- On Thursday, a summit on how to save endangered species begins
- Is being hosted by the Government at the behest of the Prince of Wales and Duke of Cambridge at London's Lancaster House
- 50 heads of state and ministers will attempt to agree a global response
- Illegal trade in wildlife parts is worth £6bn a year and funds terrorist groups
IN the gilded grandeur of London's
Lancaster House this week, the President of Tanzania, Jakaya Kikwete,
will be greeted with smiles and handshakes by the Prince of Wales, the
Duke of Cambridge, David Cameron and William Hague.
Yet
this diplomatic nicety, at the start of a summit on how to save the
world's most endangered species, will be a moment of supreme irony. For
Mr Kikwete's regime has presided over a slaughter of elephants that is
unprecedented in his country's history.
Even worse, conservationists
insist that many within the Tanzanian government's ranks have been
willing and active accomplices in that slaughter.
At
Thursday's summit, the most ambitious yet, 50 heads of state and
ministers will attempt to agree a global response to an illegal trade
in wildlife parts that is worth £6 billion a year and funds terrorist
groups.
China will be the pantomime villain
at the summit. Its newly rich middle class, now numbering about
350 million, buys around 70 per cent of Africa's poached ivory, which
they consider the ultimate status symbol. They also buy powdered rhino
horn as a cure for everything from cancer to hangovers. Like cocaine in
London, it is the cool thing to serve after fancy dinner parties.
At
the same time, Africa will be painted as the 'victim' of Asian avarice,
and with some justification. It has been plundered on such a scale that
an elephant population once numbered in the millions has plummeted to
barely 400,000 and rhinos to scarcely 25,000.
But the truth is that in some African
states the rich, the powerful and officials at every level are actively
colluding with the international criminal cartels that earn billions of
dollars from trafficking tusks and horns.
Ministers,
law enforcement agents, conservation officials, rangers - those charged
with protecting African wildlife are cashing in on its destruction, and
nowhere more so than in Tanzania. In the late 1980s, Tanzania, home to
Africa's second-largest elephant population, led the war on poaching and
championed the international ban on ivory trading that was adopted in
1989. Today, it is the epicenter of the poaching epidemic sweeping
through the continent's forests and savannas.
A third of all the illegal ivory
seized in Asia comes from or through Tanzania. The country is losing 30
elephants a day, or nearly 11,000 a year. Nearly half the country's
elephants have been shot, speared or poisoned since 2007, leaving
scarcely 60,000 in total.
A particularly shocking report revealed
recently that the giant Selous game reserve, a Unesco World Heritage
Site that boasted 70,000 elephants five years ago, now has barely
13,000. At the present rate, Tanzania's elephants will be extinct
within seven years.
Tanzania
is effectively a one-party state with a pervasive intelligence
apparatus, and nobody seriously contends that this slaughter is
happening without high-level complicity.
Yet not a single kingpin has
been charged and convicted. MPs, senior officials and businessmen are
named in parliament and the media, but investigations fizzle out and
little happens.
Illegal
ivory is still on sale in markets in the Tanzanian cities of Dar es
Salaam and Arusha. Poached tusks from across Eastern and Central Africa
flow out of Tanzania's ports without apparent hindrance. Almost all the
major seizures of illegal ivory emanating from Tanzania since 2009 -
more than 30 tons in total - were made not in the country itself, but in
Asia.
The UN is reportedly considering trade sanctions against Tanzania over its failure to crack down on the trade.
'Corruption
is a huge problem at all levels,' Alfred Kikoti, head of Tanzania's
World Elephant Centre, said. 'From people on the ground all the way up
to ministers, there's somebody involved in poaching.'
Peter Msigwa, a
clergyman and shadow minister of natural resources, said: 'The
government is doing nothing because some of the people supposed to be
solving the problem are part of the problem.'
And Mary Rice,
executive director of the London-based Environmental Investigation
Agency (EIA), agreed, saying: 'None of these networks could possibly
operate without complicity at the most senior level.'
Conservationists
briefly had cause for hope. In 2012, Khamis Kagasheki, an urbane former
ambassador to Switzerland, was appointed minister of natural resources
and confronted the ivory traders with unprecedented vigour, declaring:
'We must fight against this scourge at all costs.'
He
denounced corruption. He submitted a dossier to the president's office
identifying prominent Tanzanians colluding with the poaching syndicates
(it has not been acted on).
He sacked or suspended about 30 corrupt
wildlife officials. He excoriated police chiefs for shielding suspects,
and suggested poachers should be shot on sight. He identified at least
four MPs suspected of complicity in poaching.
Last autumn, he launched a
military crackdown which led to hundreds of arrests. Tons of illegal
ivory was seized and the elephant slaughter was briefly curtailed.
But
the operation was abruptly suspended in November amid claims that
soldiers were killing, raping and displacing innocent people. Soon
afterwards, Kagasheki and three other ministers were dismissed.
Ostensibly this was because of the human rights abuses but few
conservationists believe that.
Dr Kikote says: 'If the operation had
continued for another month, we would have seen MPs or ministers
arrested.' More than 700 wildlife activists have signed a petition
demanding Kagasheki's reinstatement.
'It is now clear that his remaining
in office would have been a very big threat to those who organise
poaching and profit from it and some are in the highest levels of
government,' the petition declares.
Contacted by The Mail on Sunday, Mr Kagasheki said he would speak out at some point, but not yet.
Many
- perhaps most - officials in Tanzania are honest and committed, but
they appear to be fighting a losing battle at every level. In the
national parks, poorly paid, ill-equipped and demoralised rangers are
easily bought with bribes bigger than their salaries.
'Rangers collude
with the poachers by either telling them when patrols will be going out,
or helping them pinpoint herds,' the EIA said in 2010.
Environmentalists
say ammunition of the sort used by the security forces has been found
near elephant carcasses. Poachers have been found with text messages to
government officials on their phones.
Tusks are sometimes transported to
Dar es Salaam and other east coast ports in police or military vehicles
that are never stopped at checkpoints, the EIA says.
There,
the ivory is put into shipping containers, often concealed in cargoes
of soya beans, dried fish or timber, but it is seldom seized because
the police, port and customs officials are all involved.
'It is
inconceivable for a container loaded with elephant teeth [tusks] to
pass through the port in the presence of Tanzania Revenue Authority,
customs and port authorities undetected,' Kagasheki declared before his
dismissal.
The names of the big traders in Dar
are well known. They include some of the country's richest businessmen,
backers and members of the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party, and
even a close relative of President Kikwete. But they have powerful
friends - and judges, prosecutors and police are easily bribed.
The
thousands of Chinese now working in Tanzania fuel the trade. Some of
the major ivory traffickers in Dar are said to be Chinese. So are many
of the middlemen. Last November, three Chinese men were caught at their
home in Dar with 1.8 tons of ivory hidden among sea shells filled with
garlic. A Channel 4 documentary claimed that when Hu Jintao, the then
Chinese president, visited Tanzania in 2010, his officials took illegal
ivory back on his plane.
Conservationists
say the Wildlife Division is the most corrupt government agency of all,
and accuse its officials of selling seized ivory on the black market.
They accuse the government of submitting fabricated figures to sell more
of that ivory on the international market, ostensibly to raise money
for conservation but in reality to fill the CCM's coffers before next
year's elections.
Thursday's
summit is being hosted by the Government at the behest of the Prince
of Wales and Duke of Cambridge. Charles will address the event and
Prince William, who spent some of the happiest months of his life in
Africa during his gap year and proposed to his wife on a Kenyan reserve,
will be by his side.
Environmentalists
are hoping that the summit will highlight Tanzania's lamentable record.
'The government has not yet got serious about this,' said one activist.
'There's too much collusion and profit and vested interests at high
levels. The only thing that will make them act is international shame
and disgrace.'
Comment by Mark Shand
In
my 30 years working in conservation, there has never been such an
unprecedented threat to world wildlife. The illegal wildlife trade is
now worth an estimated £6 billion a year, and it's growing.
For
the criminals who hack off the faces of animals and mutilate their
bodies to feed the relentless demand for wildlife parts in countries
like China and Vietnam, the animals are merely a commodity in a
low-risk, high-profit industry. And many of the stories never make
headlines.
Last year I
accompanied the Prince of Wales on part of his trip to India, planning
to highlight the work of my charity Elephant Family, and show him what
remains of Asia's incredible wildlife.
There he met the real heroes, the
people who risk their lives every day to protect Asia's wildlife, and
the message was clear: the threat of the wildlife trade is not confined
to Africa.
The Prince
has always fought to get the issue on to global agendas and has been key
in galvanising action against it. Now he has another formidable ally -
the Duke of Cambridge. We hope this week's summit in London will focus
on Asia's wildlife as well.
Poaching is devastating Asian elephant herds in India and now there are thought to be only 1,200 breeding males left.
Then
there is the sinister trade in live baby Asian elephants in Burma,
ripped from the forest and smuggled into tourist camps across the border
in Thailand. Tied up and tortured, the calves are subjected to a
'taming' process so brutal that many die from trauma or their injuries.
Burma will lose its elephants in the next 30 years if we don't stop this
trade.
But it is not only the elephants that suffer. India lost 41 of its rhinos last year, from a population of just over 2,500.
Asia's
big cats are being annihilated for their skins and bones (there are as
few as 3,200 tigers left on the whole planet), while thousands of bears
languish in cramped cages across the continent, agonisingly and
repeatedly milked for their bile.
The
little-known pangolin - a sort of anteater with scales and thought to
be the world's most traded wild mammal because of its culinary and
medicinal value in China - is disappearing from the forests, along with
thousands of other endangered species.
Many
of the major criminal networks behind the illegal wildlife trade are
based in Asia. We need to take urgent action, prosecute the kingpins and
reduce demand.
Governments must make substantial funding available now,
to equip those on the front line to fight. And we must call for an end
to all trade in endangered species, before it's too late.
If
I had one wish, it would be that China would educate its people that
ivory only ever looks good on an elephant, tiger parts do not enhance
sexual prowess in humans, rhino horn will not cure your hangover...
and that all these species are worth more alive.
By Martin Fletcher
Source @DailyMail
