Once upon a time, Africa alone was home to 26 million elephants. The giants roamed the continent knowing not what lay in store, that their habitats would dwindle and so would their majestic numbers.
From millions, they are now in their thousands, falling faster than trees – all for their ivory tusks.
Approximately 97 elephants are gunned down daily by poachers for their tusks. This means by 2030 there could be no elephants left in the wild.
According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the African elephant population dropped from 550,000 in 2006 to about 350,000. In East Africa, the decline is far more alarming – from 150,000 to about 100,000.
Other parts of the world have also seen a drastic decline of the elephant population. In Asia, it’s estimated less than 50,000 elephants still roam the region; more than half of them in India.
These figures are frightening – what deforestation and poaching can do.
Jeffrey Gettleman of The New York Times said: “Like blood diamonds from Sierra Leone or plundered minerals from Congo, ivory, it seems, is the latest conflict resource in Africa, dragged out of remote battle zones, easily converted into cash and now fueling conflicts across the continent.”
It’s hard not to notice the mammoths disappearing.
<div id="attachment_34014" style="width: 510px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-34014" class=" wp-image-34014" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Paula-Kahumbu-e1509005131550-300x214.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="357" />Paula Kahumbu. (Photo supplied)</div>
Dr. Paula Kahumbu, the CEO of WildlifeDirect, a Kenyan conservation NGO, is currently leading a campaign, Hands Off Our Elephants – civil society, corporations, government agencies as well as other conservation organizations in a unified approach towards ending the poaching crisis in Kenya.
Born in Nairobi, Kenya, to an English mother and Kenyan father, Kahumbu is one of eight siblings. Being out in the wilderness as a child interacting with animals made her the committed eco-warrior she is today.
“My mother was often home alone and because we were so many, mother would literally tell us to get lost and we would do just that,” says Kahumbu.
“We’d go exploring – catching anything you can imagine; birds, mice, snakes, frogs. We’d go fishing and swimming in the rivers, make our way through to forests and swamps. We spent our entire childhoods in the wilderness.”
“We did the kind of stuff you would never allow children to do today actually but it was very safe at that time,” she continues.
Soon, these trysts led to an encounter with Richard Leakey, a Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist and politician.
“We didn’t know all that much about wildlife so we would visit our neighbor, Richard Leakey, head of the Kenya Museum Associates. He was someone who knew a lot about animals and whenever we would spend time with him he would teach us about their ecology, behavior, and the like.”
Between the 1960s and 1980s, elephant poaching was at a dramatic high, according to the Convention of International Trade and Endangered Species (CITES).
“When I finished high school, it was very difficult at that time to get into university. My parents could not afford to take us to the local university,” says Kahumbu, who then, just as she had done countless times as a girl, returned to Leakey.
She knocked on his door, which at the time was at the National Museum, and said, “I want to be a ranger”. That got her in.
“There was one particular place I wanted to go to, Kora National Park, best known for the lions and George Adamson who is famously known as Baba ya Simba, which translates to ‘father of lions’. My dream was to be his ranger. And Richard Leakey said ‘are you sure about this’? I was 17 years old and that’s all I wanted to do. I ended up in a research facility which focused on monkeys and that’s when I realized the importance of science in studying animals,” says Kahumbu.
That was the motivation for years of study. Kahumbu was the first in her family to attend university.
“My mum was not keen on the idea of a career in animal conservation… She sent me to secretarial college because she thought that the safe [career] option is to be a secretary because everyone needs a secretary. I detested it and the day I ran to Richard Leakey’s office was the day I ran away from secretarial college.”
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Kahumu did a lot of field work early in her career.
“I went to some of the remote corners of the country, some really dangerous areas to study this wildlife. This left my mother very anxious.”
Her “conservative” mother always threatened: “I am going to speak to this Richard Leakey because it’s unacceptable that a young woman can live in the bush for months on end counting monkeys on her own.”
Her father, on the other hand, encouraged her. Kahumbu clearly broke boundaries.
“I remember my male colleagues were very angry with me because it was very uncommon for a woman, particularly a Kenyan woman, to be working in the forest usually by herself, so they would beg me to stop but of course I never did,” she says.
That did not deter her from her course.
“My son was actually born when I started working on my PhD and he was two-and-a-half years old when I had to spend extended periods of time in the wilderness conducting my research. I worked in a rainforest on top of a mountain with huge trees.”
Kahumbu and a small team of researchers were studying trees, a main source of nourishment for the elephants.
“We wanted to gauge how elephants living and eating in the forest was changing the landscape of the forest. My son was still so small, I would sit him on a mat, give him some toys to play with and go on measuring trees.”
“One day, the trees started moving as though they were being consumed by strong winds, it was actually a herd of elephants calmly making their way through the forest… But we were so busy we had not noticed they had moved in around us and I hadn&#8217;t really realized they were around us until I was about to measure what I thought was the trunk of a tree and then I realized it was the leg of an elephant,” she laughs.
“When I did [realize], I slowly tiptoed backwards and picked up the baby.”
<div id="attachment_34015" style="width: 512px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-34015" class=" wp-image-34015" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Paula-Kahumbu-elephants-e1509006154685-300x214.jpg" alt="" width="502" height="358" />Paula Kahumbu observes elephants. (Photo supplied)</div>
Kahumbu was persuaded to study elephants after her bachelor&#8217;s degree and “was offered an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to lead the stocktake of ivory in 1989 in Kenya”.
“I had to measure every single tusk, which is a great source of information about the sex of the elephant and age. We gathered data from about 3,000 tusks and drew a timeline as every tusk had a marker of when and where it was seized.”
What the timelines showed was alarming. The tusks got smaller and smaller. This showed poachers were going for smaller elephants, calves essentially.
“Juxtaposing the data with the demography of animals, we saw there were no adults left, the species was basically finished because there were no longer breeding individuals; poachers are going for any kind of elephant, even if it had half a kilogram of ivory.”
Following that, Kahumbu decided she was not going to study the pachyderms, not only because they were virtually extinct but also because there was the threat of her becoming a target for poachers in the area.
“So, for my master’s degree, I decided to study monkeys and even from time to time, when we were out doing research in the wilderness, we’d hear gunshots and subsequently come across dead elephants on our trail and I remember thinking, ‘thank goodness I’m not studying elephants’ because every single day, I would be heartbroken.”
For three years, she refused to study them.
After her master’s, she became a senior scientist at Kenya Wildlife Service. While there, the organization hired 30 young Kenyans to conduct research on elephants.
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The ban on poaching was now in place so their task was to work out how to save the remaining elephants as well as replenish the population. This formed the thesis of Kahumbu’s PhD.
When she became CEO of WildlifeDirect, she led a campaign exposing the poaching crisis in Kenya, leading to major reforms in the laws and practices against ivory poachers and traffickers.
Poaching dropped by 80% in three years. Kenya burned her entire ivory stockpile of 105 tonnes in April 2016, an event that garnered global attention.
“The world was very surprised – how was it that a country suffering economically would forego millions of dollars’ worth of a payout to prove a point?” says Kahumbu.
It was a start, and conservation continues.
“Even after decades of working in this area, I still can’t understand the inhumanity and greed of poachers. The elephant is an extraordinary animal. They can live in any habitat except the ocean. They can climb close to the ice on Mount Kilimanjaro, they can live in deserts as they do in Namibia and northern Africa. They can live in forests and in savannahs. Elephants can also eat almost anything.
“They are a lot like humans in that way because they can easily adapt to an environment. Their brain is three to six times larger than the human brain, designed to store vast amounts of information. Further, elephant families are actually governed by females because the male leave the herd at an early age and only return to mate.”
The trade of ivory is inextricably linked to the trading of slaves. Kahumbu explains, in the late 1800s, the British could not take ivory out of Africa without the help of slaves because they did not have the means to carry it. Ivory was stolen from the homesteads of people in the Congo.
“In those days, Africans did not see the monetary value poachers saw; they would use the tusks as fence posts around their homesteads and the British would raid these villages and steal all the ivory and ship it to Zanzibar and Mombasa and then it would be taken to Europe. It was so valuable, 100 tons a year were being shipped out to be used as billiard balls.”
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And then ivory found its way to America; the volume of ivory coming into one part alone gave birth to two cities on the back of ivory trade and slavery. Business boomed. Technology was developed to transform ivory into how we know it today – thin veneers used as piano keys and hair combs.
“That was a major driver. And by the end of the 1800s, there was about 1.2 million elephants – a drastic decline. In Japan, ivory was a symbol of luck, pens and stamps were made with ivory and of course this caused the trade to skyrocket in the region.”
At the moment, various species of the elephant are on the World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF) list of critically endangered, endangered, vulnerable and threatened animals, sharing the list with another dwindling animal – the rhinoceros. The illegal rhino horn trade has decimated the world’s rhino population by more than 90% over the past 40 years.
But has the world awakened to the plight of these animals?
According to research, the common strategy adopted by many countries is to destroy stockpiles of ivory. An article in The Guardian quotes WWF: “This has been the case not only for African countries but also some developed countries that have intercepted ivory originating from Africa. The idea is to remove the ivory from the market and thus reduce the incentive for people to engage in smuggling. In Kenya, the problem of elephant poaching has spiraled out of control and destroying ivory has become the common practice in dealing with the stockpiles.”
The torching of stockpiles of ivory has not been the only way governments have tried to mitigate the poaching of elephants. Countries such as France, China, the United States, and the Philippines have destroyed ivory worth millions of dollars. However, South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe oppose the destruction of illegal ivory; this according to an article published in National Geographic in 2016.
But does destroying ivory translate to less poaching? The Conservation Trust, a nongovernmental organization sites that in 2015, elephant poaching was at its highest level in more than three decades.
The ornaments made from the tusks form part of a billion-dollar industry – prevalent and as dangerous as ever.
Kahumbu’s Hands Off Our Elephants has generated unprecedented public and political awareness and support for wildlife conservation in Kenya.
According to WildlifeDirect, the most severe financial penalty for convicted poachers was $400, and fewer than 4% of convicted offenders were going to jail, a safe haven for poachers. Since then, the Kenyan government has allocated $20 million for anti-poaching activities.
In January last year, Kahumbu partnered with media and wildlife authorities to launch Kenya’s first wildlife documentary series, NTV Wild. It shines a light on issues of poaching and the very real prospect that in the near future, the world may be without elephants.

Will There Be Any Elephants Left In 2030?

Private rhino horn owner John Hume recently held South Africa’s <a href="https://rhinohornauction.com/web/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">first online rhino horn auction</a>, a major event in the ongoing fight by private rhino owners to be able to sell legal horn stocks. But in a statement <a href="http://mailchi.mp/240f2571befd/john-hume-online-rhino-horn-auction-results-835477?e=ba2124a66c" target="_blank" rel="noopener">released on Hume’s behalf</a> it was admitted that there were very few bidders for the 264 horns.
The auctions result is a setback to achieve a legal, commercial trade in horn to replace poached horn in supplying demand in the main markets. Hume’s official statement tried to put a brave face on it, saying he had triumphed and that a legal and sustainable supply <a href="http://mailchi.mp/240f2571befd/john-hume-online-rhino-horn-auction-results-835477?e=ba2124a66c" target="_blank" rel="noopener">has been established</a>. He stills hopes to attract more buyers – horn will still be available for private sales as long as permits are available.
The auction website had been translated into Vietnamese and Chinese in a bid to attract more bidders. Vietnam and China are the main markets for rhino horn – supplied currently by the <a href="https://theconversation.com/wave-of-rhino-killings-points-to-shifting-poaching-patterns-in-south-africa-77806" target="_blank" rel="noopener">huge level of poaching of rhinos</a> in South and southern Africa.
But with very few bidders taking part and one presumes little horn sold, it has done little to decisively advance the cause of establishing a legal, regulated market that both John Hume and Pelham Jones, chair of the Rhino Owners Association (PROA) believe can replace poaching, and provide funds to promote the breeding, protection and ultimate survival of rhinos.
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There’s confusion over what comes next, made worse by the inconclusive result of the online auction, which has neither put a nail firmly in the coffin of legal trade nor shown a massive domestic demand that would put pressure on the government or provide economic incentives for more auctions or private sales.
This is the worst of both worlds and will only encourage further poaching, as demand shows no sign of lessening.
<h2>Controversy remains</h2>
The situation does not help clear the mess of a three way fight between private owners who favour trade, the government which seems not to know or want to say what it wants to do, and the strong and vocal lobby totally opposed to trade. Groups such as the <a href="https://www.ewt.org.za/RHINO/rhino.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Endangered Wildlife Trust</a>, for example, are against trade mainly on ethical grounds.
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The biggest block to the success of the auction was that horns legally purchased cannot be exported legally for sale. <a href="https://cites.org/eng/disc/what.php" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species</a>, or CITES, <a href="https://cites.org/sites/default/files/eng/cop/17/WorkingDocs/E-CoP17-68-A5.pdf">bans</a> this. Without lifting the ban or changing their regulations, CITES members like South Africa, China and Vietnam cannot trade any horn. Vietnamese or Chinese buyers can buy horn in South Africa but cannot take it <a href="https://beta.safarious.com/article/1902-saving-private-rhino-owners" target="_blank" rel="noopener">out of the country</a>.
Earlier this year, South Africa’s Constitutional Court <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wildlife-rhinos-safrica-idUSKBN1771VP" target="_blank" rel="noopener">definitively overturned</a> the 2009 government ban on the domestic trade in rhino horn. The decision caused confusion over how horn would be sold, what permits were needed and whether the department would provide the permits. The ability of the government to develop a viable regulatory system for horn is also in question.
The <a href="https://www.mahohboh.org/2017/08/21/rhino-horn-online-auction-postponed/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">department set conditions</a> on issuing permits for Hume’s sale, which he agreed to comply with fully. Only permit holders can sell to other permit holders. The permit does not allow international trade. Part of the conditions was that the department must have access to the auction to do the necessary monitoring.
This would appear to be a first step in providing some sort of regulatory framework for domestic sales. It meets South Africa’s need to be seen to be complying with the 40-year-old <a href="https://voices.nationalgeographic.org/2016/10/13/cites-upholds-rhino-horn-trade-ban-but-will-this-reduce-rhino-poaching/">CITES ban</a> on the international commercial trade in rhino horn, but at the same time obeying the court order that domestic sales be permitted.
<h2>Confusion over what happens next</h2>
Earlier this year the South African government <a href="http://allafrica.com/stories/201703110005.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">published draft legislation</a> on horn sales that would allow owners of horn (South African or foreign) to take two horns out of the country as personal property but not for commercial sale and as long as the owners had the proper permits. The department then held consultations with interested parties, including private rhino owners, but the proposed legislation has not been released for consideration by parliament.
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Molewa and the department haven’t said anything about next steps. They have however released <a href="https://beta.safarious.com/article/1902-saving-private-rhino-owners" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a statement</a> affirming South Africa’s commitment to CITES regulations. This puts emphasis on the fact that commercial international trade on rhino horn remains prohibited. The department denied that the new draft regulations were meant to circumvent CITES but they did confirm that it would allow limited horn exports.
This has set alarm bells ringing that a pseudo trade could develop, with foreign buyers coming to South Africa, buying horn legally, then taking it out of the country after. Monitoring what happens then would be impossible.
There is no single solution or silver bullet to put an end to poaching, but the present impasse will only make things worse. &#8211; Written by <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/keith-somerville-275605" target="_blank" rel="author noopener">Keith Somerville</a>, Visiting Professor, University of Kent
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83119/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-advanced" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />

South Africa’s first online rhino horn auction ends in risky impasse

With the recent international outrage around the killing of Cecil the lion in Zimbabwe, sharp divisions have emerged in Africa on whether or not to ban the trophy-hunting of lions.
This especially in light of the fact that while in 1975, the population of the African lion stood at 250,000, now, on account of factors such as animal-human conflict, war, poaching and trophy-hunting, this figure has dropped to 30,000.
In some African countries like Zimbabwe, South Africa, Namibia, Mozambique and Tanzania, trophy-hunting of lions is still permitted. If not controlled, wildlife experts say, by the middle of the century, the African lion will be extinct.
“The government must act otherwise wildlife will become extinct. We run the risk of having no lions by 2050,” says Johnny Rodrigues, chairperson of the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force.
“What has happened to Cecil lends weight to our call for the banning of wildlife trophy-hunting… In southern Africa, 22,000 lions are left and this shows how lions are being decimated.”
Cecil’s killer, American dentist Walter Palmer, paid $50,000 but reportedly his local contacts, Theodoro Bronkhorst, a professional hunter, and Honest Ndlovu, owner of the safari, had no permits for the hunt.
There are many views to the controversy this killing has provoked.
Benjamin Paradza, a former High Court judge and safari operator in Zimbabwe before he went into exile, says lion-hunting should not be banned but says Cecil’s death was illegal and the real culprits are his contacts in Zimbabwe.
“The safari business is an industry mired in elitism. The real culprit is the professional hunter and the safari operator who have the responsibility to conduct a hunt within the terms of the permit granted by the government.
“What the world does not see is that politicians in Zimbabwe will politicize this simply because an American is involved. This is typical of government propaganda which blames others in order to hide its poor governance,” claims Paradza.
The government had called for the extradition of Palmer to Zimbabwe; and the country suspended the trophy-hunting of lions, leopards and elephants for a week.
Bronkhorst insists his arrest “is frivolous and wrong”.
Palmer reportedly used a bow and arrow and Cecil was injured but was brought down by a firearm some 40 hours later. Conservationists say this method cripples the animals and they endure a slow, painful death.
This is one of the reasons many are against trophy-hunting.
“I support the banning of trophy-hunting because of the way animals react and how painful it is. It’s a dangerous game. Hunters use crossbows and injure the animals and you know how an injured animal reacts. Well-connected people are also using it as a shield to illegally hunt the big game,” says Rangarirai Chinobva, a wildlife hunter guide.
However, players in the safari industry opine lion-hunting is a valuable component to conservation and boosts the country’s economy; those like Bronkhorst feel trophy-hunting is the only way to sustain wildlife.
“The hunting brings in revenue. I know it’s a terrible thing to some, but we have to be practical and realistic. Whether we lose a few animals through those that pay for the conservation or whether we lose the whole lot is the option faced in many areas,” he says.
In 2014, Zimbabwe’s revenue from the safari industry was $65 million, up from $55 million in 2013; money the industry says incentivizes communities and the country’s economy.
Rodrigues disputes this.
“It’s a myth; landowners and hunters reap rewards and hardly anything goes to the local communities. Trophy-hunting is elitist yet animals are crucial in attracting tourists if they are protected and are not hunted. The issue is that there are some bigwigs involved in poaching and are against the banning and this should be investigated,” he says.
Conservationists believe game-viewing is sustainable for the environment than trophy-hunting and brings in more revenue.
The jury is still out on this. Hopefully, Africa will not have another ‘Cecil the lion’. Hopefully.

shutterstock_265046429

Will He Roar in 2050?

Africa is the last true wild frontier in the world; its wildlife racks up more than $30 billion annually.
But, in countries such as Zimbabwe, less money is reaching the government and animal extinction is becoming a reality.
The ruthless killing of Cecil the Lion in Zimbabwe sent shockwaves around the world. It raises the question of whether Africa is getting a raw deal for its wildlife.
In 2012, the tourism sector contributed 10% to Zimbabwe’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the projection was that by this year it should have reached 15%. Statistics for this year are only available in 2016 but there has been a surge in tourists, particularly from the United States.
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Some American tourists, though, have been caught on the wrong side of the law by participating in unsanctioned lion hunts.
Johnny Rodrigues, a wildlife conservationist, believes the biggest problem standing in the way of animal conservation in Zimbabwe is corruption.
“In the case of Cecil, an American tourist bribed guides for $55,000 to kill a lion that was at the center of major international research. There are many such cases that go unreported,” he says.
In the past 20 years, the lion population in Africa has been depleted by 30%. As of 2014, it is estimated that there are only 30,000 left on the continent.
Zimbabwe has a population of around 1,600 lions, most of which are kept in protected areas away from hunters. Between 1999 and 2009, it was recorded that 800 lions were killed in legal hunts but it is understood that many more were killed in illegal hunts.
Lions, rhino, elephant, giraffe and buffalo are the most popular targets for hunters, but some lesser known animals are also caught up in the illicit trade.
Langton Masunda, a tour operator in Zimbabwe, says poachers and illegal hunters are more equipped and better funded than government rangers. This gives them an obvious advantage over those trying to save the country’s wild animals.
“They have more sophisticated weaponry, are usually better trained and they have communication equipment that the government does not have,” says Masunda.
Not so long ago, more effort was put into protecting the rhinoceros, but poachers shifted their focus to elephants. Zimbabwe has an elephant population of 85,000, with around 30,000 of those being calves. Because of the demand in the Asian market, poachers targeted the elephant at an industrial scale.
“Water sources were contaminated with cyanide. Hundreds would drop dead and in the process other animals, which the poachers had no use for, died too. Even people in rural communities surviving on the same water sources were affected. What makes it bad is that in many cases locals in poverty stricken communities would assist poachers,” says Masunda.
Although they have a harsh penal system for poaching, countries such as South Africa are havens for illegal hunts.
“Each year, more than 20,000 elephants – possibly up to 35,000 – are killed by poachers for their tusks, which are shipped to ivory markets, predominantly in countries such as China and Thailand. In 2014, 1,215 rhinos were killed in South Africa alone, which, when compared with the 13 killed by poachers in 2007, represents a more than 9,000 percent increase in rhino poaching,” says a World Economic Forum report.
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The spiraling poaching figures are driven by the Asian market. In countries such as China and Vietnam, it is believed the rhino horn has medicinal properties that can cure everything from headaches to cancer. Elephant tusks are crushed into a powder and used to make aphrodisiacs, among other things.
The development of rural communities is also a factor that opens trade links with the rest of the world. It makes smuggling easier.
But, in Southern Africa, there is hope that some of the targeted animals can be saved, especially at the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA) that brings together Zambia, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Angola and Botswana.
KAZA is the world’s largest wildlife park, slightly bigger than Italy.
In 2014, on the Botswana side of the park, President Ian Khama banned hunting to preserve the animals. As an alternative, the country is investing in luxurious camps. Last year alone, it was estimated that tourism brought in $337.5 million. A few greedy tourists with rifles should not be allowed to decimate this important source of income.

The Bullets Killing More Than Animals

The foot soldiers in the war against rhino poaching risk their lives every night. Preventing poachers from wiping the rhino off the face of Africa is a job for unsung heroes. Often, all they have are blisters to show for it.
They face questions from loved ones over the risky lives they lead. Last year, a lion dragged a sleeping anti-poaching officer from his bed under the stars and killed him.
It costs R20,000 ($1,900) a month for one unit, working as a two-man team.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-31143" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/20130523-IMG_8633-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20130523-IMG_8633-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20130523-IMG_8633-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20130523-IMG_8633-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20130523-IMG_8633.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
They have to be quick. All it takes for a poacher to kill a rhino is an hour. In five hours, the horn can be over the border and on a plane. Anti-poaching officers are on high alert 24/7. All have military training. This is a taste of their hard lives, as private money comes into the game.
Sergeant Tumi Morema
It’s 2AM at the Thorny Bush Game Lodge. The off-road vehicle’s yellow headlights pierce the landscape. Sergeant Thumi Morema is at the wheel looking for poachers. The 33 year old comes from the community in the area surrounding the private big game farms. He remembers the day he made his first arrest.
“We were searching for an old man who was hunting with dogs. If we find poaching dogs we shoot them. We found his snares and set an ambush… we saw his dogs approaching under a tree we were sitting in. The old man stopped beneath us and started fixing the snares. I jumped out of the tree, went around and came up behind him. I touched him on the shoulder, he got such a fright. We tied him and his dogs up. This man had been hunting all his life and had never been caught. I’ve been hunting before. I called it hunting, you called it poaching. I call it poaching now,” he says.
Since then, he has caught more than 50 would-be poachers. Thirty six of them have been sentenced in court. According to Morema, only a few can cut it. Of the 42 men who trained with him, only two made it.
He has spent his adult life supporting his 18 family members after his older brother died. He says his community has ostracized him since going over to what they call ‘the white famers’ side’.
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Tag: Poaching

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

Will There Be Any Elephants Left In 2030?

South Africa’s first online rhino horn auction ends in risky impasse

Will He Roar in 2050?

The Bullets Killing More Than Animals

My family is so scared i will be eaten by lions”