Dzanga Forest Elephants

Category: Elephants, Forest | Date: Sep 15 2008 | By: dzangaforestelephants

I am back in the United States until the beginning of October. This is a difficult time because I am thinking about Dzanga most of the time and hope that the assistants and guards are being vigilant about possible poaching activity. Before I left there was definitely a problem in the area, the elephants were nervous and their numbers were low for this part of the year. I was reluctant to leave knowing that there was poaching pressure in the area around Dzanga.

Bais are so important for monitoring and give an immediate assessment of poaching pressure, especially in the case of elephants who of all animal species are the most sensitive to human presence, particularly negative presence. But then they are the prime target of poachers. So their fear is what protects them in the end.

Being here in the US has brought home the terrific challenge at hand, that of protecting and conserving elephants all over Africa. Perusing the internet and receiving articles pertaining to elephants sent by Melissa Groo from the Save the Elephants list serve have saddened me. African elephants are up against the wall and are under poaching pressure continent wide. Kenya has seen an upsurge in poaching and now the Namibian government has decided to grant hunting licenses for professional hunting for some of their remaining big tuskers. behind the illicit trade are the Chinese who have been allowed to buy ivory legally from the CITES decision but then illegal trade in ivory has been traced to the Chinese. So my question is why are we rewarding bad behavior by allowing the Chinese to have it both ways ?

So what can we do about this ? There are too many bad decisions made by people so far removed from reality, decisions that are impacting species like the African elephant. These decision makers are far from the daily grind of African reality, making crucial decisions which make our jobs on the ground so much more difficult. Instead of thinking of the planet’s biodiversity which is in crisis they see the world as commodity driven reducing a magnificent animal to a trade item to be displayed in someone’s living room or turned into jewelry. We can predict the scenario, when the elephant numbers reach critical proportions there will be outcry about how few elephants are left and all the major conservation organizations will launch campaigns highlighting this crisis.

Now is the time to act when we still have a chance to stem the current levels of poaching. The challenges are perhaps insurmontable, the corruption, the poverty, and the apathy on all sides. The outcry is there but we need action and people who are not afraid to take up the challenge.

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