Autor: reaev

Dar Es Salaam — The Government has opened a small window to sell the prohibited elephant ivory in an auction scheduled for December 30, 2010 at the Julius Nyerere International Airport in Dar es Salaam suspected to be a ‚litmus test‘ in an attempt to sell the 90 tonnes of banned ivory stockpiles worth US$ 20 million.

An advert in the local media by the Acting Commissioner of Customs of the Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA), Patrick Kasaka, listed some 14 parcels which had been impounded by the Customs Department would be among hundreds of assorted items and parcels to be auctioned.

The advertis shows most consignees are from Asia whose parcels were impounded at the airport for various reasons – they include elephant ivory pieces, bungles, carvings, necklaces and ivory sticks.

Asked to comment on the sale of ivory pieces, an official in the directorate of Taxpayer Services and Education told East African Business Week, "There is nothing that bars semi processed ivory items from sale unless they were whole." If that’s the case then Tanzania will have found a safe way to dispose of its banned ivory stocks by simply cutting them into pieces.

One wildlife stakeholder, who preferred anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject, said "This (sale) is totally illegal. Tanzania would have to change its legislation. Currently it’s illegal to buy or sell ivory in Tanzania, and who will they sell it to? The Chinese? Again totally illegal as there is an international (elephant ivory) ban… Most bizarre, but clearly demonstrates total lack of understanding of the law."

Sale of Tanzania ivory has been one of the most emotive issues in Tanzania this year as the Government sought without success for permission from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) in May 2010 at the Doha, Qatar meeting, to sell its 90 tonnes stocks worth $20 million.

Tanzania claimed it was selling the stocks, now in Government custody, to spend the proceeds on wildlife conservation, but the CITES meeting dismissed the argument saying it would only fuel the slaughter of more elephants by poachers. As CITES stopped Tanzania from selling the ivory stockpiles, tension built up against proponents for the ban, who included Kenyan wildlife activists.

The Doha conference was reminded of the last concession by CITES that allowed southern African countries to sell their "legal stocks" that immediately resulted in increased poaching in eastern Africa, from where ivory is then smuggled to buyers overseas.

The other fall out was that Kenya was hit by a wave of poaching in 2009 thus hardening the country’s stance on the sale of elephant ivory. The conference was also told that poaching figures for elephants quadrupled in Kenya in 2009 compared to 2007.

Tanzania is said to be losing 200 elephants annually at the hands of poachers mostly in the vast Selous Game Reserve. The Tanzania Natural Resource Forum (TNRF), an Arusha-based organization working to improve natural resource management for local livelihoods, said then Tanzania had serious challenges within its wildlife management systems that must be dealt with before presenting a successful bid to Cites to sell its ivory.

The country has pledged to build its case for the sale the same ivory at the next CITES meeting in 2013. The big issue is what would happen if Tanzania was allowed to sell the ivory.

Would this encourage more poaching of elephants or boost conservation? Zimbabwe, South Africa, Botswana, and Namibia have in the past been granted approval through CITES for limited ivory sales, hence the need for Tanzania to clearly demonstrate that illegal stuff will not be mixed with the stockpiled ivory.

However, Tanzania wildlife stakeholders are against the sale of the ivory proposing instead for the Government to build special wildlife museums in Arusha and Dar es Salaam which would serve as permanent sources of income as tourists would pay to visit them.

They doubt if the one-off sale for $20m won’t end up in bank accounts of wildlife conservation officials.

Tanzania’s international credibility is weak because there is little evidence that the Government can effectively curb illicit ivory trade within its borders as major recent ivory seizures in Asia have been traced back to Tanzania.

A report released in March by the London and Washington, DC-based Environmental Investigative Agency (EIA), shows that a lot needs to be done.

The report titled ‚Open Season – The Burgeoning Illegal Ivory Trade in Tanzania and Zambia,‘ says the poaching threat in Tanzania is most pronounced in the 50,000 sq m Selous Game Reserve. During the last big wave of elephant poaching that hit much of Africa in the 1980s, the Selous lost 70,000 elephants.

Yet a catalogue of reports and evidence show that the reserve is still poorly protected and wide open to poachers, who are often assisted by corrupt game scouts.

Field investigations by EIA show continued flow of ivory out of the Selous. Poachers enter the reserve for periods of around two weeks and kill an average of 10 elephants on each trip, according to the report.

The bulk of the ivory poached from the Selous is smuggled through Dar es Salaam in containers to markets in the Far East, adds the report. In July 2006, Customs officers at Kaohsiung port, Taiwan, intercepted two containers supposedly containing sisal fibre shipped from Tanga.

In one container, bales of sisal were found to conceal 744 elephant tusks. In the other, 350 tusks were discovered – a 5.2-tonne ivory haul. In the same month, 2.6 tonnes of ivory, comprising 390 tusks and 121 cut pieces, were seized at a house in Hong Kong.

Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/201012131445.html

Written By:Stanley Wabomba,    Posted: Sat, Dec 11, 2010

Two Singaporean suspects have been arrested while checking in at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi with 92kg of illegal raw ivory.

The two were nabbed Friday night with the cargo, packed in four suitcases on the way to Bangkok, Thailand.

In a statement Kenya Wildlife Service Corporate Communications Manager Paul Udoto says the cargo was detected by the Kenya Wildlife Service Canine Unit rangers with their sniffer dogs based at the airport.

Udoto says the two suspects and the exhibits are being held at the JKIA Airport Police Station.

John Yap Chan, 48, and Nah Choon Quee, 47, had travelled by the Kenya Airways plane from Lilongwe, Malawi and had stayed in Kenya for two days.

Udoto says the suspects will be arraigned before the Makadara Law Courts on Tuesday.

He says KWS has deployed sniffer dogs at points of entry and exit into Kenya on a full-time basis to check on illegal trafficking in wildlife trophies. 

Source: www.kbc.co.ke/news.asp?nid=67985

four-nation ’sting‘ operation busts wildlife smuggling ring

Conservationists hail breakthrough in regional co-operation to fight illegal traffic in ivory, parrots, skins and live animals

by Charlotte Wilkins Yaoundé, Cameroon, The Observer, Sunday 12 December 2010

An African grey parrot. In Cameroon, a cargo of 1,000 of them worth -£65,000 was seized from smugglers. Photograph: Nicola Gavin / Alamy/Alamy

Sting operations by wildlife activists in central Africa have broken up highly organised smuggling rings sending endangered species abroad, leading to the arrest of key dealers and the recovery of hundreds of kilos of ivory, turtle shells and animal skins.

The clampdown took place across four neighbouring countries: Cameroon, Gabon, the Central African Republic and the Republic of Congo.Observers said the arrests last week, co-ordinated by the Last Great Ape Organisation (Laga), a wildlife law-enforcement NGO, in Cameroon, Gabon, the Central African Republic and Congo-Brazzaville, marked a big step towards regional enforcement of the laws protecting endangered species.

In Gabon, undercover agents posing as smugglers picked up 16 dealers in possession of 150kg of illegal polished ivory. The haul, estimated to be worth about -£90,000 on the international market and probably destined for China, the world’s leading market for "white gold", was going via Nigeria, one of the main smuggling routes. All 16 were remanded in custody, having been refused bail following the operation, which focused on a hotel, a local market and a sculptor’s studio following a long investigation.

Luc Mathot, of the agency AALF (appui à l’Application de la Loi sur la Faune), who proposed the project to the government, said it was the first time ivory dealers in the country had been put in jail. "This shows that the Gabonese authorities are now prepared to monitor, hunt down, condemn and imprison ivory dealers – that the law on ivory dealing in Gabon is finally being enforced," he said.

In Cameroon, three dealers trading 17 turtle shells were arrested. A cargo of 1,000 African grey parrots worth an estimated -£65,000 was intercepted being smuggled into Nigeria and a policeman was arrested on suspicion of accepting a -£2,000 bribe to release it and allow it on its way.

The operation in the Central African Republic recovered seven leopard skins, two lion skins and two tusks concealed beneath a pile of cowhides in a dealer’s truck. He was arrested. The skins were thought to be destined for Europe or the US to decorate wealthy homes. On the same day, wildlife activists in Ouesso in the north of Congo-Brazzaville found a further 30kg of ivory.

Ofir Drori, the founder of Laga, said the co-ordinated campaign was a breakthrough in a region where countries often sign up to global protections for animals but poor legislation and weak enforcement mean they fail.

"This is the first time we have experienced such a regional crackdown. African governments have started realising international trafficking has to be fought internationally," he said. "These co-ordinated arrests in four neighbouring countries are a warning to the international trafficking rings – no longer can you hide on the other side of a border.

"Traffickers are untouchable and often enjoy complicity with government officials. Conservation in central Africa is a massive failure hiding behind so-called success stories. We would never claim to be a success story – the smugglers still have the upper hand and we are just at the beginning of our fight.‘ Drori said that the slaughter of animals for the trade was driven by demand from overseas. An ivory baron in China or a trophy hunter in America would place an order that would then trickle down through the criminal network to central Africa.

The smugglers were not lone operators but part of a sophisticated mafia which had grown over the past couple of decades. "Wildlife extinction doesn’t start with poachers, it starts with wealthy white-collar criminals who have been operating in central Africa for over 20 years," he said. One of the major obstacles facing wildlife law enforcement is tackling the corruption endemic within central Africa. Congo-Brazzaville, Gabon, Cameroon and the Central African Republic are persistently ranked by Transparency International as some of the most corrupt countries in the world.

Revenue generated from the illegal wildlife trade, the single greatest threat to some species‘ survival, is estimated to be in the region of $10bn to $20bn, just behind illegal drug and firearm sales, according to the UN Congress on Crime. Sometimes drugs and wildlife trafficking work hand in hand. One chimpanzee was found sandwiched between 50kg of cocaine and marijuana when a trafficker was arrested in Cameroon en route to Nigeria four years ago.

Often the illegal trade in animals is not even remotely clandestine. In 2008, a baby male hippopotamus was put on an Ethiopian airlines flight from Douala, Cameroon’s economic capital, and flown to Lahore zoo in Pakistan. Three traffickers, currently under investigation, reportedly paid $80,000 for the hippo and smuggled it out using forged government documents. Further proof that conservationists are failing to protect endangered species is the disappearance of the West African black rhino, which was last seen in northern Cameroon in 2008. At the end of 2009, Sierra Leone announced it feared it had lost the last of its elephants to poachers, while fewer than 10 elephants remain in Senegal.