LRA massacres 68 elephants in DRC
News24 - 15 hours ago
Rabat - One of Africa's oldest national parks is under attack "from
all fronts," said its director on Friday after 68 elephants were
slaughtered over the past two months by poachers wielding chain saws
and grenades and shooting them from helicopters.
Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo is under
constant assault by renegade Congolese soldiers, gunmen from South
Sudan and others. And this is just a slice of the carnage:
international wildlife regulators say 20 000 elephants were killed
just in Africa in 2013.
The Johannesburg-based African Parks group, which manages the park,
said that since mid-May, the 5000km² Garamba National Park in Congo,
which was established in 1938, has faced an onslaught from several
bands of poachers who have already killed 4% of its elephant
population.
"The situation is extremely serious," Garamba park manger Jean-Marc
Froment said in the statement. "The park is under attack on all
fronts." A 2012 census found just 2 000 elephants in Garamba Park,
down from 20 000 in the 1960s.
One group is shooting the elephants with rifles from a helicopter and
then taking off their tusks with a chain saw. They are removing the
elephants' brains and genitals as well.
Conservationists say a thriving ivory market in Asia is helping fuel
the worst poaching epidemic of African elephants in decades.
In some cases the attacks in Garamba seem to be indiscriminate,
killing baby elephants that do not yet possess the valuable ivory
tusks.
African Parks, which runs seven parks in six countries in cooperation
with local authorities, said the poachers include renegade elements of
the Congolese army, gunmen from South Sudan, and members of the Lord's
Resistance Army, a militant rebel group whose fugitive leader Joseph
Kony is an alleged war criminal.
In one skirmish with poachers, park guards had to try to protect
themselves from hand grenades thrown by Southern Sudanese poachers,
some wearing military uniforms.
Froment singled out in particular elements of the LRA, which is
notorious for its kidnapping children and using them as soldiers, and
has been active in the park. In 2009, the group attacked the park's
headquarters, killing 15 park employees and family members.
The group is known to have a presence in the heavily forested areas
around the park.
A spokesperson for African Parks, Cynthia Walley, said the heavy
vegetation and large concentration of elephants in the park have made
it a target for poachers who have flocked to the area, leading to the
sudden escalation in attacks.
"It's pretty well documented that Garamba is one of the few remaining
places where you get these large herds of elephants," she said. "The
supply of elephants in some parts of Africa for poachers has
diminished and so in areas where you are protecting elephants you
become a target."
She said that African Parks, which has run Garamba in co-operation
with the Congolese parks authority since 2005, beefed up their forces
in anticipation of increased poaching this year but found recent spike
to be "unprecedented".
In addition to Congolese and park forces, there are units from the
United States military's African Command supporting anti-poaching
efforts on the ground, African Parks said.
In recent years, the UN has warned that armed groups in Africa have
been turning to ivory poaching to fund their struggles. Many are also
using the more sophisticated weapons that flowed from Libya after the
fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
The Geneva-based Convention on International Trade in Endangered
Species of Wild Fauna and Flora said on Friday that 20 000 elephants
were killed in 2013, but the overall poaching was on the decline due
to better law enforcement.
The spike in attacks on Garamba, however, suggests that poachers may
just be shifting to different targets. Poaching has been down in Chad,
for instance, while it has been on the rise in Central African
Republic which is being wracked by a civil war.
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SIBOMANA Jean Bosco
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