Report says Tanzania is among seven countries whose “corrupt governments” support poaching.PHOTO|FILE
By Boniface Meena The Citizen Reporter
In Summary
Nairobi. A new report has listed Tanzania among seven “corrupt governments” in Africa that support elephant poaching.
Other countries on the list are Kenya, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Sudan, Gabon and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The report, Ivory’s Curse: The Militarization and
Professionalisation of Poaching in Africa, released early this week
accuse public officials in the named countries of condoning or arming
criminals who kill elephants and rhinos for their tusks and horns,
respectively.
The report is a joint effort by the conservation
group Born Free USA and C4ADS, a non-profit organization that analyzes
the drivers of conflict and insecurity.
It says organised crime, government corruption and
militias are all linked to elephant poaching and the illegal ivory
trade. Poachers in Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Sudan and Kenya it found out move
across borders with near impunity.
Mr Adam Roberts, Born Free USA CEO, said: “For
years, Born Free USA and other animal advocates have campaigned against
the trade in elephant ivory, but on conservation and animal welfare
concerns. And we wanted to find a little bit more detail about who was
behind the ivory trade. It’s not just enough to say it’s criminal
syndicates, nefarious profiteers. We wanted to know who is really behind
it so that we can try and get governments around the world to do more
to crackdown.”
Mr Roberts said Born Free needed some help in gathering that kind of information.
“That’s one of the reasons that we commissioned
C4ADS to do the report for us. Because I think the breadth of our
capabilities within the conservation community are pretty much limited
to conservation. But having a defence analyst that looks at the
militarism behind all of these poaching incidents gives them access to
information that we wouldn’t otherwise have.”
The latest report follows the one released by
Interpol early in the year that also named Tanzania as among the leading
source of illegal ivory in the East African region last year while
Kenya and Uganda have become favourite transit routes, according to the
international security agency.
The Interpol report showed Tanzania’s elephant
population plummeting in recent years and that in the largest Selous
Game reserve which boasted the world second largest elephant population
at 70,000 elephants in 2006 had an estimated 39,000 in in 2009 and
currently stand at 13,084 elephants. The elephant population in Ruaha
National Park has declined by 44 per cent since 2006 and now numbers
approximately 20,090, saiad Interpol in their report that colloborate
many other findings of a similar nature.
Ivory’s Curse: The Militarization and
Professionalization of Poaching in Africa found unique problems in each
country -- though many of them were marked by conflict. It says, in
Sudan, government-allied militias fund their operations by poaching
elephants outside North Sudan’s borders.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, state security forces provide rebels with weapons and support in exchange for ivory.
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