Elephants and rhino under new threat of extinction

Press, 23 September 1983, Page 17

Elephants and rhino under new threat of extinction

From

ALISTAIR MATHESON

in Nairobi

The southern Sudan and adjoining territories have become the last big slaughtering ground for Africa’s elephants. Highly-organ-ised gangs have been responsible for the massacre of more than 100,000 in the last three years. Several leading wildlife and conservation experts who have been collecting evidence of this vast illegal trade, have come to the conclusion that the operations are being masterminded at a high level in the Sudan capital of Khartoum. Dr David Western, the British ecologist who heads the African elephant and rhino specialist group appointed by the International Union for the conservation of Nature and natural Resources, alleges that the Sudan is now being used as a “funnel” for massive quantities of poached African ivory destined for sale overseas. These are all supplied with legally valid permits signed by Sudanese officials to circumvent the convention which is aimed at stamping out this illegal traffic, he claims. “The main loophole is in the convention itself because the Sudan is exporting ivory with genuine permits. Nothing can be done by other countries to prevent this,” he adds.

According to recent records, the Sudan has been exporting to Hong Kong and Japan more than a third of the ivory from Africa since 1980. These countries alone account for 80 per cent of the world market for ivory. Conservationists who have made extensive field surveys, say that this vast amount of ivory also includes tusks from adjacent countries such as Zaire, the Central African Republic, and even Uganda and Tanzania. All have been fun-

nelled into the Sudan to be “legalised” by a few well-known and influential traders in Khartoum.

Over this same period the rare northern white rhinoceros has become almost extinct, due to the activities of these same well-armed gangs. They travel more than 1000 miles from the north to kill their trophies in remote frontier areas bordering on Zaire. Dr Esmond Bradley Martin, an American who has spent the past decade tracking down the routes by which rhino horn is smuggled out of Africa to lucrative markets in the Middle and Far East, says: “Most things don’t work very well in the Sudan, but this poaching operation is one of the most efficiently run activities there today. “In a country where there is no fuel to be had, and preciously little water or even food to buy, it is amazing how these northerners can travel such great distances and get back to Khartoum again with their valuable trophies. They must have some good high-level support to get away with it”. According to ivory dealers who Martin questioned in Hong Kong, one Sudanese firm in Khartoum is now the single largest exporter of ivory from Africa. Together with the Kenyan elephant expert lan Parker, Dr Martin has taken evidence from many professional hunters and their clients about the extent of the illegal activities in the Southern Sudan.

In a joint paper, due to be published shortly, they report: “The poaching is apparently undertaken by large gangs of northern Sudanese who travel hundreds of miles into the elephant areas of the south.

“These ventures call for logistical support and planning of a high order, so much so that they could only be undertaken with a high degree of certainty of success. This suggests official connivance at a high level. “Concrete proof that this is forthcoming lies in the permits which accompany the consignments that arrive, quite legally, on the international markets.”

Dr Martin says that these northern Sudanese, armed with modern rifles, “even had the audacity last year to set up camps inside the southern national park.” The wildlife authorities are either unwilling, or unable, to dislodge them.

Mr Parker thinks that their operations will cease soon now that the price of African ivory has dropped by 40 per cent, but with African rhino horn still fetching $550 a kilo in the Far East and the even scarcer Asian variety now up to a phenomenal $6500 a kilo, Dr

Martin sees no hope for the white rhino.

Dr Kes Hillman, who has been conducting an African-wide survey of the rhino population and has spent some time in southern Sudan, which with Zaire and the Central African Republic now provides the last habitat of the northern white rhino, states in her latest report: “In Shambe game reserve the last supposed sighting of a live rhino was in July last year. We could find no confirmed fresh signs of rhinos present.” The California-born Phil Snyder, who is warden of the Dorna national park recently established in the Sudan’s Equatoria province, near the Ethiopian border, has reported “a dramatic loss of elephants in eastern Equatoria,” and estimates that only a few thousand remain from herds totalling up to 22,000 that were counted in an aerial survey in 1976. Copyright — London Observer Service.