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 bringing the technology of sophisticated military operations, including night-tracking devices and sniper rifles, to their grim work. long-range. And they are winning the war.
The recent toll on East African wildlife has been dire. Big game animals are dying, not from natural causes, but because they are being slaughtered for bones and skin. Last year, some 385 elephants were killed for their ivory tusks. In October 2013, Mombasa officials seized a 4-ton cache of ivory while loading it onto a ship in port. Some species are now in danger of extinction. What drives this terrible drama? The short answer is “money”.
Ivory sells for $ 200 to $ 500 a pound on the black market, while rhino horn, much more difficult to obtain, can easily fetch $ 12,000 a pound in the markets of China and Vietnam. To get rewards like these, poachers are willing to train hard, just like a military unit would, using assault rifles and night vision goggles. They develop strong skills in the bush that make them formidable fighters when faced with the forces of order. 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 wounds.
Kenyan lawmakers have been slow to respond with tough new laws to combat increasingly militarized poachers. Penalties for killing animals can be more severe (the maximum punishment a poacher currently faces is just 36 months in prison). But more intriguing are proposals to turn technology against sophisticated poachers. For example, Kenyan rangers announced in October that they will now routinely implant a microchip transponder in every rhinoceros within Kenya’s borders. Only 900 living rhinos are believed to still roam Kenya’s game parks, compared to thousands just 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 penis erections. In fact, rhino horn is made of keratin, the same material that is meant by human nails. Therefore, drinking rhino horn is chemically indistinguishable from drinking powdered human nails. It has no effect on sex drive.
A British paratrooper regiment stationed in Nanyuki will coordinate the implantation of the microchips, which will greatly facilitate the tracking of endangered rhinos.
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 communities in East Africa, where local economies may not be able to support themselves on the highly variable income from tourism.
As Kenyans living side by side with wild animals in game parks soon discover, the temptation of a one-time big cash bonanza, rather than a trickle of tourism revenue for many months, can prove irresistible.
Part of the logic of the London-based conferences comes from the recognition that those most likely to get involved in poaching are rural peoples with few opportunities to legitimately benefit from the playgrounds from which the Kenyan government gets so many. income.
A new idea in the conservation community is to develop strategies that help provide legitimate wildlife cash to people who can provide tourism services, act as guides, and perform other legitimate service tasks in the parks they preserve, rather than endanger the animals.
“The cost-benefit equation for the citizen of rural Kenya has to be reversed,” in the words of one wildlife enthusiast. “We need it to be profitable for the aspiring 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 as supply becomes tight. The conclusion is easy for everyone to understand: If the value of the wild animals of East Africa is greater as corpses than as living creatures, it is only a matter of years before all the elephants, rhinos, buffaloes and cats disappear. all the eternity.