where local and foreign militias as well as Congolese soldiers, poachers and illegal miners regularly cross.
There are 1,100 rangers protecting five national parks -- four of which are classified as UNESCO World Heritage Sites -- in eastern DRC. Some 150 rangers have been killed while on duty in the past decade.
