SADLY, IF THIS SITUATION IS allowed to go on, the unthinkable might happen; this wonderful animal reserve, one of the best-known game parks in the world, will die.
The scenario is fraught with imponderables. Involved are poachers, bandits, a bankrupt government, corrupt politicians as well as an inept and badly trained army. There is no air support to speak of and the legal system is not beyond coercion whenever ‘incentives’ are offered. The bribes come in heavy manila envelopes stuffed with American banknotes.
The situation is linked to a level of bureaucratic obfuscation that, to the average Western mind, simply defies description. As one expatriate observer tartly commented, ‘that’s unfortunately the way it goes in these parts’. This imbroglio not only involves Serengeti. Other Tanzanian game parks – like the Selous National Reserve – are similarly affected.
A generation ago it was Kenya where poachers – many of them Simba rebels from Somalia armed with automatic weapons – killed all the rhinos. They had already set about destroying large herds of elephants, a considerable task and it is sobering that they almost succeeded.
For those parts of Africa that still have rhino, killing them for their horns is largely a cyclical process. The authorities take action, the poachers back off, somebody imports more rhino from South Africa and the process starts all over again. By mid 2009, the number of rhinoceros in East and Southern Africa was the highest for almost two decades. A year later their numbers were decreasing again at an alarming rate.
Yet it was not always so. In the mid 1960s I would regularly travel between Nairobi and Malindi by car, often taking the shorter route through parts of the beautiful Tsavo National Park. Along the way, we’d often encounter elephant herds, so vast that we’d have to stop at the side of the road until they’d crossed, an exercise that could sometimes take five or ten minutes.
These days, only small herds of elephant remain, the ivory of their predecessors long ago shipped to India or China. In both Kenya and Tanzania, the smoke and mirror swindles of ‘allowing’ poachers access to herds of elephant so that they can be shot for their ivory tusks stretches all the way back to their respective capitals and the crooked politicians who control them.
Dar es Salaam, the beautiful and ancient tropical city on the fringe of the Indian Ocean, first mentioned by Pliny the Elder, lies at the heart of much of it. As in most countries in Africa, Tanzania’s leaders have proved to be corrupt, which is also why it has followed the same route as Kenya: almost all of its rhinos have been poached. The majority were slaughtered for their horns, which were bought by Chinese parties, ground-up into a powder and used as a primitive form of Viagra.
Caught between these vagaries in the country’s national reserves is a tiny, but resolute, band of conservationists and game guards who regularly match their wits against the poachers. They are a dedicated, illequipped and chronically underpaid band of veterans, but they are willing to put everything on the line, including their lives, in their often futile attempts to stop the killings.
Justin Hando, head of the Tanzanian paramilitary Anti-Poaching Unit in the Serengeti National Park, was the man in charge the last time I visited East Africa. Responsible for some of the most spectacular concentrations of wildlife in the world, he was emphatic: ‘Our animals are being killed in great numbers and if these people are not halted, then it won’t be long before the process becomes irreversible.’
He encapsulated his argument with a simple analogy. If poaching were allowed to go on, the word gets around. Soon everyone and his uncle comes running to get a share of the booty. The perception among many of these illegal hunters, he stressed, was that an almost unlimited supply of fresh meat was available. It was there for the taking, and if a game guards got in the way, they did the necessary…