11,000 elephants poached in Gabon over last decade

A file picture dated December 4, 2012, of Thai customs officials displaying some of the elephant tusks seized at Bangkok airport.Reuters/LibrevillePoachers have killed more than 11,000 elephants in Gabon’s Minkebe National Park rainforest since 2004, Gabon’s government said yesterday, with the massacre fuelled by increasing demand for ivory in Asia.The densely-forested central African country is home to about half the world’s roughly 100,000 remaining forest elephants, the smallest species of elephant and coveted by ivory dealers for their harder and straighter tusks.A study conducted by Gabon’s government along with advocacy groups World Wildlife Fund and the Wildlife Conservation Society found two-thirds of the forest elephants in Minkebe park had been killed off since 2004, or about 11,100.“If we don’t reverse this situation rapidly, the future of elephants in Africa will be compromised,” Lee White, executive secretary of Gabon’s national parks agency, said in a statement issued by Gabon’s presidency.Demand for ivory for use in jewellery and ornamental items is rising fast in Asia. Conservationists say growing Chinese influence and investment in Africa has opened the door wider for the illicit trade in elephant tusks.Poachers are often armed with large-calibre rifles and chainsaws to remove tusks, the statement issued by the presidency said. They have secret camps in the rainforest, evading small deployments of park guards and leaving rotting elephant carcasses in their wake.A park official said most of the poachers were believed to be from neighbouring Cameroon, where the government has deployed army helicopters and hundreds of troops to protect its own dwindling elephant population.Gabon security forces last week arrested at least one gendarme who was transporting tusks in a government vehicle, according to the statement, underlining the risk of corruption in an increasingly lucrative black market trade.“If we do not want to lose the last elephants in central Africa, the illicit ivory trade needs to be treated as a grave crime that corrupts governments and seriously undermines economic development and security,” said Bas Huijbregts, head of WWF’s anti-poaching campaign in the region.Cameroon deployed about 600 troops to its Bouba Ndjida National Park, a former safari tourism destination, late last year to combat horse-mounted Sudanese poachers who killed up to 450 elephants in 2011 and 2012.In 2011, an estimated 40 tonnes of illegal ivory was seized worldwide, representing thousands of dead elephants. Figures for 2012 are expected to be similar, according to conservation group Traffic.Ivory smuggling has also been linked to conflict. Last year the UN Security Council called for an investigation into the alleged involvement in the trade of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda.Led by warlord Joseph Kony, who is being hunted by an African Union and US-backed military force, the LRA is accused of terrorising the country’s north for more than 20 years through the abduction of children to use as fighters and sex slaves.Kenya suspends top wildlife officials in poaching probeKenya’s wildlife authorities have suspended two top officials in the midst of investigations into rampant poaching that has decimated elephant herds and other wild animals, officials said yesterday. Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) said in a statement that the officials were ordered “to take leave to facilitate internal investigations into the wildlife security situation”. Poaching has spiked recently in East Africa, with whole herds of elephants massacred for their ivory.  “The suspensions had to be done to pave way for investigations... we are waiting for the final report,” said KWS spokesman Paul Mbugua. He stressed that no charges have been brought against the officials, Peter Leitoro, the deputy director of security, and Benjamin Kavu, deputy director of wildlife and community. Last month officials in the Kenyan port city of Mombasa seized more than two tonnes of ivory, which had reportedly come from Tanzania and was destined for Indonesia. Last year poachers killed at least 360 elephants in Kenya, up from 289 in 2011, according to official figures. At least 40 poachers were killed last year as rangers battled the raiders. Trade in elephant ivory, with rare exceptions, has been outlawed since 1989 after elephant populations in Africa dwindled from millions in the mid-20th century to some 600,000 by the end of the 1980s.