Johannesburg - It is child’s play to poison elephants with cyanide when water is scarce and mopane trees are bare after the long, hot summer months.
In July, hundreds of elephants passed through the remote, southern tip of Zimbabwe’s 14 600km2 Hwange National Park looking for water.
A cow and her dead calf were among the first casualties seen from the air as a European hunter and his Zimbabwe guides flew overhead, north to Victoria Falls. As they slowed and flew lower they saw scores more dead elephants. Piles of dead white-backed vultures lay nearby.
The death toll of what is believed to be the largest single massacre of elephants in sub-Saharan Africa is now at least 300 and untold numbers of other animals and birds.
“We could not believe our eyes,” one hunter said. “We thought they must have been shot. There were too many to have died of thirst or hunger.”
They flew back to their camp near Bulawayo and returned to the park in a 4x4 vehicle and sent others to pick up government rangers at Main Camp.
“We found [that] elephants we saw from the air were not shot, but the tusks were gone.”
The rangers and the hunters waited and soon saw a man crossing into the park carrying a bucket and a packet. They watched him bury a bucket in the sand, then mix some powder from his packet into the water.
The hunters found four gallon buckets submerged in the sand. The elephants would have quickly sucked up all that water and squirted it into their mouths.
They would then have died quickly, within four or five paces.
The National Parks and Wildlife Authority sent in investigators, and police deployed to the south-east of the park. The water was analysed: cyanide.
It’s a weapon that’s easy to use, much less trouble than gunfire, much quieter and much cheaper.
Within weeks police had arrested eight men from a village in the Tsholotsho district, which borders the park; several policemen, who were allegedly bribed to ignore the poachers; and a distributor of 50kg of cyanide, used by informal gold miners digging around this part of Zimbabwe.
The suspected poachers were quickly processed through the courts. Three were sentenced to 16 years in prison each, and were also fined R6-million.
In September, police continued to round up villagers for questioning. Some said their children, fearing arrest, had skipped across the border into South Africa.
In court it emerged that the cyanide poachers were selling tusks for about R4 500 each to middle men who shipped them out of the country to be sold to syndicates in South Africa for about R150 000 a pair. Some of this ivory, poachers believe, ends up being crafted into artefacts and sold in Cape Town markets.
The ivory within Hwange National Park is of poor quality but good enough for small, carved bangles.
According to the state newspaper, The Herald, one of the villagers, John Vumile Dube, told environment minister Saviour Kasukuwere who visited a village close to the border with the park two weeks ago, that poaching by poison was a crime of poverty.
“We have already convinced some villagers to hand over cyanide. We are pleading with the police to give us time and stop arresting villagers, at least until the end of the month,” Dube said.
He said villagers’ crops had failed in the drought and previous income from hunters and safari operators via a system called the Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (Campfire), had dried up. The system was designed to assist rural development and conservation by paying funds from safari operators to local people.
The villagers claim they are owed about R1.2m from previous operators who abandoned the hunting site near their homes last year. Other professional hunters have now set up camp close by and are regularly paying their Campfire dues.
Caroline Washaya-Moyo, the public relations manager for Zimbabwe’s National Parks, said on Wednesday her agency had launched its first aerial survey of the park last week looking for more elephant casualties, and had found ten which experts estimated had died within the previous three weeks.
She said police had arrested two men accused of killing them. Akim Masuku, 26, from Hwange town, had been sentenced to 15 years in prison on Wednesday.
“He still has to stand trial on October 30 in connection with hazardous substances and illegal hunting,” she said.
“Another man, Normal Ncube, 18, was also arrested… and he will stand trial on October 30.”
She said police and rangers found 14 tusks near the railway line that passes through Hwange.
So far 12 people had been arrested since the first carcasses were found.
“It is a pity that they all seem so reluctant to identify the big people involved, as ivory, like the rhino horn, is not used in Zimbabwe. It is used by foreigners.”
She said a “detox” operation in the park was under way and many carcasses had been burned, though some had been kept for further investigation. She was “surprised” at estimates made by visiting hunters of 300 elephants killed by cyanide since July.
Tom Milliken, the programme leader for the Elephant and Rhino elephant Traffic network, a joint programme of the WWF and the International Union for Conservation of Nature, said he was “astounded” to learn that so many elephant had died from cyanide poisoning.
Thys de Vries, a professional hunter and conservationist, said this week: “We believe National Parks will successfully stop this tragedy. There are some… good people out there, but they are short of resources and need help.” - The Star