WWF - Wildlife trade blog

An elephant's tale

2013-04-01

By Simon Reeve, TV presenter & WWF-UK ambassador.

The longer scientists study elephants, the more we realise how special they are. These are creatures that live for around 65 years. Females teach younger elephants about the geography and food of their world, and how to raise young. Elephants display many of the emotions we associate with humans: for example, they love, play and empathise with each other.

Elephants can also smell the bones of a dead friend or relative, and will mourn them with sounds too low for humans to even hear. New discoveries concerning elephant behaviour are made all the time. Scientists now think elephants can sense the movement of other herds (particularly those fleeing danger) up to 13 miles away, by detecting sonic vibrations through their feet.

Even claims elephants destroy vegetation are not entirely accurate. Yes, they eat a lot and have a habit of knocking over trees and uprooting bushes. But by snapping the trees, ellies allow sunlight to hit the ground, allowing grasslands to flourish that are crucial for herbivores such as zebra and wildebeest, which in turn provide food for the big cats.

One of my most memorable encounters with these grand giants was in Botswana. I'd met up with soldiers from the Botswana Defence Force (BDF), which has caught, arrested or shot dozens of poachers around the spectacular Okavango Delta and across the country. But poachers are still active. Just days before I arrived, the last two white rhinos in neighbouring Zambia's Mosi-oa-Tunya (Victoria Falls) National Park were shot by poachers travelling on speedboats. The gunmen are often former soldiers or guerrilla fighters and carry Kalashnikov assault rifles. They don't think twice about shooting guards or soldiers, let alone elephants. Between 1979 and 1990 at least 600,000 elephants (half the African population) were slaughtered. The commercial trade was banned in 1989, but ivory is still being smuggled to China to be used in jewellery and medicines, and to the Middle East to make handles for ceremonial daggers. A few weeks before I visited, 13 elephants had been killed in northern Botswana for their tusks.

At the regional army base, an hour outside the Botswanan town of Maun, gateway to the Okavango Delta, Captain Solomon Mamadi gathered supplies for a journey into the delta to check on an army anti-poaching patrol. There was anger at the latest elephant shootings. "The order has come down from on high. We must hunt down the poachers and kill them," he said. I climbed into the back of a dark green army Land Rover with the captain, and his driver took us towards the buffalo fence marking the boundary of the Okavango Delta. It's a line stopping buffalo from spreading disease. But it's also a clear demarcation between a world of cattle and goats on one side and true wildlife on the other.

We crossed into the delta and the world began to change. We passed nervous giraffes with legs so gangly they appeared to flee in slow motion. Another two hours of driving along impossibly bumpy tracks brought us to bushes concealing 10 silent soldiers, invisible in their green jungle camouflage uniforms. Aged 25 to 35 and loaded with assault rifles, knives, GPSs, field radios, binoculars and dozens of magazines for their guns, they were a potent force. Many African armies suffer from poor discipline, ancient equipment and corruption. By contrast, BDF soldiers are well trained and well disciplined.

The men reported no contact with poachers. So the captain decided to show me what his soldiers were protecting. We headed into the bush on foot with the squad, and went hunting for elephants, walking slowly behind an expert tracker at the front, a young lance corporal with keen sight and a sharp mind.

"He'll find them," said the captain confidently. "He reads the ground, the bushes, even the air."

Within 10 minutes the 'corp' found a dry grass stalk that had been broken by an elephant within the previous hour. The stalk had snapped under a giant foot — still just a shadow in the hard dust. The corp could tell the age of the tracks by how long a spider had taken to rebuild his web in a damaged bush, or termites had spent repairing a trodden mound. My brain needed a retune to understand this world. For the corp it came naturally and immediately. There were three elephants, and he had their trail.

The corporal pushed us forward, talking quickly about his hatred of the gunmen shooting "our wildlife". He led our squad through the sweltering bush for half an hour. Then we heard our targets before we could see them: three young adult bull elephants, fresh from a swim, were ripping at the undergrowth in search of food.

We approached quietly from downwind, but wary elephants can easily sense a squad of soldiers and a film crew. Two of them peeled away and headed deeper into the bush, leaving the biggest, bolshiest elephant staring at me, staring at him.

"Don't make any sudden moves," the captain warned. "You don't want to annoy him. If he charges, run in a zigzag and hide behind some thick scrub."

Run in a zigzag? Hide? Where? The elephant flapped his ears, swung his trunk and glared at us.

Fortunately, hunger won over indignation. The bull was standing next to a tall ivory nut palm. At the top were bunches of seed-bearing fruit, so hard they've long been used to make buttons. Elephants love them.

The bull squared up to the tree and then repeatedly headbutted the trunk, shaking and pushing it violently. I could feel the ground moving under my feet. Fruit started to rain down. It bounced off his head, trunk and back, but he kept shaking. After 30 seconds the earthquake stopped, checked we weren't planning to steal his meal, and began to graze, reaching down with his trunk and popping fruit into his mouth.

The captain and I looked on with wonder. Solomon beamed the smile of a man eyeing his children at play. His men were watching for poachers from the undergrowth and here was one of their charges. Solomon turned to me.

"I've seen them many, many times, but they still fill me with wonder," he said quietly. "Now, Simon, you can see why we're under their spell."

A weekend of elephants – and of seeing the effect of policy

2013-03-25

By Heather Sohl

Sometimes when people think policy, they think boring – talking about document wording, and who's saying what on which issues. For me it's exciting – there's a rush when a delegate repeats on the floor what you've said in the lunch break – and highly important, because without the right policies in place you can't hope to achieve everything you want to out in the field.

This weekend, I took the opportunity to go into the field where WWF works in Kuiburi National Park, Thailand. The weekend is supposed to be a time for relaxing during the full-on two weeks of the CITES CoP (or for more working groups for the unlucky few), but I couldn't turn this down. So I set my alarm early, but thankfully traded my smart shoes and blackberry for walking shoes and binoculars.

My colleagues and I joined a patrol of army soldiers, rangers and special forces that were going out for three days straight – we only joined them for about 90 minutes though! Their job is to protect the elephants from poachers seeking ivory, and in the last year alone they've caught 12 poachers.

The patrol carried large, heavy backpacks with everything they needed for three days in the jungle. Yet they still walked faster than us, and probably only stopped so frequently because of the 'tourists'! I certainly wouldn't want to be a poacher bumping into them.

WWF helps bring together the different government departments to collaborate in the fight against the poachers. Border officers are also there to help guard the porous border with Myanmar. We help set up effective monitoring, and provide most of the equipment for the patrol (hence the panda logo on the backpack).

We were lucky enough to see almost 30 wild Asian elephants the day before. It was intoxicating to look at the beauty of these huge animals, with such majesty in their movements and such strong family units.

When we saw the 'tusker' ahead of us on the road it was truly distressing to think a poacher would cold-heartedly look at such an experience as an opportunity for profit. We were just in awe.

It seemed a long way from the air conditioned conference rooms to the hot, sweaty jungle. The agreements made on elephants at the CoP help improve national wildlife laws, enhance enforcement, increase penalties, and enact demand reduction strategies.

If the governments are really committed (and we're still pushing for that compliance!), this will help to give those elephants a better future than ending up as ivory carvings.

The images telling the story of wildlife trade

2013-03-04

by WWF photographer James Morgan

If I had to chose a favourite image from the series, it would probably be this one (above). The tiger cub is one of 16 that was found packed into crates in the back of a smuggler's truck crossing the border from Thailand into Laos. The cub is surrounded by a veterinary team from Bangkok who are taking its blood in order to trace its DNA. I asked the chief veterinary surgeon if he had ever taken blood from a tiger cub before. "No, but it's sort of like a kitten' he told me.

In many ways the tiger cub did look like a kitten, but on another level the two animals couldn't be more different. One of nature's most beautiful and efficient predators, the product of thousands of years of evolution sitting cross-legged like Buddha as a confused and concerned group of humans try to pries answers out of it. It speaks to me of the wider relationship we have with the natural world, how we objectify it, make it an unwitting party to our affairs and invent barriers to help ourselves believe that we are separate from it.

It's always hard to know whether you're being objective about a photograph's merit. It's so easy for the experience surrounding the image, the series of moments leading up to it, to sway your judgment. Once we heard that these tiger cubs had been found we tried to get permission from the Thai authorities to photograph the cubs and were denied. In the end we decided to take a risk and drive 9 hours to the place they were being held to see if we could wing it. By chance, we arrived just after the police chief had left and just as the veterinary team were beginning to take blood samples. The fixer I was working with never slept facing west which apparently guaranteed us good luck for the entire trip. She was also very kind and respectful to everyone we came across which I think was just as likely to have been the source of our good fortune. Either way, it would have been a very different 9 hour drive back to Bangkok without these images.

I do try to retain copyright to my images, having my name at the bottom of them ensures I can pay my bills every month, but the reality is that all my images are collaborations, most obviously with the people who appear in them. This image is of eco ranger Mba Ndong Marius holding seized Ivory in front of a line of confiscated weapons in a small town called Oyem in the north east of Gabon.

This image is interesting as it's actually a scene I created. When we first raised the idea of photographing confiscated ivory and weapons at the police station in Oyem, it was all piled up outside a drab looking building and didn't make for an arresting photograph. So we moved everything across the street to a building with a bit more texture and colour. Then we bought in Mba Ndong Marius to hold the elephant tusks and add some perspective and another focal point. And then, by chance, we came across two ladies wearing clothes that echoed the colour palette of the scene who kindly stood in the window finishing off the image.

One of the things that has always captivated me about photography is its troubled relationship with truth. I think originally this connection stemmed from a need to differentiate itself from painting. Painting was art, photography was a way to document, to record, to create timeless sealed packets of truth. And whilst that relationship has been challenged recently with digital post production, that link still exists and it's something I'm very attached to and conscious of when I'm working.

So why not just take the photograph of the ivory sitting outside the police station where it was when I arrived? In recent years news gathering has changed enormously, millions of images are now uploaded every day, often only seconds after they're taken. But does this proliferation of images bring us any closer to understanding the world? Or inspire us to action? Personally I'm much more concerned with eliciting the truth of a situation than I am with feverishly documenting the facts. There are endless statistics about ivory online, but my interests lie elsewhere. It's the internal lives of the people I meet that fascinate me. My role is to talk to people and help them tell their stories in a way that they're unable to themselves. The space photojournalism occupies at the intersection of art and reportage; being entirely embedded in fact but also uniquely positioned to transcend it, is what I believe gives photojournalism its power as a medium and makes it such a valuable tool for NGOs and campaigning organisations.

Shortly after taking the photograph of Mba Ndong Marius with the seized ivory, it was all piled up on a truck to be transported to the capital Libreville. I was piled into the back of the truck on top of the ivory and we drove ten hours through the night, arriving in Libreville just before dawn. All night, trucks had been arriving from all over the country bringing huge quantities of contraband elephant tusks and weapons. When we arrived WWF and other organisations were busy counting it all by torch light.

This image was taken an hour after Gabon's president Ali Bongo Ondimba had set the entire stockpile alight at a ceremony which took place later that morning. I've chosen it here as it serves as a strong end point to the series of images. When these images have appeared in magazines and newspapers this image is often used as a closer. I think the shape of the flames works as a sort of visual punctuation and for Gabon the move was, on some levels at least, conclusive and irreversible. But of course, the whole notion of an end point to wildlife crime is misleading, and in all honesty this photograph scares me. And I do wonder if the aesthetics of it slightly hide the horror of what it's actually depicting; because wildlife crime continues and the battle is far from over. Gabon has taken a strong stance and hopefully other African nations will follow suit. But without real pressure on the demand countries this will not be resolved.

James Morgan is an award winning photojournalist and filmmaker. The majority of his work is focused around providing supplementary narratives to environmental and human rights policy. His images have led campaigns for WWF, the United States Agency for International Development and the United Nations Refugee Agency. www.jamesmorganphotography.co.uk, Facebook, Twitter.

Eyes in the sky on the lookout for poachers

2013-02-19

By Dr A. Christy Williams
WWF Asian Rhino and Elephant Programme Leader

One of the places I spend a lot of my time is Chitwan National Park in southern Nepal. Chitwan is special because it is home not only to the Asian elephants and greater one-horned rhinos that I work with, but also tigers and many other animals. I am really proud of the fact that Nepal lost no rhinos to poaching in 2011 despite a sharp rise in killings elsewhere.

Last March, however, Chitwan was struck by rhino poachers. Three of the ranger posts heard the gunshots, but it took them four hours to find the carcass in the park's heavy brush. By that time two of the poachers had slipped over the Indian border with the horn. We were too late to catch them.

It was then that we first considered using conservation drones. If we had technology to see from the air we could have launched when the shots were fired and would have been able to find the crime scene within maybe 15 minutes. We also could have dispatched sniffer dogs to chase down the perpetrators.

I soon discovered that we weren't the only ones thinking about how drone technology could help rangers stop poachers. When I started researching I came across this huge open-source community of drone builders exchanging information on a site founded by former Wired magazine editor Chris Anderson called DIYdrones.com. Dedicated enthusiasts from all over the world are programming new ideas every day.

I got in touch with some builders from conservationdrones.org to start discussing possibilities that were within our limited budget. I learned that we could do much of what the sophisticated drones do, albeit on a smaller scale, for a modest investment. In Nepal the army is in charge of protecting the national parks, so the government was comfortable giving all the proper clearances because an official security agency would operate the drones.

In Nepal we have very good intelligence networks and all the known poachers are already behind bars. But where there is opportunity criminals will exploit any weaknesses, so we have to be smarter.

Over the past few months we've been testing the drones and training the park's security personnel on how to use them. We are stressing with them that drones are only one tool and must be backed up by the boots on the ground. Anything the drones see we have to respond to.

We'd also like to put up towers with long distance security cameras so computers can alert us when someone illegally enters the park. There is a deterrent factor to drones and camera towers. The bad guys considering coming in to poach would see them and maybe think again about committing a crime. With this technology we are warning criminals that we will find you.

We hope that Chitwan is just the beginning. WWF has started working with technology giant Google to roll out these types of aerial surveillance systems in other important places to help rangers.

In the past, when rangers went out on a foot patrol they could only see a tiny part of their protected area. What happened beyond that largely remained unknown. With conservation drones not only can rangers see better, but they can better protect against the threats facing the animals and habitats they are guarding.

Success and setbacks in the fight for rhinos

2013-02-19

By Dr A. Christy Williams

When I started leading WWF's Asian Rhino and Elephant Programme in 1999, greater one-horned rhinos were highly endangered. During years of insurgency, in the animals, also known as Indian rhinos, had been poached out of many of their habitats. At that time there were only two Indian parks that had more than 100 rhinos in them. The rest of the animals were living in isolated groups of about 40-60 individuals.

It was a very dangerous situation to have all our eggs in one basket, as the saying goes. With only two strong populations the species was too much at risk. A disease outbreak, natural disaster or poaching spree could have eliminated them all in a very short time.

In 2000 we decided that we needed to move some rhinos from the big populations back into the places where the species used to be found. It took us five years to convince the Indian government to let us move rhinos for what we call range expansion. WWF scientists are the experts in this type of work pioneering it in South Africa for critically endangered black rhinos.

We started relocating rhinos in 2005 to Manas National Park under the Indian Rhino Vision 2020 project. Our goal is to increase rhinos from three protected areas within India's Assam state to six, and to get the population up to 3,000 by 2020.

When we identified Manas as a project site it was not in great shape. UNESCO had it on the list of World Heritage Sites in danger. Because of improvements to the park's infrastructure and management that were made in preparation for receiving the rhinos, such as more game guards, is was removed from the danger list. That in itself is a great victory because Manas is home to endangered species like tigers and the golden langur, a monkey that is only found in Assam and Bhutan.

Things were going really well in Manas for a few years. We had moved 18 rhinos and a calf was born. Greater one-horned rhinos were even moved off the endangered list. But the rhino poaching crisis, which led to the deaths of 668 rhinos last year in South Africa, has dealt us a terrible blow. Three of the rhinos we moved have been shot by poachers for their horns in the past 18 months.

With demand for rhino horn surging in Viet Nam, we learned the hard way that cannot let our guard down even for a second.

We've put the translocations on hold for the moment while we look at how to improve protection in Manas. WWF is part of a global coalition rolling out a tool for rangers called SMART that helps them be more efficient and effective. When we are sure things are under control we will start to move rhinos to Manas again.

The setback, while discouraging, reaffirms our belief that we need to keep expanding rhino range. Having rhinos in more places will mean the species as a whole is more secure for the future.

Taking a pause in Manas may mean that we can get started sooner in our next site. We have a rhino ready to go that strayed out of a park a while back. It was going to go to Manas, but now it may instead be the first rhino to start a new population.

When one door closes, another opens. No matter what, we are going to continue to do everything we can to give rhinos a safe place to live and breed.

Science must continue, even as we try to stop the slaughter

2013-02-19

By Dr Chistiaan Van Der Hoeven WWF-NL

I'm a biologist, with a Ph.D. in park management and wildlife surveys – counting stuff. But I'm originally an ethologist, so animal behavior. I have done a lot of research in Africa on monkeys and on elephants, which made me love those species and the African continent. They say you can never get Africa out of your blood once you've been there. I don't do the counting myself any more, which is a pity because it's nice to run around in the forest.

Today, we don't know enough about how many elephants there are. The problem is, with the current poaching crisis going on, the priority is to save the elephants. If you talk to people in the field they say, "Listen, I don't care how many elephants there are. They are being slaughtered by the thousands, so I am not going to spend money and time counting elephants while they are being slaughtered." But how can you protect what you can't even count? Surveying is actually an essential part of protecting.

For some species, we have sophisticated monitoring – the rhino DNA database, for example. We can really see what's going on with rhinos. But with other species we know so little. We don't know how many gorillas are there in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. We have no clue. We need this information, or we could lose a population before we ever knew it existed. So counting is really important.

Part of the challenge is that it's extremely difficult to count animals in dense forest. Another factor is the sheer scale of the landscapes we're trying to survey. This is why we need a mix of methodologies – old fashioned and high tech.

I developed with my previous professor a partnership with the local people that live in these forests. They know exactly what is in the forests. They don't care about population densities, but they do know that the elephants are there, or the apes. And they know if there used to be more. So I developed a way of interviewing community members and translating what they said as a way to estimate how many animals live in a particular area in the forest. They know perfectly well whether numbers have gone down or up based on their daily observations. If you are not sure, then you ask someone from the older generation to come by, and they will know.

On the other end of the spectrum, we now have access to cutting-edge conservation drones. These "eyes in the sky" let us look for things like fires from poachers camps. When you fly over the rainforest, you can't see anything but the canopy trees, but you can see very far. A wisp of smoke stands out. This information is vital when deciding where to send anti-poaching patrols. You can't be everywhere at once – you need some intelligence. By sending a drone up, you can point the patrol in the right direction and save a lot of time and money.

Drones also can be useful for counting animals. By gathering better data we can make smarter management plans. We won't save animals by law enforcement alone. We need that, but we need science, too.

Elephant crisis - what poaching does to animals, environments and people

2013-02-15

Dr Kate Evans is the director and founder of Elephants for Africa. She started her research over a decade ago, looking at adolescent male elephants in the Okavango Delta and how they socialise – with an emphasis on how captive-bred animals would react in a wild environment. Here she talks about how complex these beautiful (and emotional) animals are:

"Elephants have always been my passion, and growing up the poaching crisis of the 1970s and 80s had a massive impact on the journey that my life would take. Since 2002 I have been studying the elephants of Botswana, home to the largest remaining population in the world. My particular interest is male elephants and their ecological and social requirements.

The charity Elephants for Africa was founded in 2007 to support research and education towards the conservation of the African elephants, and we have since expanded to include projects in Ethiopia and South Africa.

I am shocked, but not surprised, to find ourselves in the middle of another poaching crisis, one that is having massive impact throughout the African continent. A small trinket or a large extravagant ornament made of ivory will have had a bloody start as most ivory these days is illegal; hacked from the face of a dead or dying elephant.

Whole herds are being gunned down, calves and adults alike, left to rot in the African sun in a pool of blood to feed humanity's thirst for ivory.

This mass loss of individuals leads to the breakdown of family units and elephant society at large, leaving herds of leaderless elephants trying to make their way through their home that has become a war zone.

I have seen dead elephants, the bodies of young and old that have died of natural causes, and I have seen elephants visit those carcasses and grieve. One young male I know guarded the dead body of a much older male for three days, chasing the scavengers off.

We have to ask ourselves, what does an elephant do, feel or think when they come across a whole herd of dead elephants? Are they aware of who is responsible? What are the consequences for us humans?

I have come across bush meat poachers whilst by myself in the field and slept with a machete under my pillow in fear of reprisals. Thankfully I've never needed to defend myself, but the rangers and wardens that are out there in the field protecting our elephants get my utmost respect. They show no fear, yet they often come across poachers better equipped than themselves and risk their lives daily.

Our researcher in Ethiopia has seen the devastation first-hand, with reports of 66 elephants poached in recent months. With only an estimated 150-250 left in Babile Elephant Sanctuary, this loss is devastating – not only to the elephants but also to the ecology of the area if they were to lose this keystone species.

A sea of humanity isolates this population, so if the last elephant were to die there would be no natural repopulation – leading to irreversible change within the system, which would affect the animals and people that rely on this wilderness area.

Even Botswana, a safe haven for wildlife for so long can no longer escape the bloody tide and more and more reports of poaching are emerging.

We cannot fully comprehend the extent of the impact the extinction of the African elephant will have on the ecology and economy of Africa, yet this is where we are heading if we do not stop the illegal ivory trade. Sign the petition to ban the ivory trade in Thailand.

Understanding the mechanics and motivation behind the demand for animal products in Asia

2013-02-11

by WWF photographer James Morgan

Having spent time with rangers and affected communities in Gabon in the first stage of my commission with WWF, my next trip was to Thailand to try and understand the mechanics and motivation behind the surge in demand for animal products. The first thing that hit me was the amount of wildlife smuggling going on in Thailand. I saw a lot of ivory in Africa but somehow, in the neon glow of Bangkok, piles of African elephant tusks looked more alien, more menacing.

I started off photographing underneath Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi international airport. Suvarnabhumi is a hub for the Asian smuggling network, contraband in all guises - wildlife, narcotic and human - pass through daily in quantities and numbers that can't even be guessed at. The Thai police weren't able to show me the country's stockpile (I wonder how much of it is still there) but the amount of ivory I saw just from the last few weeks of confiscations was staggering.

A few days later we got word that the Thai authorities had stopped a truck trying to cross the border from Thailand into Laos. In the back of the truck were 16 tiger cubs packed into crates. We were later able to photograph them being DNA tested as part of the government's efforts to track wildlife contraband to its source. In the same week there was also a record haul of ivory in Hong Kong.

So why are animal parts so sought after in Asia? There are plenty of socio-historic explanations that have been put forward. Ivory, for example, has been traded as an aspirational commodity in China since the Ming dynasty. Now, of course, there are far more Chinese people with aspirations and a modern, capitalist market ready to cater to them. In more recent history, an unnamed politician in Vietnam (believed to be the major end destination for South African rhino) is said to have had his cancer cured by imbibing ground rhino horn, in turn kicking off the widespread belief that rhino horn may be a miracle cure for cancers and other serious illnesses.

The semi-mystical projection of human desires and needs onto the natural world is by no means exclusive to Asia. Throughout the world there are plenty of examples of natural 'commodities' being used as health boosters with no scientific backing, as well as pelts and furs being used as a means to attain status. However, these explanations go some way to explain why the demand for endangered animal parts is particularly prevalent in specfic Asian countries.

As I understand it, the environmental movement is currently working on two ways of addressing the problem. Firstly, using force and legislation to reduce supply. This involves bringing tougher penalties for smugglers and ensuring that convictions aren't overturned or thrown out of court without a full trial. Secondly, using a rational argument to reduce demand. This involves debunking the myth of rhino horn (and other animal parts') medicinal properties and raising awareness of the catastrophic environmental impact of the trade.

Both approaches are important, but they're also both problematic. Laws around wildlife crime should, without a doubt, be equal to laws around drug smuggling and other serious offenses. The knock on effects of wildlife crime, as I discovered in Gabon, are complex and highly destructive, both socially and environmentally. But would tighter laws on wildlife crime make a difference? Thailand has the death penalty for drug smuggling but it remains the narcotics capital of Asia.

The medical myth is the most quoted cause of wildlife crime. The fact that we're on the verge of losing an entire species to an insatiable demand for its horn (which is composed mostly of keratin, the same as human hair and fingernails) has all the irony and narrative hooks of a good tabloid story. And, in many ways, although I feel the truth of the situation has been slightly misrepresented, this story in its various forms has been instrumental in raising awareness around the issue in Europe and America. However, I don't think it's a story that will work in Vietnam or Thailand.

The majority of people I met whilst working on this issue had stories of vague acquaintances narrowly escaping fatal illnesses by resort to rare animal parts. Individuals who have been diagnosed with a life-threatening illness will never believe in science as much as they believe in hope. Humans just aren't wired that way and such stories will invariably beat science in capturing people's imaginations.

As I see it, the battle to reduce consumption of animal parts must combine increased legal pressure with a change in perception through a line of reasoning that is emotional and tailored to the world of the consumer. Essentially, it will come down to who tells the best story. The animal kingdom, particularly the target species; elephants, rhinos and tigers are incredibly beautiful. Complex, majestic, enigmatic. They speak to us of a natural ease and grace that we have lost; they represent an exaggeration of desirable human characteristics; speed, strength, courage and wisdom. The idea that I could ingest a part of them, absorb some of their power and reverse the hand fate has dealt me is an undeniably powerful story and I'm not surprised it has gained traction. Just like the western myth that rhino horn is used as an aphrodisiac in Traditional Chinese Medicine (it's not). If stories are good enough they'll tell themselves.

There's no question that the role played by WWF, and other pressure groups, will be instrumental in any solution to end wildlife crime, but I think it's equally important that journalists and campaigners don't simply regurgitate press releases. Statistics and CITES appendices are not the right message for the consumers that I've met. What we need instead is a story as powerful as the story being told by those who have a vested interest in continuing the trade. Until we have that story, and really learn how to tell it, dead elephants will continue to bestow prestige in Thailand and dead rhinos will continue to cure cancer on the anonymous outer ring of Vietnam's social circles.

Read the first of James Morgan's Illegal WIld Life Trade blog posts here

James' multimedia piece 'Inside Wildlife Crime':

James Morgan is an award winning photojournalist and filmmaker. The majority of his work is focused around providing supplementary narratives to environmental and human rights policy. His images have led campaigns for WWF, the United States Agency for International Development and the United Nations Refugee Agency. www.jamesmorganphotography.co.uk, Facebook, Twitter.

In the field with an anti-poaching patrol in Gabon

2013-01-28

by WWF photographer James Morgan

Last year I was asked by WWF to produce a series of images looking at the effects of the illegal wildlife trade. In June, I spent some time with an anti-poaching patrol in Gabon. My original aim was to photograph the lives of individuals on the frontlines of the war against wildlife crime, focusing on one of the most charismatic rangers, Soho Jocelyn.

I spent time with Soho at his home in Makokou and then followed him into the forest on patrol. One night sitting around the fire we got the chilling news that two rangers had been murdered, just miles away, across the border in Congo.

The increase in clashes between rangers and poachers has left horrifying numbers dead in the past year alone. However some of the most compelling images from the trip reflect a feeling that I had whilst I was there: I don't think there is a frontline on the war against wildlife crime.

The increased frequency of ranger deaths is haunting, but its also an accessible symbol of a much deeper erosion of culture and livelihoods. As Soho Jocelyn kissed his wife and children before leaving for the jungle, I got a real sense of what was at stake. Not just in terms of his safety but the repercussions for his community and its history and shared values.

I grew up in the New Forest, a small stretch of forestland in the south of England. The New Forest is as thick with tales as it is with trees, and at the root of all these stories is the concept of forest law. Much of the old forest law, some of which still survives to this day, curtailed the ability of forest people to gather food in favour of protecting deer populations for the king's hunting grounds. This inevitably led to an entire canon of stories painting poaching as a romantic, even noble, pursuit. I grew up with legends of the outlaw peasant taking what was rightfully his, outsmarting the crown and its feudal landowners.

But the poaching stories which emerged from Central Africa in 2012 bear no resemblance to the stories of my childhood. The romanticism and communal spirit are gone, and in their place are automatic weapons, bloodshed (both human and animal) and the irreversible damage of social and natural ecosystems. Ultimately the people who lose out aren't wealthy landowners and caricature baddies, but communities struggling to subsist as criminal groups erode both their communities and resources.

The Baka community, who live in the forests of Gabon, Congo and Cameroon are perhaps as caught up as anyone. There was always tension when I first arrived in a Baka village. Nothing the universal language of silliness and a shared experience skinning a water cobra couldn't swiftly dissolve, but the Baka have been vilified by environmental groups for the role they play in elephant poaching, and relationships are understandably fraught.

In many ways the short time I spent with the Baka was the most illustrative of the full effects of wildlife crime. Baka are employed and killed on both sides of the battle, a poacher one day may have no qualms about becoming a ranger the next. It all depends who's footing the bill. But the recent escalation in commercial poaching has bought more than just the death of a few individuals, it has bought about the disintegration of an entire way of life.

Or more accurately, the advent of poaching has served as a catalyst hugely enhancing the effect of other environmental pressures in breaking the bonds the Baka once held with the forest and pushing them into alcoholism, domestic violence and a whole host of associated social problems. I often find in the course of my work that the social cohesion of indigenous groups can be read as a litmus test for environmental issues.

The Baka were originally semi-nomadic subsistence hunters. The majority have now settled in villages as pressure from logging and infrastructure projects has impacted wildlife populations throughout the Congo basin. It's economics that have pushed the Baka to hunt elephants. Elephants alive steal food and trample crops, whilst dead their tusks are almost worth their weight in gold. It's ironic in a sense, and also understandably frustrating for the Baka, that they used to revere the elephant and only started 'poaching' under pressure from French and German colonial rulers who had an insatiable thirst for ivory. Now their orders are coming from criminal syndicates and terrorist groups. It's probably hard to tell the difference.

Read James' second blog post on the illegal wildlife trade here

James' multimedia piece 'Inside Wildlife Crime':

James Morgan is an award winning photojournalist and filmmaker. The majority of his work is focused around providing supplementary narratives to environmental and human rights policy. His images have led campaigns for WWF, the United States Agency for International Development and the United Nations Refugee Agency. www.jamesmorganphotography.co.uk, Facebook, Twitter.

Forest elephants, scientists and chance

2013-01-21

The heavy rain in the morning prevented me from participating in a traditional BaAka hunt in Dzanga Sangha protected area, whereby long nets are deployed in the forests and animals, like porcupines and small antelopes, are flushed into them with drums and vocalizations. Instead, I spent the afternoon on the elevated observation platform at Dzanga-Baï, a vast forest clearing where elephants and other wildlife congregate to drink and to benefit from minerals dissolved in the water. This is arguably the best place in Africa to observe large numbers of forest elephants.

Crossing paths

Andrea Turkalo from Wildlife Conservation Society has been studying elephants from this location for two decades and has identified over 4,000 individuals. I found her observing a large bull with her binoculars. She expressed her frustration at witnessing many of the well-known animals leaving the park, into areas where poaching is rampant, never to return. Turkalo is convinced that forest elephants are a separate species from savannah elephants. And she can refer with authority after 30 years in the Central African Republic, about how the establishment of logging companies and their road networks increase poaching pressures on elephants and facilitate ivory trade.

I was unaware of the chance event that was about to happen as she introduced to me another senior scientist on the platform, Peter, who was using a thermal camera to observe elephants at night. The device showed in blues, oranges and yellows the temperature of any object in view. He pointed out to me through the camera that one could even see the veins on the ears of elephant bulls, which transport blood to the large skin surface for cooling purposes. More importantly, however, he was able to see the elephants with high definition in absolute darkness.

Peter has also set up a device to record the sounds at the Baï uninterruptedly for 6 months, as a way of monitoring elephant trumpeting and other vocalizations as indicators of activity levels. When he revealed to me his surname, Wrege, and his affiliation to Cornell University I realized that we had met 28 years ago in Kenya, when he was studying the social behaviour of bee-eater birds and I was studying migratory birds.

We hugged and laughed and recalled the circumstance that brought us together: he was bitten by a venomous snake during a nightly visit to the bee-eater nests, barefoot to minimize disturbance. I remember accompanying him through the agony of hours, monitoring his pain on the leg, his feeling of numbness in the face and other strange symptoms. We had anti-venom, but decided to observe the evolution of the condition before administering the dose, aware of the risk of a sudden allergic reaction that could have killed him. He recovered well, without the anti-venom. And there he was, at age 64, fit and cheerful as always, following his passion for animals and spending the nights on his own, up on a platform in the heart of the Congo Basin.

These two fascinating characters I met today are examples of a life-long dedication to the study of animals in the wild. Good wildlife conservation needs to be based on the best available science. Turkalo and Wrege, in their own ways, contribute knowledge that can better inform the decisions of conservationists and policy makers.

Agents of change

And then there is Terence Fuh, a young and energetic Cameroonian, whom I met yesterday. He was recruited by WWF to run the gorilla habituation camp in Dzanga Sangha. The vision for his rightfulness, skills and commitment to learning is to become a leading conservationist and a powerful agent of change. Fuh and Lamine Sebogo, WWF´s African Elephant Leader born in Burkina Faso, are examples of the African talent that is so much needed to influence the path of conservation in this region.

On an ironic note, I learned this evening that three of the endangered elephants that we all so much care for were killed recently in the national park by a falling tree as they were digging for minerals close to its roots. I was reminded by this incident and the meeting of Wrege today that chance is in itself an agent of change too, sometimes in favour, sometimes against our interests. There is nobody to thank and nobody to blame. I would need to blame myself, however, if I did not maintain an open mind for the unexpected, look at the glass half full, and grasp with enthusiasm the opportunities that chance may put before me.

-Carlos

Read the previous dispatch here: An injured gorilla and a volunerable ecosystem

Read the next dispatch here: Hope for the future

A safe haven for elephants and gorillas in Central Africa

2013-01-13

My name is Carlos Drews. I am the director of the Global Species Programme for WWF. I have studied animals and worked in wildlife conservation for the last 25 years or so. Recently, I learned about the invisible demise of forest elephants in Central Africa, a large and charismatic animal now threatened with extinction and for which accurate counts do not exist.

The journey to Dzanga Sangha

I decided to travel to Dzanga Sangha Protected Areas in the Central African Republic as part of an inquiry into the best strategy to halt their rampant killing for the international ivory trade. I had learned last week that despite the devastating poaching wave across the Congo Basin, not a single elephant was killed in 2011 in this park. What had been the reason?

The small 6-seater aircraft took a small team of WWF conservationists on a two hour flight from Yaoundé, Cameroon over some 700 km of what I perceived to be a by-and-large seemingly intact and magnifiscent rainforest stretch in Southeastern Cameroon. What I was unable to see from the aircraft was the wave of rampant poaching of elephants under the thick canopy that has wiped out this species in various forest pockets of Central Africa and that continues unabated and fueled by a growing demand for carved ivory products in Asia, mostly China and Thailand.

First encounters

Upon arrival to the park, the half an hour brisk walk guided by knowledgeable Mr Mutingi, a member of the BaAka people, led through cristal clear creeks and trails under the shade of colossal rainforest trees, eventually yielding a very unexpected sight: not less than 95 elephants wallowing, digging for water and socializing in a vast open area of clay and sand.

I had seen elephants in other parts of Africa before, but these were different. Forest elephants are indeed unique: they are visibly smaller than their savannah counterparts, their ears are rounded in shape and the tusks tend to be quite straight. They have a toe less than savannah elephants and their DNA is distinct enough from these, with some scientists arguing that forest elephants are in fact a separate species altogether.

The elephant families that I had before me varied considerably in colour, depending on the composition of the mud in which they had wallowed most recently. I marveled at the lively sight of young ones and adults, trumpeting and rumbling in this well-known spot, but at the same time felt uneasy realizing their tremendous vulnerability to unscrupulous poaching gangs.

Looming threats

I returned before sunset to the camp to meet with WWF staffmember Bryan Curran, the technical advisor for the park. Dzanga Sangha is jointly managed between WWF and the government. The seasoned conservationist told me about last year´s incursion of Sudanese into the Central African Republic, a heavily armed gang of poachers on horseback, heading towards the park over hundreds of kilometers. WWF notified the armed forces who intercepted the criminals just in time to stop a mass slaugther of elephants in the park.

Curran attributed the success of zero poaching of elephants last year to the significant investment in a platoon of 42 ecoguards, resulting in over 10,700 man-patrol days that acted as an efficient deterrent. Poachers may be focusing now on neighbouring Cameroon and Congo, where enforcement efforts are weak, turning poaching for ivory into a low risk criminal activity with very high returns. I was reassured, however, to see today that there is still a safe haven for forest elephants in Central Africa. And tomorrow I hope to see a habituated group of gorillas, benefitting equally from the safety of Dzanga Sangha.

-Carlos

Read the next dispatch here: The gorillas of Dzanga Sangha

For law enforcers, confidence is in the job description

2013-01-07

By David Higgins, Manager, Interpol Environmental Crime Programme

Throughout my career in law enforcement, first in Australia and now at Interpol, I've learned that criminals are opportunistic. They look for weakness to exploit. If one country, or one agency within a country, is not as engaged in combating crime as others then the criminals will exploit that opportunity.

Often environmental law enforcement is not treated like the profession that it is. We expect our scientists, policymakers and lawyers to have advanced degrees and be highly experienced. But our enforcers, our rangers, we give them a one week course, maybe two, then send them out to the field to face criminals that are often armed and dangerous.

When I went through the law enforcement academy it took nine months. At Interpol we conduct trainings to empower environmental law enforcement officers, to give them a belief in themselves that they can do the job. It's very hands on. Arresting people or interrogating suspects is not something I can teach in a PowerPoint presentation. In a law enforcement recruit course we teach you how to arrest somebody and then we actually go out and do it.

When I was an officer in training, I had learned how to put handcuffs on people but when I had to do it on a real criminal it was totally different. We were just moving him from one jail to another, some rather senior police colleagues were there, and they told me to handcuff the guy so we could transport him. I went up to him – he was a big burly guy - and in my little nervous 22-year-old voice I told him to put his hands behind his back. He growled a little and I stuck the handcuff on, but then I realized the other cuff wasn't going to get to the other hand because I had put it on wrong. And he started to laugh, even my colleagues laughed.

I had been trained on how to do this stuff, but it was my first time with a real criminal and I was nervous, so I had to unlock the handcuff and put it on again while everyone laughed at me. But I never made the same mistake again. And I learned that it's ok to make mistakes, but we have to then do something to improve. In our trainings we want to give enforcers confidence in themselves that if they make a mistake it's not the end of the world as long as they take the opportunity to learn from it and don't give up.

We also go out into the field for operations, this year it was Operation Worthy, targeting illegal ivory traders. With the support of IFAW and the UK government, we went into 12 African countries to shadow the national law enforcement officers. We provided advisory support, we didn't do their jobs for them, they did their jobs and we provided the advice.

Initially you could see the confidence wasn't there. It's quite scary having all these people watching your every move, film crews where there as well, it was like having the chief of police watching - imagine if he was there watching me with the handcuffs that first time!

The teams were timid; they weren't sure how to act at first. I felt that they just needed a success, no matter how big or small. So we said, just go out and catch somebody who is breaking the law. Don't worry about the ivory, just get somebody.

We had some information about a guy with snakes he shouldn't have. We went in to his house and he did have a heap of snakes! And bang, they got their success. From then on you couldn't hold them back. Off they went and within a day they had arrested three people for illegal ivory trade. For the first day and a half there was nothing because they needed that win, they needed something to bring them together and to build upon as a team. After that breakthrough they had the confidence they needed to do the job and they've kept it up since we've left.

At Interpol, and as an international community, we can help with management, strategy, vision and government engagement, but it's great when I get to see people on the ground putting in the hard yards. We had a part to play in giving them their confidence, but at the end of the day it's the law enforcement professionals on the ground who are responsible for the success.

The trade that is killing the turtle

2012-12-31

By Dr. Jianbin Shi, Head of TRAFFIC in China

TRAFFIC is the only global specialist organisation focused on trade in wild fauna and flora, and operates as a strategic alliance of WWF and IUCN. TRAFFIC has an internationally recognised reputation for the quality of its research, technical expertise and its ability to work objectively.

Because of the complexity inherent in dealing with wildlife trade, TRAFFIC often works across a number of sectors, with government and non-government partners at national and international levels. Strategies to address illegal wildlife trade, including marine turtles, are based on research-driven approaches to advocate for international and national action, including policy change, enhanced law enforcement, increased capacity and training for government officers, and outreach to the public to reduce demand for illegal and unsustainable wildlife products.

Rising purchasing power in China and other Asian economies have driven the expansion of markets for 'luxury wildlife goods' for food, medicine and display. Trade in marine turtle products is largely commercially driven, rather than for subsistence use – whether for food (meat, eggs), medicine (shell, usually as a substitute for freshwater turtle shell) or luxury items (shell for jewellery or whole specimens for decorative display). The turtles are caught by foreign and domestic fishing effort, often as by-catch and sometimes targeted specifically. From point of harvest to end-use market there are usually several steps in the trade chain. Interventions should be considered to prevent poaching in source locations, to increase law enforcement effectiveness at intermediate points of transaction, at points of processing and sale to the end-consumer. Reducing demand for these illegal wildlife products should also be pursued to raise the awareness of processers, traders, and end-consumers – ultimately a change in their behaviour to avoid such products will result in less demand and this should lead to reductions in poaching pressure.

TRAFFIC's work on the illegal trade of marine turtle products in the Coral Triangle region has focused historically on harvest and trade of whole specimens, meat, shell and eggs in Indonesia and Malaysia, as well as concentrated efforts in Viet Nam in partnership with WWF and IUCN. More recently, TRAFFIC's research work has focused on the current market status in China and Japan, connected to supply from the Coral Triangle. The Chinese provinces of Hainan and Guangxi have emerged as major hubs for processing and sale of marine turtle products, as well as supply to other market locations in China. An integrated strategy for behavioural change involving advocacy with government authorities and specific sectors of the buying public, combined with targeted capacity building for relevant law enforcement agencies is currently being implemented with an array of partners. In parallel with this WWF-supported effort in China, TRAFFIC is pursuing concurrently a capacity building strategy in South-east Asia, supporting the ASEAN Wildlife Enforcement Network in curbing illegal trade of marine species, including marine turtles, with funding from the US Department of State.

Marine turtles play an important role in the balance and integrity of marine ecosystems. Major threats result from direct exploitation for human consumption (meat, eggs and shell) as well as by-catch and degradation of marine turtle habitats. Populations in the Coral Triangle have declined dramatically in recent decades – by as much as 90% for some populations, mainly due to illegal harvesting for trade. Individuals need to learn about the important role of marine turtles in ocean ecosystems, and to understand what effects their purchasing decisions, driven by desire for consuming marine turtle products, have on these ancient chelonian species in the wild. Beyond targeting actual end-users, we need to persuade others to influence changes in consumer behaviour.

In my role as the head of TRAFFIC's team in China, I have found that dealing with illegal wildlife trade is often a complex equation. It involves research and analysis, advocacy, political diplomacy and investing in strategic partnerships and targeted communications. Persistence is probably the most significant quality you need, as well as an ability to think laterally to devise workable solutions in whichever local, national or international context you are working in. I hope that our efforts in China will further enhance co-operation with our South-east Asian neighbours, and reduce both supply of, and demand for, marine turtles and their products.

Saving tigers: A special offer

2012-12-24

By Adam Barralet, Author and volunteer at Caversham Wildlife Park

Buy one and get one free. Purchase in bulk and save. This offer includes a free set of steak knives. I love a special offer as much as everyone else but today I have one of the best offers you'll ever hear. Give me a chance to explain – I promise I will eventually meander my way to the point.

In past decades we have seen the extinction of some iconic animals; species like the Javan and Bali tiger have been declared extinct and vanished off the face of the Earth forevermore. Although we have increased our conservation efforts in recent years we still have work to do. This is evident as the Javan rhinoceros was declared extinct just last year when it was believed the last remaining animal was shot by poachers.

At the present one of WWF Australia's focuses is the Survival Appeal. They are focusing on five iconic species; the Borneo orang-utan, the giant panda, polar bears, black-footed wallabies and an animal I have long felt a connection to – tigers.

As a child growing up I was always fascinated by animals. I loved their unique abilities, their personalities, their colours and loved the idea of all the different animals spread around the world. Then there comes an age when you realise that animals are not as abundant as original thought. For me this came when I saw a sign at the Perth Zoo tiger enclosure. Here it listed the eight species of tiger. Then it showed how many were left and how much of the tiger habitat had been lost due to the encroachment of humans. It was then I realised that humans and animals were not cohabitating harmoniously around the world.

I have always been attracted to the majestic manner of the tiger. One moment I will always treasure happened just two years ago during my time as a volunteer at Toronto Zoo. I had ended my shift on a cold winter day. The ground was covered with snow and the massive zoo was practically empty as the only people brave enough to venture out from their warm and comfortable homes on this wild day were the keepers and crazy volunteers. I walked over to visit one of the Amur Tigers (once called Siberian tiger but name was changed because their range has reduced from throughout Siberia to just the region surrounding the Amur River). I stood at the fence but couldn't see him. No one else around and the snowfall stifled any sounds from nearby. Then suddenly he came bounding over the hill and stood right in front of me, staring straight into my eyes, separated only by wire mesh. He refused to look aside and I started to walk and he followed. For what seemed like ages I walked back and forwards around the perimeter of his enclosure and he followed, turning when I turned, stopping when I did. It really felt that day that I was walking through the forest with a tiger. I felt a bond and I'll never forget it.

But what about this great deal I mentioned? Tigers are referred to as a keystone species. A keystone species is a species that plays a major role within an environment or ecosystem. Such species play a critical role in maintaining the structure of an ecological community, affecting many other organisms in an ecosystem and helping to determine the types and numbers of various other species in the community.

By protecting tigers and the habitats in which they live you are also ensuring the survival of the Amur Leopard, the Red-crowned Crane , the Oriental White Stork, the Ussurian Asiatic Black Bear as well as many other animals and plants found only in the areas where tigers roam. So the great deal is SAVE THE TIGER AND SAVE MANY OTHER SPECIES TOO! You can do this by supporting WWF's work to double tiger numbers by 2022.

Maybe in ten years time when I take my children to Perth Zoo, they can see a new sign which shows how much the tiger range has grown in the last decade.

Click here if you want to help WWF protect these big cats before it's really too late. Your donation gift to WWF will help to save some of the Earth's most magnificent animals by protecting their habitats, reducing threats like the illegal wildlife trade, and empowering local communities to save the animals that they share the land with.

About Adam Barralet:

Adam Barralet's relationship with WWF began in 2007, when he hosted a radio show on Melbourne's JOY 94.9. The show looking at green and environmental issues and success, regularly featured interviews with members of the WWF Australia team. While living in North America for the last two years he was involved in social media for an array of organisations concerned with animal rights to global travel as well as donating his time as a tour guide at Toronto Zoo. Now Adam is glad to be back in Australia, facilitating life skills to children, working on his first book and volunteering at Caversham Wildlife Park. He continues to run his blog, originally a spin off from his radio show.

A muffled growl from a suitcase

2012-12-17

By Alister Doyle, Reuters Environment Correspondent

Imagine you are sitting on a plane and hear a muffled growl from a suitcase.

Or you notice with shock that a tiny bird hatches from the clothing of a woman sitting beside you. Or you find some tiny, bewildered tortoises crawling on the floor.

I work as environment correspondent for Thomson Reuters – stories we've covered over the years show an astonishing and disheartening inventiveness among wildlife smugglers.

Is it that the chances of getting caught are too small, the value of the wildlife is too high, or the penalties for violations are too low? It's probably all of them.

None of the examples at the top are unthinkable -- among the stories we've covered that have stuck with me -- the 2010 case of a 31-year-old Thai woman caught at Bangkok airport about to board a flight to Iran with a drugged, two-month old tiger cub in her bag, stashed among lookalike cuddly tiger toys.

And John Sellar, at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), once told me that women smugglers have sometimes been caught on flights with the eggs of endangered birds stuck down their bras – an aid to incubation and easier to hide than a parrot.

The depressing litany of examples includes tiny monkeys wrapped in socks, smuggled snakes or 900 tiny tortoises found in a suitcase. And then there's the elephant ivory, tiger wine or ground-up rhino horn.

Education has to be the key – does anyone really need these products? "Thank you for buying me tiger wine for my birthday: it was delicious and I feel better already."

And it's odd that wildlife crime doesn't get higher priority even though many of the creatures tied up, sedated and dragged around the world are under threat of extinction.

As a journalist, I've found writing about elephant ivory is hardest because of competing arguments. I went to a meeting of CITES in The Hague in the Netherlands, for instance, in 2007 where governments agreed to extend a 1989 ivory export ban for nine years, after a sale of stocks.

African governments had strongly held, and very different, views about how to strike a balance between wildlife protection and ending human poverty, for example in villages where elephants are trampling crops. And the story's still complicated -- this October, Tanzania said that it wants to sell 100 tonnes of ivory from its stocks.

There are glimmers of hope for endangered creatures -- the U.N. General Assembly took up wildlife smuggling as a major criminal threat in September for the first time.

Let's hope that will lead to a crackdown -- I don't want to be at an airport and find that an angry, woozy tiger leaps out of someone's bag.

What about you?

Alister Doyle's biography

Alister Doyle has worked as Reuters Environment Correspondent since 2004, mainly covering U.N. negotiations and the science of climate change. A British citizen based in Oslo, the job has taken him to places ranging from the Arctic to Antarctica, where he was on the last flight to land on a part of the Wilkins Ice shelf before it collapsed in early 2009. For 2011-12, he was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Before covering the environment, he had postings with Reuters in Paris, Central America, Brussels and London in a career stretching back to 1982.

On your next holiday, help stop the trade that kills

2012-12-10

By Adam Barralet, Author and volunteer at Caversham Wildlife Park

You've waited weeks, months, maybe even years for this holiday. You've worked tirelessly, went without that dessert and that new pair of jeans just to have more spending money and it's all paid off because you are boarding the plane. Where are you off to this time? Is it somewhere unusual or exotic like India, Bangladesh, Sumatra, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Kenya or Mozambique?

....And then you're there. You caught a glimpse of a tiger or spotted a mother rhinoceros with her calf or heard elephants trumpeting as you lay in bed one night. It's been an amazing trip, the days have flown by and soon it's back to the mundane routine of everyday life. How will you remember this great time? You've taken plenty of photos but an authentic souvenir would be perfect too!

This is the point when you have a chance to stop or support an illegal trade that is responsible for killing thousands of endangered animals each year. In fact, nearly 400 rhinoceros have been killed in South Africa alone this year. Each year tens of thousands of elephants are killed for their ivory tusks and due to poaching just 3,200 tigers still roam free through Asia. This not only contributes to the extinction of a species but also individual animals suffer greatly and are killed inhumanely.

You may have heard that traditional medicines are responsible for the demand of rhinoceros horn and tiger bones but this is not the only industry. People will still purchase ivory statues and carvings made from elephant tusk (see below), rare animal furs, and animal body parts such as teeth and claws. As long as a tourist will buy them, somebody else will be willing to kill an animal to take the tourist dollar.

But the list of things to avoid isn't just restricted to elephant, rhinoceros and tiger products. Many endangered animals are threatened by this trade so avoid:

dried starfish
seahorses
coral
conch shells
shark teeth & jaws
reptile skins
furs
feathers
tusks or bones of whales, walruses and seals
bush meat
turtle meat and eggs
queen conch

I remember being in Bali just a few months ago and even in some of the nicest shopping malls you could purchase ivory statues as well as turtle shells, dried star fish and other ornamental keepsakes from the local waters. It may be just one little star fish but if everyone bought one thing, you've got one big problem!

On another trip when I was in Japan a friend took me to a local BBQ restaurant where you could try a huge variety of different meats cooked in traditional styles. With the menu all in foreign characters and my Japanese a little rusty, luckily I had a friend able to tell me exactly what was on the menu.

When eating out it is always great to try local food but be careful your meal isn't supporting a trade that jeopardises the lives of endangered animals. As you peruse the menu say "no" to bush meat, shark fin soup, turtle meat and eggs, queen conch and anything else from a non-domesticated animal.

Just because something is sold doesn't mean it is legal as well. The Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) protects endangered animals and prevents their trade. If you try to bring a banned item home it is likely to be seized and you could find yourself paying a hefty fine. Just look at all the items in the picture that have been seized by customs.

Your holiday is meant to be a time to get away from it all, relax and unwind. The good memories will last for years to come. Let's just make sure that the memory sitting on your mantle, bookshelf or desk didn't involve the inhumane suffering or killing of an animal or contribute to the animal's extinction.

This is your chance to stop the trade that kills.

About Adam Barralet

Adam Barralet's relationship with WWF began in 2007, when he hosted a radio show on Melbourne's JOY 94.9. The show looking at green and environmental issues and success, regularly featured interviews with members of the WWF Australia team. While living in North America for the last two years he was involved in social media for an array of organisations concerned with animal rights to global travel as well as donating his time as a tour guide at Toronto Zoo. Now Adam is glad to be back in Australia, facilitating life skills to children, working on his first book and volunteering at Caversham Wildlife Park. He continues to run his blog, originally a spin off from his radio show.

The dull anger of environmental crime

2012-12-03

by David Higgins, Manager of Interpol Environmental Crime Programme

Early in my career when I was an officer with the Tasmanian Police Service, I saw people in my community in all different emotional states. That was the start of my understanding of what drives individuals and what drives a community. Now leading the Environmental Crime Programme at Interpol, I have found that as a global community, we need to broaden our thinking of who the criminals are and what a victim is.

If you're the victim of a burglary - someone breaks into your house, or steals your car – it hurts. When someone steals from you it hurts. You get upset. You get really passionate about it because they have taken from you as an individual. You think, "How dare they violate my rights, take my property." You get mad, you call the police and you demand a reaction.

Now perhaps you have forests outside your city, forests that you enjoy from time to time. If you're in Asia and those forests are tiger habitat, you maybe see a tiger once every year or every two. Now imagine that somebody kills that tiger. When you hear you think, "Aw, someone killed the tiger, that's a shame." But when you go home and find that someone has broken into your house do you think "Aw that's a shame?" No. You're furious. And that's the difference between environmental crime and other crimes and why it's perceived to be victimless. The problem is that if there are no tigers left, the emotion will be less sharp within us. It makes us angry, but it's a dull anger.

We don't like to hear that we are vulnerable; we think we are strong. But we are not victimless; criminals are stealing our natural resources, they are destroying our environment and we ultimately need it to live. If we don't have the air, the water, the soil and the biodiversity then we are dead. But we don't have that sharpness in our emotion.

Environmental crime is individuals within our community that are stealing from us as people. They are taking from our future and from our future generations. We as human beings don't take sufficient ownership of our environment, but we are beginning to. I have seen a lot of community groups starting to take responsibility for their environment and their biodiversity and they get very upset about the theft of this.

There are many countries around the world where thieves are stealing our natural resources, like timber or fish, on a daily basis. The criminals are exploiting us by sending out their fishing vessels to steal our fish stocks, for example. You think that doesn't hurt you, but actually it does. Because they aren't paying taxes and therefore they are not building up our school systems or our roads.

So that pothole that you drive over on your way to work every day doesn't get fixed because that person is not paying their taxes like you do. They are stealing our fish, they are stealing our timber, they are killing our wildlife and that's why that pothole is there. When you get a flat tire from driving over that pothole, don't blame the government, think about why they don't have the money to fix it. Because criminals are stealing timber and not giving the government the money that they should be.

The government is representatives of our community. If you think that environmental security is important, then your community needs to empower the government to address it. The government can be lobbied and convinced to do it. Everybody is at risk here. We are all collective victims of the issue and all have a stake in solving it. We need to start feeling that way, to feel the emotion of people stealing from us.

I would like to see a significant enhancement in the way that we as a global community consider environmental security. The environment is not something that's just there for us to exploit. If you saw someone breaking into your house you'd chase them down the road, but it's not a social norm for us to confront someone who is littering or is destroying our environment. I'd like to see a change so that we all start thinking more community-oriented, rather than focusing on the individual.

We are changing as a global community, but we need to recognize that it's a shared environment. My organization Interpol hopes to have a valuable part in helping the world realize this. Combating criminality is ultimately about protecting what we value: the safety of our community. That's what we are doing from an environmental point of view.

Imagine a world without tigers...

2012-11-26

By Jim Leape, Director General of WWF International

Imagine a world without tigers. A world without rhinos and elephants. A world where these incredible animals are consigned to history like dinosaurs and dodos. It would be a poor world indeed – but this scenario is not impossible.

Poaching and illegal wildlife trade pose the greatest threats to some of the Earth's most charismatic, valuable and ecologically important species. Recent months have seen a dramatic upsurge in poaching and illegal trade of high-value wildlife products. Over 570 rhinos have been killed just this year in South Africa. Tens of thousands of elephants are killed annually for their ivory. There are as few as 3,200 tigers now left in the wild.

And most of this booty is hauled to Asia – for status symbols, tourist trinkets, or supposed medicinal cures.

Illegal wildlife trade also leads directly to human injury and death. It is estimated that well over 1,000 wildlife park rangers have been killed by commercial poachers and armed militia groups in the last 10 years alone. The number of poachers killed is unknown but likely to be much higher. Yet the criminal syndicates at the heart of this trade are rarely caught, and even more rarely prosecuted.

The rangers on the front line of this fight are the protectors of iconic species. Protectors of animals that take our breath away with their beauty, their power and their dignity – that form a vital part of the vast and complex web of life to which we all belong. They represent our natural heritage and a valuable resource for governments and communities, and without them we would be poor indeed.

WWF was founded on the desire to give such incredible animals a chance at survival – for their own sake, and for the sake of life itself. There is so much that hangs on the survival of tigers and rhinos – economies and societies are inextricably linked to them.

But there is hope that we can save them from this poaching and trade crisis – and two recent encounters have given me fresh cause to be optimistic that humanity can and will tackle this ugly problem.

Last month WWF awarded its highest honour, the Duke of Edinburgh Conservation Medal, to 36-year-old Israeli wildlife crime whistleblower and activist, Ofir Drori, recognising his vision and courage in shedding light on this issue and bringing perpetrators to justice.

When you hear Ofir speak, you cannot help but be deeply touched by the fire in his eyes, by his conviction and passion. Ofir risks his life in his efforts to take down the leaders of the syndicates that are making vast profits from this destabilising organised crime. Seven months after Ofir's arrival in Central Africa, the small group of local activist volunteers that he established, called The Last Great Ape Organization (LAGA), brought about the first ever wildlife prosecution for the whole of West and Central Africa. Today, LAGA's work with the Government of Cameroon has put more than 450 traffickers behind bars.

And it is not just dedicated activists like Ofir who are recognising the severity of the problem. In our work with Donald Kaberuka, President of the African Development Bank, I've been struck by his fierce determination to galvanize action on illegal wildlife trade. Formerly finance minister in Rwanda, he knows first-hand that the heavily armed bands of poachers who are massacring elephants and rhinos across the continent are a threat not just to wildlife but to national economies and national security. Illegal wildlife trade is destabilising societies and jeopardising the reputations of African countries as good places to invest and do business.

In Asia, too, the severity of the problem is being recognised at the highest level. A declaration from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in September expressed concern about "the escalating illicit trafficking in endangered and protected wildlife" and its "economic, social, security, and environmental consequences in our economies". The region's leaders committed "to strengthen our efforts to combat illegal trade in wildlife".

Everyone – be they activists or businesspeople, tourists or presidents, can play a part in their own spheres of influence in putting a stop to wildlife poaching and illegal trade. I ask you to do so. We've seen too much already – and it could soon be too late.

Jim Leape's biography

Follow Jim Leape on Twitter @jimleape