Wildlife Trade monitoring network TRAFFIC reports that ivory poaching has risen to its
worst levels since the global commercial ivory trade ban was imposed in 1989. (SBS)
Tanzania is one country in Africa stepping up the fight against poaching of endangered animals. As SBS Radio's Karen Ashford reports, it has many challenges to overcome in protecting its diverse species.
Listen: Tanzania steps up fight against poaching
International studies show poaching of endangered animals is on the rise across Africa.
Tanzania is one country stepping up its fight against a practice it regards as a threat to its very livelihood.
As Karen Ashford reports, it has many challenges to overcome in protecting its diverse species.
(Transcription by World News Australia Radio)
On safari on the fringe of the Serengeti by a hippo-filled waterhole, observers spot a poacher fleeing authorities.
Armed with a spear, he's likely a villager hunting meat.
His whereabouts are reported to rangers hot on his trail. And he was later caught.
In Tanzania, all poaching - small and large - is taken seriously.
Villagers don't just poach small deer for meat, they also hunt the endangered Colobus monkey for their spectacular coat used in dancing ceremonies.Tanzania is one country stepping up its fight against a practice it regards as a threat to its very livelihood.
As Karen Ashford reports, it has many challenges to overcome in protecting its diverse species.
(Transcription by World News Australia Radio)
On safari on the fringe of the Serengeti by a hippo-filled waterhole, observers spot a poacher fleeing authorities.
Armed with a spear, he's likely a villager hunting meat.
His whereabouts are reported to rangers hot on his trail. And he was later caught.
In Tanzania, all poaching - small and large - is taken seriously.
But it's the big animals, like rhino and elephant, that are most at threat.
International poaching rings, some even with helicopters at their disposal, are literally making a killing feeding the demand for rhino horn and elephant tusk in Asia.
The Tanzanian government admits it has a tough task convincing villagers and international poachers that the animals they're killing in the iconic Serengeti and Ngorongoro crater conservation zones are far more valuable alive than dead.
"To educate them that, you know, losing one elephant, say, by selling the tusks, if you get something like even say $100,000, it's just nothing," said Ngorongoro Conservation Manager Amiyo Amiyo. "But if you keep that elephant, if you conserve that elephant you get a lot of money from tourism."
With the exception of Botswana, Tanzania boasts more elephant than anywhere else in Africa, and plenty of other animals too, elevating wildlife tourism to the country's third-largest income-earner.
Joan Elson is an Australian tourist on her debut safari.
"It just blows my mind, the animals, seeing all of the animals has just been lovely," she said, "and seeing them in their natural habitat, they're just here and we're privileged to be able to share a bit of that time with them."
But time is against them.
Well-resourced crime syndicates are building their fortune filling the demand in countries like China , Vietnam and the Philippines for ivory for carving and rhino horn in the mistaken belief it's an aphrodisiac.
Wildlife Trade monitoring network TRAFFIC reports that ivory poaching has risen to its worst levels since the global commercial ivory trade ban was imposed in 1989.
Amiyo Amiyo says the slaughter isn't just threatening animals - it's threatening Tanzania's tourism livelihood.
"This is not a good thing to tamper with the economy of the country. By killing the elephant it is something like tampering with the economy of our country."
Even Tanzania's President, Jakaya Kikwete, is worried.
"Because of poaching now we have created teams of bodyguards for the rhinos - it's overnight watch, to make sure they're safe," he said. "But of course the elephants are just too many now, there's too many and we cannot do that tracking as we do with rhinos, and the elephant poaching has come back, has become a big problem now."
The poaching boom has taken a terrible toll.
The elephant population in Tanzania's wildlife sanctuaries has plummeted from nearly 75,000 in 2006 to an estimated 35,000 today.
Rhinos have also been hard hit - at one point they were thought extinct, but following the sighting of two females and a male on the Serengeti the population has rebuilt to a fragile 32 individuals.
Amiyo Amiyo says the fight to protect elephant and rhinos is becoming harder as poachers become increasingly clever in their methods.
"Sometimes they shoot them, but shooting them makes a lot of noise because the firearm which they use, the gun which they use, is a big calibre firearm, you can hear it from afar. "Now if they want not somebody to hear it, they come with poison, then they put it into the watermelon or something like that so when the elephant feed on them they die within 30 to 40 minutes."
President Kikwete says the use of poison is cruel and horrifying, and results in indiscriminate killing of whole families of elephants, even juveniles with no tusks.
He says firepower remains the key approach, and that means better equipping rangers, who often have inferior guns to the poachers they're trying to stop.
But the President says Tanzania is trying to find other ways to disrupt the trade, and has a long-term goal of trying to stem market demand.
"Because if we can close the markets than elephants will be safe, if you can try to encourage those people that they can use something else as an aphrodisiac rather than the powder of a rhino horn," he said.
"It's crazy, it's crazy, you know the human mind is strange because somebody just believes that if he gets the powder of the elephant horn then he becomes a better man! "It's amazing, but it's the human mind. And if we can convince those guys that they don't need to have to take the rhino, there is so much in the market that can do a better job; if they are taught there is that then I'm sure we will be able to make our rhinos safe."
The other key remedy available to Tanzania is prosecution.
But President Kikwete says even massive penalties are a scant deterrent when set against windfall profits.
"The penalties are tough enough - but where there is big money involved people really take risks. It's just like drug traffickers, they get a 38 year sentence here but they don't stop. "Every day almost we arrest, despite the risks, so the issue in Tanzania is not the penalty, it's the creativeness of the business. People really take risks, because once they succeed they'll have made a big kill (lots of money)."
Now, Tanzania's launching a crackdown.
It's devoting three million dollars to new guns and vehicles, plus accepting high-tech equipment from animal welfare agencies to bolster their efforts.
Amiyo Amiyo says it's the largest effort since the army was called in during the 1980s and says, if necessary, the army could be called in again.
"We've got sophisticated firearms, we've got AK47, SNGs, SLRs, again we are using the modern technology of monitoring animals by using satellites,: he said. "Some observation points have been fitted with telescopic binoculars and tele-lens cameras which of course can see very far. Sometimes during the night we also use the night vision goggles, and now we are busy introducing sophisticated technology to use cameras to see poachers in the night."
Meanwhile, there's one other innovative approach that Tanzania's trying out.
Traditional villagers like the Masai have extensive knowledge about the lands and its animals.
At present, poverty sees some - like the villager spotted near the hippo waterhole - turn to small-scale poaching to feed their families.
Authorities think tackling poverty could reduce their reliance on poaching and free them up for a different, valuable role - as extra eyes and ears in the fight against international poaching syndicates.
Masai elder and Ngorongoro tourism officer Peter Makutian says a program is underway to establish traditional villages, or Bomas, expressly to give visitors the experience of living with the Masai.
He says the returns are divided between conservation and the villagers, to give the Masai a bigger stake in the tourism industry.
Mr Makutian believes the economic independence of villagers could ultimately assist the anti-poaching cause.
"Normally those ones who are being chosen to come to this boma are those ones who are really poor, so that they can at least make a living out of tourism. "In trying to make sure that the community also gets something out of tourism we have got some campsites which are in the villages, and when they collect the money half of the money goes to the Ngorongoro Conservation Area authority and some of it goes directly to the villagers and they are the ones to decide how to utilise that money. "It is another way of ensuring that the community also obtain something out of tourism."
Source: World News Australia / SBS
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