Massacre of the elephant ...

Press, 7 December 1976, Page 25

Massacre of the elephant ...

By

BRIAN JACKMAN,

of the

“Sunday Times,” London

Bananas laced with battery acid are among the more bizarre weapons being used by elephant poachers in Uganda, So many elephants have been slaughtered over the last three years that little more than one-sixth of the main herds have survived. The poisoned bananas

are left in the two nat* ional parks where most of the elephants are concentrated. Then, all the poachers have to do is wait and watch for the inevitable tell-tale spiral of vultures to lead them to the victim’s carcass.

Ivory poaching is an en» demic disease in Africa. It

always has been. But never before has it been so virulent as the present outbreak which is turning Uganda’s magnificent parks into vast elephant graveyards. Three years ago Uganda’s two great wildlife strongholds, the Kabalega Falls and Rwenzori

nationals parks, were overflowing with elephants. Aerial counts put the numbers at about 14,000 in Kabaiega and 2700 in Rwenzori. Today, the two parks can scarcely muster 3000 elephants between them. Unlike Kenya, where elephant populations figures are now classified information Uganda has always been quite open about its poaching problems and the herds have been monitored' annually for a number of years by Dr Keith Eltringham, a Cambridge University lecturer and his assistant Mr Bob Malpas.

The results of their latest aerial survey carried out in September at the request of the Uganda ■National Parks authorities confirm wildlife experts’ worst fears.. The figures show a further significant drop in the numbers of elephant in the Rwenzori national park: down from last year’s total of 1,047 to 704.

In the Kabaiega Falls park, the figures are slightly higher: 2448 elephants, which is about 200 more than the total for last year’s count. But there Dr Eltringham believes, the law of diminishing returns is beginning to operate. “I think the poaching could be easing up a bit in Kabaiega simply because there are so few elephants left. They are becoming so hard to find it is no longer worth

while going out to look for them.” Nevertheless, there were plenty of sightings of recently dead elephants from the air — and of poaching gangs camped out in the bush all over Kabalega — to confirm that poaching is still going on.

Poaching has also brought about the destruction of the elephants’ c 1 o s e-knit matriarchal family groups. Since the old matriarchs also carry heavy tusks it is they rather than the more solitary males who have been the poachers’ prihie target. As a result the leaderless

elephants have tended to merge together forming nervous and aimlessly milling herds.

Until the late 1920 s elephant ranged freely over most of Uganda. But as the land was settled over the next 30 years they were shot in their thom sands. The surviving herds retreated into the national parks of Kabaiega (then called Murchison) Falls, Rwenzori , (then called Queen Elizabeth) and Kidepo, in the remote northern territory.

There they gathered in such numbers that the parks began to suffer from a surfeit of elephant. By the mid-1960s the elephants had become so destructive in their feeding habits, uprooting and debarking the trees, that 2000 were culled in Kaba-

iega to prevent the park becoming a near-desert. All tliis changed suddenly in 1974. Aerial surveys carried out that year revealed a startling drop in the elephant population. In just 12 months the number of elephants in Kabaiega Falls park had inexplicably fallen to less than half, and counts carried out over Rwenzori park told a similar story. “It was such a huge and unexpected discrepancy we wondered if our surveying technique was at fault,” says Dr Eltringham. “But the following year’s counts proved only too well that we had been right.”

By then the cause was clear. The parks were strewn with rotting elephant carcases. None had been killed for food. But in every case the tusks had been hacked out.

As the price of raw ivory soared to $3O a kilo, almost any elephant with a pair of tusks came to be regarded as a walking bank vault, and poaching in the parks swiftly developed into the present ruthless free-for-all .

The Ugandan authorities are genuinely concerned but they have been powerless to stop the killing. The park wardens are ham-strung by petrol shortages and lack of vehicle spares. The average park patrols, consisting of one corporal with a rifle and two rangers with spears, are no match for the heavily-armed poaching gangs.

As a result of last year’s alarming figures, President Idi Amin issued a decree, saying that elephant poachers would be shot. So far, if this year’s survey is anything to go by, his threat has had little effect.

Ivory is still being airlifted out of Entebbe, presumably with "legal” documentation as there is a moratorium on elephant shooting in Uganda. However, there is no restriction on the import of ivory. This means that ivory theoretically “imported” from, say, Zaire, can be exported quite legally from Uganda to the insatiable markets of Hong Kong. Just who is profiteering from the slaughter remains a matter for rumour and speculation. Besides, Dr Eltringham says: “It serves little purpose to allocate blame if the objective is to reduce the illegal killing of elephants. This can be done only by the Ugandans themselves. We, as outsiders, can do no more than supply them with the facts and hope they will do something about it.”’