Poachers slaughter Uganda’s elephants

Press, 14 July 1980, Page 16

Poachers slaughter Uganda’s elephants

By

NICK WORRALL

in Kampala, Uganda

Ivory poachers have slaughtered most of the elephants in Uganda. In the 10 years of anarchy since Idi Amin grabbed power, the country’s vast herd .of 40,000 has been reduced to a mere 1500. The poaching has been made easier by the endless supply of military weapons. Groups of five and more elephants can be killed at a time with a few bursts from an automatic rifle. “It came as an appalling shock to come here and discover what in human terms could only be described as genocide,” says Dr lain Douglas-Hamilton, a British, elephant expert who has just begun anti-poacher flights in a Cessna light aircraft. Swooping Low over the 1500 square miles of Kabalega Falls National Park in northern Uganda, he has carried out the first comprehensive elephant survey of the region for four years. He has also counted elephants in Rwenzori Park in western Uganda, near the Mountains of the Moon. “Dead elephants were seen scattered all over the park. They outnumbered the living in the ratio of 62 per cent dead t 0 38 per cent living ” says his report on Rwenzori. “Many carcases were found in groups of two to eight, suggesting that whole groups had been killed simultaneously.” The picture is also grim at Kabalega Falls, once the source of tourism revenue for Uganda exceeded only by coffee and cotton as an earner of foreign exchange. Of 14,000 elephants counted 10 years ago, less than 1000 nave survived.' They cluster near the three lodges where park rangers have their headquarters. Oh the south bank of the Nile, where ID years ago 9000 elephants could be counted, Dr Douglas-Hamilton saw only 160. The chief warden at

Kabalega is Alfred Labongo, a tall, gruff Acholi from northern Uganda who narrowly escaped murder at the hands of Amin’s killers in 1972. “If the present rate of poaching continues at Kabalega Falls Park, the elephants here wilt not survive another six months, he says. “We have already lost all our rhinos, including the rare white rhinos. There were three left in the park last year and they have now been killed for their horns. Many of the poachers are believed to have been soldiers in Amin’s army. Armed with French G-3 automatic rifles, they usually keep to the southern section of the park, where until recently the rangers could not reach them because the Nile ferry had broken down. At dawn they move into the herds, isolating panicstricken cows and their calves. According to Dr Douglas-Hamilton, they then open fire from within a circle of milling animals, firing hundreds of rounds into the great grey bodies. Big as they are, the elephants have no chance. Baggy legs crumple and the trumpeting animals sink to the ground. Then comes the bloody removal of the tusks. Another game warden, Richard Olango, showed me a pile of tusks captured oy his rangers. They were pathetically small, evidence of the ruthlessness of the poachers and . their greed for ivory, which prompts them to kill even calves. , There was also a clutch of G-3 rifles, taken from the poachers after fierce gunfights. “If our rangers meet up with poachers, there has to be a fight if the men have guns,” said Olango. “So far we have killed about 60 poachers. They will never surrender if they are armed.” The 70 rangers at Kabalega have an enormous task which they are tackling with great

dedication. “I have seen the rangers coming back after days stalking poachers on their hands and knees, their knees covered with, sores from rocks and sharp grass, their clothes torn. But if they have captured a gun or a poacher they are jubilant. They all want to do the best they can,” says Dr DouglasHamilton.

The rangers are underpaid — sometimes waiting months for their money. They lack modem equipment. They have no proper uniforms or boots because Uganda’s game parks have been starved of money since the tourists stopped coming during the Amin regime . They have to walk miles through the bush because the park has only one working Land Rover, donated by Frankfurt Zoological Society. Of three radio sets, only two are working. Patrols are often incommunicado for days. The Cessna is the new hope for an all-out drive against the poachers, partly because of lain Douglas-Hamilton’s fearless flying style. When 1 flew with him, never more than 100 feet above the trees, he would spot a poachers’ camp and then bank low over the grass huts, the Cessna’s stall warning device screaming its alarm. He learned to fly while researching elephant behaviour and movement at Tanzania’s Lake Manyara National Park in the 19605. Given reliable radio links with the ground and fast transport for the rangers, poachers could be rooted out and attacked swiftly. It would be the ultimate deterrent.

But, apart from small contributions from the World Wildlife Fund and Frankfurt and the little money Uganda has to spare, no one has come forward with the cash or equipment to make an all-out operation possible. Soon it will be too late. — London Observer Service, Copyright.