How This Tanzanian Musician Made Ivory a National Campaign Issue

Posted on July 1, 2017 by GarryRogers

GR: Individual activists are important spark plugs for nature conservation and wildlife protection. Here’s a great example.

Shubert Mwarabu promotes the grassroots campaign to save Tanzania’s elephants at a festival in Iringa, in the southern highlands. PHOTOGRAPH BY MOHAMED MVUMBAGU, FEMINA HIP

“Until Shubert Mwarabu saw a photograph of an elephant with its face hacked and bloodied, poaching was an abstraction. He didn’t know anything about ivory trafficking, or even what ivory was used for. That was in 2011, and the Tanzanian musician was 25.

“The photo had a powerful impact on him, and from then on, he says, he threw himself into the fight to save Tanzania’s elephants.Mwarabu, who previously had organized clubs in primary schools for advocating against child abuse, now started school conservation clubs. He composed songs about protecting elephants. His first, called “Let’s Talk About Poaching,” or “Tupige Vita Ujangili” in KiSwahili, was played on Tanzania’s national radio station.

“His efforts have been noticed in Tanzania and beyond. The California-based nonprofit Generation Awakening, which works to support young environmental activists, appointed him their first country ambassador.

“In October 2013, Mwarabu launched a one-man campaign, naming it Me Against Poaching, to show that change can come from a single person.

“Now he’s leading the first organized citizen campaign to lobby the Tanzanian government to halt the ivory trafficking that has made this East African country ground zero in the slaughter of Africa’s elephants. Okoa Tembo wa Tanzania, “Save Tanzania’s Elephants,” succeeded in making conservation an election issue in the hotly contested presidential race, Mwarabu says.” –Maraya Cornell (How This Tanzanian Musician Made Ivory a National Campaign Issue)

WATCH on the original post: A video aired in 2013 shows investigative journalist Aidan Hartley attempting to gain access to a maximum-security warehouse in Tanzania that holds perhaps the world’s largest cache of raw ivory. Maintaining this stockpile is expensive. Moreover it can’t legally be sold. So why not follow Kenya’s example and burn it!

2016: Another fatal year for elephants

Posted on December 22, 2016 by GarryRogers

GR: With great sorrow, we watch as poachers eliminate elephants from the Earth.

HAMBURG, Germany, Dec. 22, 2016 — Elephants continued to be slaughtered for their ivory this year. More than 18 tons of illegal ivory, plus 949 elephant tusks and more than 3,000 pieces were reportedly seized in 2016, with at least 15 large seizures in excess of 500 kilograms. Most large shipments were intercepted in Vietnam, although huge amounts were also found in Malaysia, Uganda, Tanzania, Sudan, Spain, Austria and Germany.

“It is a sad fact that practically no day goes by without dozens of elephants being killed by poachers and every single week this year enforcers discovered illegal ivory somewhere in the world,” said Rikkert Reijnen, Director of the Wildlife Trade Program for International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW). “And this is just the tip of the iceberg as only a small fraction of the illegal ivory on the market is being intercepted.” –International Fund for Animals (Continue Reading: 2016: Another fatal year for elephants)

Petition · Remove Ivory from the traditional Wedding Anniversary gifts list before its TOO LATE

Posted on December 3, 2016 by GarryRogers

GR: Wildlife is dying out as our farms, forestry, cities, and industries remove and poison habitats. Ivory lovers and the poachers who represent them favor a more direct approach to extinction.

“Thank you so much for taking the time to read this short and simple petition, which has a very achievable and easy goal, which I will come onto shortly.

“As you will already know, this petition centres around the conservation of our magnificent gentle giants with whom we share this planet. The noble and majestic Elephant. A beautiful and intelligent creature which may very possibly be extinct in our lifetimes. This means our children may never know a real live Elephant.

“This is not hundreds of years in the future, this is now.

“The insatiable demand for ivory is causing a dramatic decline in the number of African elephants. Poachers are hunting the animal faster than it can reproduce, with deaths affecting more than half of elephant families in the Samburu National Reserve in Kenya, a new study finds. In 2011, the worst African elephant poaching year on record since 1998, poachers killed an estimated 40,000 elephants, or about 8 percent of the elephant population in Africa. This is unsustainable.” Please sign: Petition · Remove Ivory from the traditional Wedding Anniversary gifts list before its TOO LATE. · Change.org

Stop Wildlife Trafficking | ForceChange

Posted on November 17, 2016 by GarryRogers

GR: Here’s a petition with a tight focus on a high-volume wildlife-crime center.

“Target: Nguyễn Phú Trọng, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam

“Goal: Act to end the illegal trade in endangered species by shutting down the trade in Nhi Khe.

“Investigators with the Wildlife Justice Commission (WJC) have alleged that tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars in illegal wildlife is being trafficked through the Vietnamese village of Nhi Khe. Over the investigation, the WJC linked $53.1 million in illegal wildlife products to 51 traders based in the village of Nhi Khe. Over an 18-month investigation, these traders allegedly sold products made from an estimated 225 tigers, 579 rhinos, and 907 elephants. Deals were reportedly completed in person and through social media platforms such as Facebook and WeChat. If the tiger products allegedly sold in Nhi Khe over the investigations were exclusively wild tigers, this represents about six percent of the wild population.

“Vietnam is a hub for wildlife trafficking and the final stop for ivory before it enters Chinese markets. The WJC handed the results of its investigations to the Vietnamese government, however, the response has not been sufficient. Sign our petition and demand that the Vietnamese government act immediately and effectively to end wildlife trafficking in Nhi Khe.”

PETITION LETTER: (Read and sign at: Stop Wildlife Trafficking | ForceChange)

Bipartisan Senate legislation gets tough on wildlife crime

Posted on October 27, 2016 by GarryRogers

GR: Almost brings a tear to an eye to see Congress doing something good.

“Update: On October 7, 2016, President Obama signed into law the END Wildlife Trafficking Act (H.R. 2494).

“Wildlife trafficking fills criminal coffers to the tune of $7-10 billion a year at the expense of our planet’s most magnificent wildlife,” said Carter Roberts, president and CEO of WWF. “President Obama has put organized crime syndicates on notice that the US government will not stand idly by while thousands of elephants, tigers and rhinos become victims to this brutal trade.”

“Update: On September 21, 2016, the US House of Representatives the House of Representatives unanimously passed the END Wildlife Trafficking Act (H.R. 2494). The bill now heads to President Obama’s desk for his signature.

“In a continuing demonstration of the U.S. government’s commitment to combating wildlife crime globally, the U.S. Senate has unanimously passed the Eliminate, Neutralize, and Disrupt (END) Wildlife Trafficking Act (H.R. 2494), a bipartisan bill introduced by Senators Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.).

“The END Wildlife Trafficking Act is the result of several years of dedicated work by congressional offices and conservation organizations. WWF has played a leadership role in those efforts, collaborating closely with champions in Congress and advocating to incorporate several important provisions into the legislation. Among these are measures that will ensure federal agencies continue to use a coordinated, whole-of-government approach as they respond to the global poaching crisis and direct them to work with affected countries to improve their abilities to protect wildlife populations, disrupt wildlife trafficking networks and prosecute wildlife criminals.

“This bill helps ensure a unified approach by the US government as it works with countries and communities around the globe to combat wildlife crime and the challenges it poses to development, security and conservation,” said Ginette Hemley, WWF’s senior vice president of wildlife conservation. “It also smartly elevates wildlife trafficking into a serious crime under US law, upping the penalties and providing law enforcement with greater tools for going after the worst offenders.

“The END Wildlife Trafficking Act also encourages the transfer of surplus equipment and uniforms to rangers and other wildlife law enforcement personnel in developing countries, who are often ill-equipped and under resourced. And the bill gives strong support and endorsement to community-based conservation approaches like the ones WWF has long championed, recognizing that communities are on the front lines of the poaching epidemic and can be among the strongest allies in the fight to address it.” —Bipartisan Senate legislation gets tough on wildlife crime | Stories | WWF

African forest elephants may face extinction sooner than thought

Posted on August 31, 2016 by GarryRogers

GR.–It’s difficult to think of a response to this. Apparently humanities love of ivory is stronger than its love of elephants.

Oliver Milman, Guardian: New study finds poaching has helped shrink population by 60% since 2002 – and eventually may be responsible for eradicating one of the largest creatures left.

African forest elephants: research indicates their rate of population growth is about three times slower than their savannah cousins.

Photograph: Cristián Samper/WCS

Forest-dwelling elephants are likely to face extinction far more quickly than previously assumed because their sluggish reproduction rate cannot keep pace with rampant poaching and habitat loss, a new study has found.

The first comprehensive research into forest elephant demographics found that even if poaching was curbed, it will take nearly 100 years for the species just to recover the losses suffered in the past decade. The forest elephant population has crashed by more than 60% since 2002, with the species now inhabiting less than a quarter of its potential range of the Congo basin in Africa. Source: African forest elephants may face extinction sooner than thought: study

Legal ivory sale drove dramatic increase in elephant poaching, study shows | Environment | The Guardian

Posted on June 13, 2016 by GarryRogers

Damian Carrington, Monday 13 June 2016: Research shows the legal sale in 2008 catastrophically backfired – but two African nations want to repeat the stockpile sell-off.

A huge legal sale of ivory intended to cut elephant poaching instead catastrophically backfired by dramatically increasing elephant deaths, according to new research.

The revelation comes just months before a decision on whether to permit another legal sale and against a backdrop of more African elephants being killed for ivory than are being born. In 2015 alone, 20,000 elephants were illegally killed.

The international trade in ivory was banned in 1989 but, in 2008, China and Japan were allowed to pay $15m for 107 tonnes of ivory stockpiled from elephants that died naturally in four African nations. The intention was to flood the market, crash prices and make poaching less profitable.

But instead, the legal sale was followed by “an abrupt, significant, permanent, robust and geographically widespread increase” in elephant poaching, concluded researchers Prof Solomon Hsiang at the University of California Berkeley and Nitin Sekar at Princeton University, whose work was published on Monday. Continue Reading: Legal ivory sale drove dramatic increase in elephant poaching, study shows | Environment | The Guardian

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Wildlife Weekly Wrap-up – Defenders of Wildlife Blog

Posted on June 3, 2016 by GarryRogers

Weekly Wildlife Wrap-up Stories

Cracking Down on Ivory

This week, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service finalized new regulations to help protect elephants from the demands of the ivory trade. Previous rules had loopholes that allowed those selling illegal ivory attempt to pass it off as legal. But with the new regulations comes a near-total ban on the commercial trade of ivory in the U.S., putting an end to the trade of products that had served as a cover for illegal ivory. More than 300,000 African elephants are killed for their ivory tusks each year, pushing the species closer to the brink of extinction.

Learn about the new ivory regulations

Back in the Wild Again . . . .

A Bear Doesn’t Care . . . .

Protect the Pallid! . . . .

Source: Wildlife Weekly Wrap-up – Defenders of Wildlife Blog

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Australian state MP admits eating elephant he shot in Zimbabwe | Australia news | The Guardian

Posted on June 1, 2016 by GarryRogers

A member of the New South Wales parliament belonging to the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers party has revealed he once shot and ate an elephant while hunting in Zimbabwe.Robert Borsak has previously admitted shooting an elephant during an African hunting tour, with a picture of the state senator kneeling beside the kill sparking controversy.

According to the Zambezi Society, a conservation group, elephant populations in Zimbabwe have fallen dramatically in the past 15 years, particularly in the Middle Zambezi Valley, where last January there were around 11,500 elephants, down from 18,000 in 2001.

Source: Australian state MP admits eating elephant he shot in Zimbabwe | Australia news | The Guardian

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Elephants could vanish from one of Africa’s key reserves within six years | Environment | The Guardian

Posted on June 1, 2016 by GarryRogers

Elephants could disappear from one of Africa’s most important wildlife reserves within six years unless industrial scale poaching is stopped and mining is brought under control, the WWF has said.

Selous national park, a world heritage site in southern Tanzania, has lost an average of almost 2,500 elephants a year since the 1970s. But it has now reached a crtitical stage with only about 15,000 left, according to the latest census.

“The population is at an historic low. and urgent measures are required to protect the remaining animals and return the population to a stable and sustainable size. If this trend continues, elephants could vanish from Selous by early 2022,” says the WWF in a new study.

Source: Elephants could vanish from one of Africa’s key reserves within six years | Environment | The Guardian

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