The latest casualty figures in the ancient war of man versusbeast in Africa are in, and they look bad for both sides. At least 25,000elephants may have been slaughtered in Africa in 2011 – more than in any yearsince reporting began in 2002 – according to Kenneth Burnham, the statisticianfor Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants, an intergovernmental researchagency. Hundreds of humans have also died as a result of the elephant slaughter– not just from scattered maulings or tramplings, but from bullets fired byother humans fighting on the animals’ behalf.
Since the 1980s, under the mantle of conservation effortsand with funding from the European Union, governments, NGOs and privateassociations, African park guards have fought a rarely discussed low-level waragainst poachers. The conflict is becoming increasingly militarised, with bothpoachers and anti-poachers each justifying their belligerence as a response tothe others. It is difficult to know exactly how many people have died. Groupsthat support anti-poaching efforts might count the number of guards who fall inthe line of duty, but not the poachers dispatched to hidden bush graves.
Some anti-poaching guards claim to have killed hundreds ofpoachers. In a particularly macabre case from 2007 in a remote northeasternpart of the Central African Republic, a dozen anti-poachers mutilated thebodies of the handful of poachers they killed under the watch of a heavy-handedmercenary who led the bush war in Central Africa in 2005-07. Witnesses told methey saw human limbs hanging from tree branches.
Meanwhile, the slaughter of elephants continues. In andaround the Zakouma National Park in southeastern Chad, the EU has funded parkguards to battle hunters and nomadic herders in their violent anti-poachingefforts. Unable to effectively control the 3,000-square-kilometer area, theyfocused on specific elephant refuge zones. It didn’t work. In 2006, 3,000 elephantswere believed to live in the area; two years later, according to the WildlifeConservation Society, only 1,000 were left. A colleague of mine who didresearch there last year found fewer than 500.
What can be done? Participatory approaches to conservationhave had some success, at least in zones that aren’t militarised. Beginningwith Zimbabwe’s Campfire (Communal Areas Management Program for IndigenousResources) in the 1980s, revenues generated through wildlife management andconservation, such as tourist and sport-hunting taxes, were handed to thecommunities bordering the protected zones.
The idea was that if people had a financial stake inpreserving animal populations, they would take the initiative to stop hunters.These efforts resulted in fewer deaths. According to Campfire, both elephantand human populations in these areas doubled between 1990 and 2003. In areaswith endemic violence and ineffective governments, like Central Africa,repressive strategies are more common. The only wildlife conservation that has succeededhas been by accident. Conservationists had feared that Sudan’s protracted civilwar would decimate wildlife in the South’s verdant savannahs, swamps andforests. But a survey by the Wildlife Conservation Society after the 2005 peaceagreement revealed that in inaccessible enclaves, some animal populations,especially gazelles and antelopes but also elephants, had in fact flourished.
Unfortunately, the geographic and circumstantial factorsthat allowed this are impossible to replicate. The animals of South Sudan founda natural refuge in the swamps of Sudd to the east of the Nile which areimpassible by humans. The prospects for ending poaching in war zones throughhuman management are slim. The only way to reduce both the slaughter ofelephants and related human killings is to reduce demand for ivory. And that’sa very tall order.
A PR campaign displaying gruesome photos of elephantcarcasses would likely have limited effect in China, Thailand and thePhilippines – the countries that drive the demand for ivory. Demand there isdriven by religious beliefs, including, among many Catholics and Buddhists, thenotion that ivory honors God. Strengthening the international legalarchitecture would also be difficult, given the major profits that the Chinesegovernment, among others, draws from the trade. Only sales of ivory harvestedafter 1989 are banned – a criterion that is easy to fake. But curbing thedemand for ivory is, in the end, the only way to curb both elephant and humandeaths.
Louisa Lombard is a postdoctoral fellow at theUniversity of California, Berkeley. She blogs about Central Africa atfoolesnomansland.blogspot.com.
