Poachers kill 65 elephants, 30 rhinos in Zimbabwe: official

Yahoo News 16 Nov 09;

HARARE (AFP) – An international crime syndicate is behind an escalation in poaching in Zimbabwe which has slaughtered 65 elephants and 30 rhinos this year, a wildlife official said Monday.

"From January to October this year we have lost 65 elephants through poaching," Vitalis Chadenga, operations director of the Zimbabwe National Parks and Wildlife Authority told journalists.

"In the same period we have lost 24 black and six white rhinos. It is true that we have witnessed an escalation of poaching nationwide, particularly on private farms."

The black rhino is listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the white rhino is categorised as "near threatened."

"We do have a group of international gangsters, who are funding poachers around this part of the world and taking away many horns and it is a major problem," Chadenga said.

He could not provide numbers from last year, but said poaching was on the rise.

"We have arrested 2,500 poachers in the same period, ten poachers have been shot dead since the beginning of this year," Chadenga said.

Zimbabwe has a population of nearly 100,000 elephants, which Chadenga said has been growing over recent years, and is banned from international ivory trade.

The southern African nation has 26 tonnes of ivory in its stocks and four tonnes of rhino horns.

Last year, Zimbabwe auctioned four tonnes of ivory to buyers from Japan and China getting 487,162 dollars (380,268 euros). During the same period, Namibia, Botswana and South Africa sold a total of 102 tonnes of tusks.

The four countries are home to 312,000 elephants, and their government stocks of tusks came from natural deaths or the culling of herds to keep the population under control.