Poaching: Can technology help prevent the extinction of Kenya’s big game?
To the horror of naturalists and wildlife lovers, poachers of rhinos, elephants and other large mammals in East Africa are incorporating sophisticated military operations technology, including night-tracking devices and sniper rifles, into their shadowy work. long-range. And they are winning the war.
The recent toll on East African wildlife has been terrible. Big game animals are dying, not of natural causes, but because they are being slaughtered for bones and skin. Last year, some 385 elephants were slaughtered for their ivory tusks. In October 2013, officials in Mombasa seized a 4-tonne cache of ivory while loading it onto a ship in the port. Some species are now in danger of extinction. What drives this terrible drama? The short answer is ‘money’.
Ivory sells for between $200 and $500 a pound on the black market, while much harder-to-obtain rhino horn can easily fetch $12,000 a pound on markets in China and Vietnam. For rewards like these, poachers are willing to train hard, like a military unit would, using assault rifles and night vision goggles. They develop strong skills in the jungle that make them formidable fighters when facing law enforcement. Modern, military-style poachers will not hesitate to kill rangers who interfere with them. A year ago, in January 2013, Somali poachers working in the Kasigau Wildlife Corridor in southeastern Kenya shot dead Wildlife Service ranger Abdullahi Mohammed. A colleague was shot in the face but survived with crippling injuries.
Kenyan lawmakers have been slow to respond with tough new laws to combat increasingly militarized poachers. Penalties for killing animals can be made more severe (the maximum punishment a poacher currently faces is just 36 months in prison). But more intriguing are proposals to turn the technology against sophisticated poachers. For example, Kenyan rangers announced in October that they will now routinely implant a microchip transponder in every rhino within Kenya’s borders. Only 900 living rhinos are thought to still roam Kenya’s game parks, down from thousands just a few decades ago.
Ground rhino horn is considered a more powerful aphrodisiac than Viagra in many wealthy communities in Southeast Asia, where deluded men believe that drinking powdered rhino horn in their tea will give them massive penile erections. In fact, rhino horn is made of keratin, the same material that includes human fingernails. Therefore, drinking fed rhino horn is chemically indistinguishable from drinking powdered human fingernails. It has no effect on sexual drive.
A British parachute regiment stationed in Nanyuki will coordinate the implantation of the microchips, which will make tracking endangered rhinos much easier.
Meanwhile, London-based conservation NGOs are convening discussions next February to explore economic incentives to reduce poaching. A major challenge today is that poaching has become deeply embedded in rural East African communities, where local economies may be unable to sustain themselves on the highly variable income from tourism.
As Kenyans living side by side with wild animals at game parks soon discover, the temptation of a one-time big cash bonanza, rather than a trickle of tourism revenue for many months, can be irresistible.
Part of the logic of the London-based conferences stems from the recognition that those most likely to engage in poaching are rural people with little opportunity to legitimately benefit from the game parks that the Kenyan government obtains. so much income.
A new idea in the conservation community is to develop strategies that help provide legitimate wildlife money to people who may provide tourism services, act as guides, and perform other legitimate service tasks in the parks they preserve, instead of putting danger to animals.
“The cost-benefit equation for the rural Kenyan needs to be reversed,” in the words of one wildlife enthusiast. “We need to make it profitable for the would-be poacher save money animals instead of killing them.
But demand for ivory, animal skins for leather shoes and boots, and rhino horn as an aphrodisiac remains strong as prices rise because supply becomes tight. The bottom line is simple for all to understand: If the value of East African wildlife is higher as carcasses than as live creatures, it is only a matter of years before all the elephants, rhinos, buffalo and cats are gone. all the eternity.