Thanks to all of you for taking the time to not only read the blog but take the time to comment on the situation.

Poaching wherever it takes place is a complicated situation and is normally fueled not always by corruption but also poverty.  Elephant poaching in this part of the world is practiced by those who can afford the arms and ammunition and who are also protected from prosecution.  So it is not a matter of poor people hunting for self-sustainance.  There are well organized gangs of people who are under the thumb of one person hired by a local officials to hunt.  These criminal gangs are well protected and even when they are arrested they are only sent away for a couple of weeks or months before returning to the area to pick up where they left off.  There appears to be this tacit agreement that if the poacher keeps his mouth shut he will eventually be back at work in a short time.  I would also add that this is much the case in all of Central Africa where the forest elephants are being hunted full-time.

How do we work against this corruption ?  That is the perhaps the most difficult part.  Corruption runs deep and the more I learn about it the more I am frustrated and the most frustrating part is that most of the people here know about the system and how it works.  They accept it as the status quo, it always having been the situation and they know no other.  They also know as I have learned after more than two decades on the ground that it is virtually impossible to change the situation.  The only way I can deal with it is on a day to day basis and try to find some positive side of my experience.

In the end unless the corruption is dealt with Africa is doomed from an economic as well as social point of view.  The majority of people here deserve better because the majority of them are concerned with educating and feeding themselves but with the quality of leadership that now exists that is impossible.

I heard the news this morning on the BBC about the UN flying a helicopter into Virunga National Park and trading munition for ivory.  If this is true then it is another indication of how difficult the problem is and if there is corruption at that level one can only imagine how deep it goes.

A friend of mine said something very striking yesterday.  We were talking about the corruption and how it a form of adaptation, an adaptation of survival.  In other words in an environment where corruption is rife the only way to survive is also to be corrupt.

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