Following the discovery of 87 elephant carcasses in Botswana, one of the few remaining sanctuaries on Earth, the founder of Elephant Action League sheds light on what isn't working in the fight against poaching, on the ground.
Botswana was and remains the safest refuge in Africa for the elephant, but NGOs like ours, Elephant Action League, engaged in gathering intelligence, information and conducting investigations into wildlife crime around the world, also know that in Botswana certain facts do not always come to light, and there has long been a poaching problem in that country.
What's more, three years ago our organisation filmed, with a hidden camera, an ivory tusk bearing an official Botswana government stamp in the possession of an ivory trafficker in the Chinese capital Beijing — a sign of a possible theft of confiscated ivory from government stockpiles in Botswana itself. Alarming as this news is, we are not talking about an isolated incident or a single massacre, but rather 87 elephant carcasses counted from an aircraft over the course of a few months in Botswana.
Sadly, there have been even more glaring cases in recent years. In Zimbabwe, in 2013, for example, more than 300 elephants were poisoned with cyanide in the water. Also in 2013, more than 25,000 elephants were killed over a decade in a national park in Gabon. In Tanzania, nearly 70,000 elephants were killed in just five years, decimating the population. This tragic new development in Botswana once again exposes the limitations of anti-poaching operations on the ground — absolutely necessary, but not effective at tackling the problem efficiently, owing to the large number of potential poachers used by traffickers, widespread poverty, and the limited capacity of African governments to act strategically.
To say nothing of rampant corruption at every level. Intelligence work and targeted action against major traffickers along the entire illegal ivory supply chain — from African ports to China, passing through key countries in South-East Asia — is the approach that delivers the best and most lasting results. Unfortunately, it remains far too rarely implemented, due to fear and to a poor understanding of the problem in all its complexity. This is the work of our NGO and our teams on the ground, across three continents.