Daily Nation
December 31  2012 
 
The international ring behind poaching and smuggling of ivory has devised ingenious ways of transporting their loot to evade detection from security agencies, investigations by the Nation reveal.

Their tricks include declaring containers ferrying the smuggled ivory as carrying either timber, fruits, electronics, tyres or other assorted goods. Most of the ivory intercepted in Asia is being traced to the ports of Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania and Mombasa port.

A wave of poaching has in the recent past hit the Eastern Conservation Area (ECA) which includes national parks, game reserves and sanctuaries in Isiolo, Meru, Garissa and Kitui counties.

Fight stepped up

Some of the affected parks include Meru National Park, the Shaba/Buffalo Springs in Isiolo County and 24 private and community wildlife conservancies.

This comes at a time when security agencies have stepped up efforts to combat the poaching menace by introducing new measures in efforts to take on poachers. They include a tool kit to help fight poaching, new state of the art laboratory and training more rangers.

For instance, the International Consortium on Combating Wildlife Crime (ICCWC) has launched a wildlife crime analytic tool kit to help fight poaching.

The use of the tool kit will provide government officials, customs, police and other relevant enforcement agencies with a framework to analyse, prevent, detect and combat wildlife and forest offences.

The Kenya Wildlife Service has also increased the number of rangers and retrained the existing ones. According to the KWS director in charge of the ECA area George Osuri, KWS has been training its officers on how to fight increased poaching incidents.

KWS chairman David Mwiraria also revealed recently that the agency had recruited and trained 4,900 rangers and bought new equipment to help in the fight against poaching in national parks and wild life conservancies.

“We have bought sophisticated guns, vehicles and other high-tech equipment,” said Mr Mwiraria.

Wildlife conservationists have welcomed the construction of a multi-million forensic and genetic laboratory which they say will help convict poachers. The centre, which will to be completed soon, will enable KWS build water tight cases against poachers.

Once completed, the new facility will also act as a DNA data bank for all wild animals killed. When impounded game trophies are recovered, the exhibits will be scientifically analysed to help KWS link the dealers of game trophies to the animals killed and the location where the incident occurred.

Former KWS director Julius Kipngetich traces the increase in poaching and ivory smuggling to 2008 when China received the go-ahead from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species to buy non-poached ivory from some African nations.

“The go-ahead, which we opposed vehemently, has eventually created a demand that now seems to be insatiable and threatens to significantly reduce the population of elephants,” he said.

The nine-year moratorium expires in 2017. Dr Kipngetich said the licensing of butcheries selling game meat in some neighbouring countries has also increased poaching.

“There is poaching in the Mara, but most of the activities take place outside the park,” he says.

The government, according to the chairman of Siana Wildlife Trust Sammy Nkoitoi is doing little to conserve the jumbos.

“The government does not completely support the conservancies that form the bulk of the territory where elephants are found. KWS only covers 25 per cent of the wildlife territory and is under-funded,” he says.

In the last three years more than 80 elephants, five rhinos and an unknown number of other species have been killed in the Maasai Mara Game Reserve alone.

Like other areas with a huge population of wildlife, poachers use guns to kill the animals but also use poisoned arrows and spears to avoid detection by the county council and KWS rangers.

Narok County Council, which manages the vast Mara reserve, has round the clock surveillance on the movement of both people and animals. The council’s town clerk, Mr Pius Mutemi adds that communities living near parks have an obligation to protect the animals but often times kill the jumbos.

Narok is one of the leading human-wildlife conflict hot-spots with an average of between three to five deaths every month. This is in addition to the destruction of property and crops by elephants that roam outside their designated areas.

KWS Narok chief warden Benard Koruta said the on going poaching of elephants does not bode well for future tourism prospects and asked communities living near neighbouring national parks to help in fighting the menace.

Police in the area are stepping up arrests. Narok police boss Peterson Maelo said more than 40 poachers have been arrested with 300 kgs of elephant tusks in the last one year.

Fifteen of them have been shot dead by KWS officers. Recently, three Somali nationals were arrested in Lemek area in Narok south and Sh700, 000 they were carrying seized.