Posted on 06 February
2013 | A new study confirms what has been
long suspected: elephant populations are
being decimated to the point that the survival
of the species in Central Africa is now
in question.
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According to a study
by the Gabonese National Parks Agency, WWF
and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS),
poachers have killed an estimated 11,100
elephants – between 44 to 77 per cent of
the population –in parts of Minkébé’s
National Park and its surroundings in northern
Gabon since 2004, when it held Africa’s
largest forest elephant population.
“The situation is out
of control. We are witnessing the systematic
slaughter of the world’s largest land mammal,”
said Bas Huijbregts, head of the Central
African strand of WWF’s global campaign
against illegal wildlife trade.
“Some reports lead the
world to believe that the ivory war has
moved from the Central Africa region to
other parts of the continent. This is wrong.
What has changed is that these criminals
are now also attacking the better protected
elephant herds in Eastern and Southern Africa.”
“But here in Central
Africa, unnoticed to the world, elephants
are losing this war at lightning speed.”
A regional crisis
Fiona Maisels, a conservation
scientist at WCS who has been analyzing
the survey data, said that the data pointed
to a regional crisis.
“The Minkébé
data are representative of trends across
all remaining forest elephant strongholds
in the region, not to speak of the Democratic
Republic of the Congo, which is believed
to hold 7,000 to 10,000 elephants, or less
than ten per cent of its population twenty
years ago,”
Gabon, Maisels explained,
represents only about 13% of the forests
of Central Africa but is home to over half
of Africa’s forest elephants. The Minkébé
National Park, in turn, is home to Gabon’s
biggest elephant population and to probably
the largest forest elephant population in
Africa. “At least until these data came
out,” she said.
Over in in the Central
African Republic (CAR) - which in the mid
1980’s held up to 80,000 elephants – poachers
are taking advantage of the political instability
to wipe out the country’s remaining elephant,
which can now number in the thousands.
Speaking from Bayanga
in southwest CAR, Guian Zokoe, who is in
charge of the Dzanga-Sangha Protected Areas
for the CAR Ministry of Water and Forests,
says poachers have killed at least 17 elephants
around the Ngotto forest in the south of
the country in the past few days. Unconfirmed
reports by villagers hint that some sixty
elephants were also killed further north,
near the town of Yaloke, he said, adding
there were reports of killings throughout
the country.
“The Central African
Republic’s new government has to send its
armed forces to stop these poachers before
they hit its last elephant stronghold, Dzanga-Sangha,
a recently declared World Heritage Site.”
“It is not just a question
of protecting CAR’s natural resources, but
of stopping these armed groups from waltzing
around the country and terrorizing local
populations wherever they go,” Zokoe added.
How to end poaching
Although solutions to
effectively address the poaching crisis
in the region are varied, what can be concluded
is clear: left unaddressed, Central Africa’s
elephants will follow the footstep of their
western black and northern white rhinoceroses,
both hunted to extinction.
“Governments in the
region such as Cameroon, Chad and Gabon
are recruiting more rangers and send their
armies to fight these poachers. But that
is not enough,” Huijbregts says.
“The international intelligence
community needs to get involved in this
fight as soon as possible, in order to identify,
track and put out of business these global
criminal networks, which corrupt governments,
erode national security and hamper economic
development prospects.”
But Huijbregts explained
that to effectively put an end to the poaching
crisis, countries in in East Asia would
need to address their exploding demand for
ivory, which is resulting in record prices.
“Unless the governments
of the region and demand countries treat
this issue as an international emergency
we cannot rule out that, in our lifetime,
there will no longer be any viable elephant
populations in Central Africa,” Huijbregts
said.
