Brendan Borrell, for the Pulitzer Center
Earlier this month, I met Colin Bristow, a bush pilot based
in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe who has spent 29 years running charters in countries
ranging from Mozambique to Angola. He often flies tourists over the Lower
Zambezi National Park in Zambia and sometimes visits the park on foot after
most of the tourist lodges have shut down for the season. On a recent trip, he
was shocked to count over 60 elephant corpses: their ivory tusks shorn from their
heads.
It's become a yearly cycle, he says, when the lodges close,
the poachers move in. Some lodge owners may even be aware of the phenomenon, he alleges, but have so far have failed to raise a stink because the poachers have political ties. It would
have been just another unsavory rumor for me to file away from this eye-opening
trip to southern Africa, but Bristow offered to email proof in the form of
gruesome photos. Here's the first
one I have received, and I will hopefully post more later.
When I told Chris Weaver, the director of WWF-Namibia about
the poaching, he shook his head and said, "That's nothing new. Zambia has
yet to submit an elephant management plan to CITES." In other words,
without economic benefits trickling into local communities through foreign trophy
hunters, elephants had no value.
Or let's just say their value was determined by the paltry price of
their tusks on the black market.
For those of us enamored with Africa's big mammals (and who
isn't?), sustainable use is not an easy pill to swallow. But Africa is not our zoo. It's a continent where millions of
people are struggling to get by, and wildlife – properly managed -- could well
be their most profitable natural resource.
In fact, Namibia does have an elephant management plan in
place. And thanks in no small part to Weaver's work at the WWF over the last 15
years, locally run conservancies, particularly in Damaraland, are now blessed
with a significant income (and precious meat) coming from trophy hunting. Populations of black rhino and elephant are booming there
and in Etosha National Park, which has had hardly any poaching over the last
decade. A nearby conservancy
boasts some of the largest "tuskers" on the continent through
rigorous management: a quota of 5 elephant hunts per year in a population of
3000 animals. Last week, the
Ministry of the Environment hosted a landmark public auction for hunting rights to 3
black rhinos over the next 3 years.
And so I'll end this entry on a positive note. On Sunday evening, I sat by the
Okakeujo water hole in Etosha and watched a big male elephant slurp up the drink. Later, nine black rhino came to lap at
the water's edge – a remarkable number even by Etosha's standards.
I never like to hear of this it gives hunters who follow the rules a bad name... I do wissh though that someday I could fly in to africa with a experienced bush pilot now this would be fun...
Posted by: Mr. Hunting Scopes | June 12, 2009 at 05:21 PM