Don’t be a Dumbo: sign up for safari
* Forget the elephants
* Raise the price of ivory
* Tally ho, trophy hunters!
Considered a deity by some, treated like royalty by others, earth’s largest land animal is as revered a target as you’re likely to find. Environmentally, the African elephant is nauseatingly virtuous. Even its nutrient-rich faeces are laced with good ingredients for foragers, and some hapless seeds can’t germinate unless they have first travelled through the elephant’s vast bowels. Conservationists gloss over the creatures’ destructive tendencies: they decimate crops, trample livelihoods and can gore people to death. They might look impressive, but can an elephant earn a million? Complete the Rubik’s cube? Invent the iPod? No. The elephant is nothing but a jumbo Janus with teeth that do not fit in its mouth.
It is these teeth that will ensure the downfall of the African elephant. At the height of the ivory rush, elephant numbers slumped from 1.3 million in 1979 to 625,000 a decade later. Trinkets made from their molars were highly desirable and poachers were cashing in. In 1989 some fusty chaps from the UN Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species banned the sale of ivory. The slaughter stopped pronto.
Now, though, poaching is back big time. A one-off sale from the ivory stockpile of South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe was recently sanctioned by the UN. The move has paved the way for an elephant massacre. No one can really distinguish between legal and illegal ivory. Hidden behind the smokescreen of this legally sanctioned sale, you could bring about the greatest elephant holocaust ever seen and flood the world market with illegal ivory. The price will soar. Currently, ivory fetches around £375 per kilo, up from £50 a few years back, but you must push it to a record high. The higher the price, the more likely that organized poaching syndicates will be tempted. You could try to beat the cost of gold – at the time of writing a record £500 an ounce.
Between 470,000 and 690,000 elephants are still stomping across the African savannahs. Latest intelligence suggests that 23,000 elephants a year are currently being killed for ivory. Credible certainly, but too modest a tally for your purposes. Make those boys back in the Seventies look like the cowboys they were. Their chaotic, frenzied spree massacred 70,000 creatures a year; but there’s no excuse for inefficiency. With a sophisticated, organized poaching network you can hit six figures.
To commence the cull you clearly need to target a country with a sizeable elephant population. Ideally, choose an economy which has collapsed beyond recognition, a country without moral leadership, dominated by a crackpot dictator with no interest in or concern for what the world thinks…off the top of my head, Zimbabwe. But you will have to move fast. Zimbabwe’s elephant population of 120,000 may not survive much longer. Already, poaching there is out of control. Latest intelligence found 939 active poaching camps in a single north-eastern state.
The first step is to get a foothold inside this turbulent country which, while starving its own people, has retained the admirable foresight to continue allowing elephant hunting. Start by trawling safari companies, who can offer a permit to enter Zimbabwe for the ‘trophy’ hunting of such creatures. Shooting animals for a laugh is a traditional pastime of the privileged, so try the royal gunsmith Holland and Holland, based in Mayfair and supplier of firearms to creatures as respected as the Duke of Edinburgh, the Prince of Wales and members of the new aristocracy, Madonna and Guy Ritchie. Once, H&H charged an awesome £5,000 for shooting male elephants in Botswana. Have a punt and ask about neighbouring Zimbabwe. Admittedly, it’s a long shot – they claim no longer to offer such well-meaning trips. Otherwise, try Banbury-based E.J. Churchill, who once offered elephant shooting at a not unreasonable £4,700. Company director Sir Edward Dashwood is an admirable old card, once saying of pachyderm poaching, ‘Go and shoot an elephant, it’s like having the most expensive bottle of wine you can have at every meal, with vintage champagne and caviar.’ Although he no longer organizes these worthy African breaks, he may be able to recommend like-minded sorts who still do. If he’s reluctant to help, your third port of call is Zimbabwe-based Nyakasanga Hunting Safaris, who offer professional licensed hunters to target male elephants.
Once you’ve made it to Zim, make efforts to shoot only bulls. Men might be increasingly redundant in human society, but they’re still required to do the business out here on the African plains. Spread the word to the local poaching networks that you’ll pay $1,000 – valuable foreign currency – to anyone who slays an elephant. Alternatively, contact Zimbabwe’s National Parks and Wildlife Management Authority, which has reportedly been offering farmers the chance to buy elephants. According to the authority’s director, Maurice Mutsambiwa, they have at least 55,000 too many. The going price is £1,000. What a snip.
So, hurrah! There is at least some good news coming out of modern-day Zimbabwe. Mugabe may run the risk of being under-appreciated, but you must applaud his well-crafted food shortages which impel his countrymen to kill elephants for food and his officials to deal in ivory in order to feed their families. One national park has, according to reports, been instructed to slaughter elephants to feed the villages on Independence Day. What a feast! All indications are that your poachers will be able to operate with impunity as long as Mugabe gets his return. Zimbabwe’s elephants stand no chance.
The cull should next be encouraged to move on to Zambia’s 30,000 elephants and then Botswana’s 123,000 creatures, followed by an efficient extermination of Namibia’s 12,000. Next, the 17,000 of South Africa, the 24,000 of Mozambique and, finally, on to Kenya’s population of 32,000. It is now early 2012 and more than 350,000 elephants in Africa have vanished. As southern Africa is cleansed, mobs up north have extinguished the Loxodonta africana in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroon, Tanzania and Nigeria where, in places, the fog of war has abetted your programme.
Unsurprisingly, the massive market of China is obsessed with ivory; its elite will do anything to get their hands on the new ‘white gold’. And while Japan might be the only certified country able to receive ivory stockpiles, all illegal African ivory will be easily diverted en route to this rising star of the East. Chinese traders will facilitate the movement. Dozens of companies there are currently registering in preparation to legally sell ivory. The China National Petroleum Corporation and its Ministry of Defence have both been linked to the ivory trade. Even the Communist Party of China has been involved, which just goes to show that socialism works in mysterious ways. China is currently pressing for the ivory moratorium to be lifted. Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe, meanwhile, are chasing regular export quotas. Even if they fail, it really doesn’t matter as long as the teeth reach China. There they can use it how they want: ivory chopsticks, figurines, spectacle frames – you name it. All that is important is maintaining the fabulously well-formed smuggling route from the poaching camps of Africa to the shipping magnates of China.
African nations should learn from the example of Zambia. A shipment of 6.5 tonnes of ivory – 6,000 elephants’ worth – was intercepted in Singapore, most likely on its way to China. When questioned, Zambia’s government played dumb. Its official documentation claimed that only 135 elephants had been killed in the country during the entire previous decade. Their bluff worked, but in the future countries should at least attempt to make their story plausible.
Keep an eye on other potential markets. Europe has always been partial to ivory. Again, aristocracy may have a part to play. Down the road from Holland and Holland is the barbershop George F. Trumper Ltd, patronized by the royals since Queen Victoria’s reign. The ‘finest traditional gentlemen’s barber in London’ was once fined £10,000 for dealing illegal ivory shaving brushes and the like. Soon after, the Met realized that protecting animals was actually a bit of a lame pastime in the face of real crime, and the four-strong unit was scaled back to two because accountants felt that £40,000 from a £2.5 billion budget could be better spent. And so the ivory keeps on coming. Recent audits found 27,000 ivory items on sale in 1,143 shops across Germany, UK, France and Spain. Germany hoarded more than 16,444 items, with the UK coming in at a respectable second-place with 8,325. If all goes well, one day, quite soon, such figures will seem ridiculously, naively, low.
* Well-known environmental group calls for large-scale trophy hunting of elephants with proceeds spent on conservation measures. Certain.
* China’s president appears on state television wearing what looks suspiciously like an ivory bracelet, beads and ring. He responds to international opprobrium by explaining it was a gift from his African friends. Chinese media remarks how handsome their leader looks. Unlikely.
* Price of ivory reaches £1,100 in 2014 after conservation groups announce that the wild African elephant population has collapsed. A rare interception of ivory for Beijing is traced back by DNA to Mugabe’s presidential herd. Improbable.
* As poaching spirals out of control, world leaders promise international efforts to save the elephant. Britney Spears goes slightly madder and media attention shifts stateside. The Serengeti is all but forgotten. Probable.
* Intent on proving he is more bonkers than Spears, Mugabe announces he cannot find any of his country’s elephants. Last seen riding naked into the jungle on the back of his last surviving presidential elephant. Feasible.
Likelihood of African elephant reaching unsustainable levels by 2020: 71%