91 elephants poisoned with cyanide in Zimbabwe

While African heads of state made measured long-range commitments to
intensify anti-wildlife poaching measures at a UN summit in New York
this week [23-29 Sep 2013], conservation authorities in Zimbabwe were
continuing to count the cost of what could be the single worst
poaching incident on the continent in living memory.

By yesterday [28 Sep 2013], 91 elephant carcasses had been found in
Zimbabwe's Hwange National Park, victims of cyanide added to salt
licks at watering holes inside the reserve.

Meanwhile, reports have indicated the poison has led to widespread
devastation of the ecosystems in the area, with large, though at this
stage untallied, numbers of other wildlife including lions, zebras,
wildebeest, hyenas, leopards, cheetahs, and several species of birds
also included in the list of victims. Especially vulnerable have been
vultures feeding from elephant carcasses.

"This is the worst ecological disaster we have seen, and the fallout
is going to be massive," said Johnny Rodrigues, Chairman of the
Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force.

"Watering holes and the ground are contaminated, and the entire
wildlife food chain is threatened."

"Already predators and vultures and other birdlife species are dying
from the chain reaction or secondary poisoning, and a lot more animals
are going to suffer and die."

Conservationists believe the final tally -- which has steadily risen
after the discovery of some 40 carcasses in August [2013] -- could
climb to 3 figures before the poisons introduced into the watering
holes lose their toxicity.

Hwange covers an area of 14 650 sq km [5656 sq mi] and is Africa's 3rd
largest wildlife sanctuary. The Zimbabwe Wildlife Authority employs
just 50 rangers to protect the park where earlier this year [2013] it
was reported the last southern white rhino at Hwange had been
poached.

Hwange received no mention at this week's [23-29 Sep 2013] UN-hosted
deliberations in New York, where Gabon's President Ali Bongo called
for the appointment of a UN rapporteur on wildlife crime, a call
supported by the UK and Germany among others.

Somewhat more proactive were the Zimbabwean prosecutorial authorities,
arresting 8 suspected poachers since August [2013] in connection with
the cyanide outrage, and securing confessions from at least 2 suspects
that elephants had been targeted for their ivory in poisoning the
watering holes.

This week [23-29 Sep 2013], 3 of the suspects were convicted in the
Hwange Regional Court. 2 were sentenced to 15 years imprisonment, and
an order for the restitution of USD 600 000 (R 5.9 million) to the
Parks and Wildlife Management Authority of Zimbabwe. The 3rd was
handed down a 16-year sentence with labour, and an order for
restitution in the value of USD 200 000 [about R 2 million].

Zimbabwe's political responses have been less pertinent, however, with
Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF blaming Western sanctions for the poaching
crisis. Claiming it had conducted a week-long investigation into the
cyanide poisoning, government mouthpiece the Zimbabwe Herald said last
week it attributed the elephant killing to "the West's illegal
economic sanctions that affected Zimbabwe's once-vibrant wildlife
management system."

Conservation authorities have pointed out that cyanide is a highly
controlled substance, and virtually unobtainable. The single exception
lies in the mining sector.  In recent years, several gold mining
concessions in the Hwange region have been handed out -- nearly all of
them to Chinese interests.

While investigators of the Hwange atrocity have not connected the
provision of the cyanide to mining operators in the area,
circumstantial corroboration is lent to the suspicion by organic
chemist and toxicologist Gerhard Verdoorn.  According to Verdoorn, the
Chinese "colonisation of parts of Africa" has led to a situation where
a "very large quantity of unregistered and uncontrolled Chinese
pesticides and other toxins enter Africa without any control."

Verdoorn says the use of poisons in poaching goes back some years, and
that in the past 2 years [2011-2012] he has received several reports
of mass poisonings of wildlife in Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Namibia, but
has been under pressure from investigative authorities to "keep a lid
on the information" in the light of ongoing investigations.

Ivory trafficking has become one of the world's most lucrative
criminal industries, with an estimated value of USD 7-10 billion a
year, nonprofit advocacy groups say.

Since 1980, the estimated population of African elephants has fallen
from 1.2 million to less than 420 000. In 2012 alone, 35 000 elephants
were slaughtered, data show.

Ivory seizures data indicates that most ivory smuggled from Africa
goes to China, according to Tom Milliken, an expert from world
wildlife monitoring network Traffic.
Bulawayo's Milliken, who runs the Elephant Trade Information System
(ETIS), has tracked the illegal flow of ivory from Africa for the past
22 years.

"In every analysis that we've done since 2004, illegal trade in ivory
has been escalating. The last time we did a major assessment, in 2009,
it was escalating at a rate faster and greater than we had seen
previously. Looking at large-scale ivory seizures in 2011, it's going
off the charts. There were just 13 seizures that generated over 23
tons of ivory," he said.

On Thursday [26 Sep 2013] in New York, Hillary Rodham Clinton
announced a new global effort to protect Africa's wild elephants from
poaching, part of a personal crusade.
"Unless the killing stops, African forest elephants are expected to be
extinct within 10 years," Clinton said. "I can't even grasp what a
great disaster this is ecologically, but also for anyone who shares
this planet to lose a magnificent creature like the African forest
elephant seems like such a rebuke to our own values," she said.
Font: PROMED 03.10.2013