Kenya Tanzania Safari Information | Elephant Poachers Arrested

What we must face all of us - poachers, tourists, farmers, conservationists and pastoralists - is the difficult truth that the land does not go on forever." In the early 1960's, the government tried to stop the wildebeest from moving into Ngorongoro with a long barbed wire fence. Peter Matthesian recalled the results in "The Tree Where Man Was Born." He quotes Myles Turner, Deputy Chief Game Warden of Serengeti National Park: '"They tried to interfere with what thousands of animals had done for thousands of years," Miles glared at the old fence line with satisfaction. "It's marvellous the way those animals smashed it flat. I use the fence posts for firewood now."'

Turner's departure from the park coincided with a severe nation-wide economic depression. The Serengeti National Park, like most of the other protected areas in the country, slipped into a decline. Ivory poaching decimated the elephant population until only a few hundred were left in the park, and the thriving rhino population dwindled to just two individuals.

Park rangers went without bullets, boots, uniforms and often salaries. But by the mid 1980's, the economy of both the park and the country improved. A massive infusion of donor money helped park authorities to rebuild crucial park infrastructure and reestablish the morale and effectiveness of the anti-poaching units. The 1989 worldwide Ivory Ban further eased the burden on the park's elephant population. Slowly and surely, park authorities wrested control of the park away from the poachers.

However, meat poaching continues. In an average year, local people living around the park illegally kill about 40,000 animals, mainly wildebeest and zebra, but also giraffe, buffalo and impala. Many other animals are caught in poachers' snares or pit fall traps. The killing is ultimately a manifestation of long-simmering antagonism between the impoverished villagers around the Serengeti's National Park protected areas and the authorities of the Serengeti National Park.

The conflict, now recognized as the source of most management, poaching and encroachment problems did not exist two decades ago; there was land enough for everyone and every animal. What we must face, all of us - poachers, tourists, farmers, conservationists and pastoralists - is the difficult truth that the land does not go on forever. In an effort to harmonize the existence of pastoralists with the wildlife in the Serengeti buffer zones locally administered game reserves, Wildlife Management Areas, are now created in the peripheries of the park.

Kenya

Poachers have killed seven elephants near Kenya's Tsavo National Park over the past month, wildlife officials said Thursday. The Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) said the animals died in a migrating corridor near the Kenya-Tanzania border, where seven Tanzanian poachers and their Kenyan guide were arrested over the weekend.

"Of the seven elephants, we recovered tusks for only two," Tsavo chief warden Julius Chipgetich told African safaris and Adventures. Chipgetich said the elephants were killed in the nearby Koranze ranch, which serves as a corridor for the wildlife when migrating from Tsavo to Tanzania's northeastern Mkomazi Game Reserve."We suspect that the Tanzanians we arrested over the weekend are part of a syndicate that is notorious for poaching.

But we have intensified security in the parks and along the corridors," he added. Poaching slashed Kenya's elephant population from nearly 50,000 in 1960 to about 10,600 in the early 1993s but conservation efforts and anti-poaching measures saw numbers inch back up to 30,000. The state-run Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) said most poachers in southwestern Kenya cross over from Tanzania, where they have nearly wiped out wildlife in Mkomazi Game Reserve.

"These incursions could be a result of a lack of wildlife in many parts of Tanzania caused by abused licensed hunting," KWS spokesman explained. Over the weekend, KWS increased surveillance in the country's animal sanctuaries after 214 of kilograms of zebra and wildebeest meat destined for Nairobi markets were impounded.

Last month, the 171-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) approved a landmark nine-year ban on international ivory trade to stem a surge in poaching that has killed up to 20,000 elephants per year.