WWF to launch int'l campaign against elephant poaching
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E-mail Xinhua, February 16, 2013
The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) will on Monday next week launch an international campaign against the poaching of elephants, a phenomenon which has increased in the Central African region where close to half of the elephants population has died in the last one decade.
The announcement was made during an interview accorded to Xinhua on Wednesday in Libreville by Pauwel de Wachter, the coordinator of Tridom national parks which include Dja and Odzala parks in the Republic of Congo and Minkebe in Gabon.
"The campaign should last for one and a half years but it will continue until the battle is won," De Wachter said.
He said the situation is very serious. In the Central African Republic, there were 80,000 elephants in early 1980s, but now there are just a few thousands. It's the same case in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) which has remained with a few thousand elephants.
"It's estimated that between 80 percent to 90 percent of the DR Congo elephants disappeared in the last 20 to 25 years," the WWF official said.
He said that in the Republic of Congo, it's estimated that about 50 percent of the elephants were lost in the last 10 years, but that the biggest disappearance of elephants occurred in Gabon.
The phenomenon increased because of the high prices of ivory. "The poachers use very sophisticated weapons. Poaching has become a big business and there's no forest where we cannot find poachers. They are everywhere. We may lose the battle," he said.
"There's need to conduct regular patrols in all the remaining forests where there are elephant populations. There's need to prevent the poachers from entering there. We must dismantle the networks of ivory buyers because it's very strong in the sub- region," he added.
"The punishment for ivory traffickers should be very heavy," he recommended.
The idea of the anti-poaching campaign comes at a time when the Gabonese government recently announced that about 11,000 elephants were killed between 2004 and 2012 in Minkebe national park which is considered as the biggest sanctuary of the forest elephants in the world.
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