Cape Town - The illegal trade in ivory increased 300 percent from 1998 to 2011 in Asian-run underground operations that have led to the deaths of an estimated 100 000 African elephants across the continent in the last three years, according to a new report.
And an aerial census of elephants – both living and dead – will begin this week in Mozambique where the onslaught against the big mammals is ramping up with poachers using AK-47s and poisoning waterholes.
A report released by the wildlife trade monitoring network Traffic and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) on Friday said record quantities of ivory had been seized globally from 2011 to last year with “an alarming increase” in the frequency of ivory seizures of 500kg or more since 2000.
The report, Illegal Trade in Ivory and Rhino Horn, was compiled to help improve law enforcement by developing tools to reduce illegal Asian-run, African-based wildlife trafficking between the continent and the main ivory consumer countries China and Thailand.
Most of the ivory shipments since 2009 have involved African seaports, where fewer than 5 percent of containers are examined.
“Although incomplete, 2013 raw data already represent the greatest quantity of ivory in these seizures in more than 25 years,” it said.
The report said the Asian-run illegal operations used syndicates which increasingly relied on sophisticated technologies. In order to apprehend those behind them, the global response needed to be equally sophisticated.
Central to this was improved training, law-enforcement technology and monitoring of judiciary processes at key locations in Africa and Asia. It was also critical that specialised intelligence units were expanded and developed so that key individuals and financial flows could be identified and lead to arrests of those at high-levels in the crime syndicates.
The US-based Wildlife Conservation Society announced on Friday it was to begin a national elephant survey to collect data essential to protect Mozambique’s “highly threatened and diminishing savannah elephant population”.
The organisation estimates that 4 000 elephants have been killed in Mozambique since 2010. The survey in Mozambique, where 22 elephants were killed in its Niassa game reserve this month, is part of the Great Elephant Census that hopes to have surveyed elephants in 18 countries covering more than 80 percent of savannah elephant range and 90 percent of African elephants.
”It is estimated 100 000 elephants have been killed across Africa in the last three years by organised crime networks that are also negatively affecting the security, governance and development potential of local communities,” the society said.
In Niassa two elephants are gunned down every day. The society said in western Mozambique, poachers were poisoning waterholes to kill elephants, a method also used in Zimbabwe.
Cape Times