Death is part of life in Africa, as David Attenborough’s latest series, which pulled in 6.5 million viewers this week, documents. Whether it is a pack of lions, sparring giraffes or a baby elephant dying of thirst in a drought on the plains of Amboseli, the reality of survival is harsh.
Among the dense greenery, icy mountain peaks, steamy swamps and savannahs, the octogenarian broadcaster has travelled to the rocky outcrops of the Serengeti, to Tanzania and Congo to film the diverse and awe-inspiring array of wildlife battling for survival on this incredible continent.
But elsewhere there is a far more ominous, if less publicised, struggle going on.
Congo, 2012. Heavily armed soldiers traipse through the dense, grassy lands on the hunt for something. They hold rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns and are clearly ready to fight to the death for their cause.
They are in the midst of a terrible war, one that kills males, females and youngsters. They are neither military personnel nor guerillas but park rangers, protectors of endangered species within the Garamba National Park which covers 19,000 square miles.
A plane has spotted a large carcass so the rangers are on the hunt and sure enough they soon come across the remains of a recently slaughtered male elephant aged around 20 years old, his face sliced off to remove his tusks of precious ivory. He is just one of thousands massacred last year in what has been shown to be the worst ever year for the animals that are slaughtered as part of the illegal ivory trade.
Rewind to July 1989 and Kenyan president Daniel Arap Moi sets fire to 12 tonnes of confi scated elephant tusks, worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, in front of a startled crowd.
Months later CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) bans the trade of ivory, demand plummets and it’s hoped the elephant populations will have a chance to recover.
And for a while that’s what looked as if it was going to happen. The ivory trade declined steadily and then a decade ago the fi gures started to creep back up again – 23 years after the ban was imposed the number of elephants being killed is higher than ever. Last month marked the biggest ever single seizure of ivory in Malaysia:
24 tonnes, 1,500 tusks, £12.4million and 750 elephants. Between January and March a staggering 50 per cent of the elephant population in Cameroon’s Bouba Ndjida National Park were slaughtered by bandits.
In March, 22 elephant corpses were recovered from Garamba National Park. They were found positioned in a group, possibly to protect their young, and had all been shot in the head from above, wounds that could only have been infl icted from a helicopter.
On October 20 Hong Kong seized a record 3.81 tonnes of illegal ivory – the largest ever haul in China and the biggest worldwide in two years. The 1,209 tusks and ivory pieces were found on board two ships from Tanzania and Kenya and marked as “plastic scrap” and “rose coco” beans.
On October 31 Tanzania made one of its biggest ever ivory busts when police found more than 200 tusks hidden in a coffi n and bags marked “fertiliser”. The contraband was being sent to Kenya from Dar-es-Salaam.
Three suspects, including two Kenyans, were arrested.
So why the increase in poaching during the past decade? Conservationist Jane Goodall says the rise is fuelled by demand from wealthy consumers in what may soon be the greatest superpower: China.
“Ivory is highly prized,” explains Tom Milliken, director of TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network. “It’s a status symbol but equally the Chinese use it for things like chopsticks as it’s so durable.
Combined with its appearance it’s the sterling silver of the Far East. There’s still an attachment in China to the imperial past, an obsession with status and wealth, and ivory affords an opportunity to show that status in a modern context.”
BUT there are other markets too. At tourist bazaars and emporiums in Thailand stalls are heaped with trinkets and ornamental carvings, ironically some in the shape of little elephants, all fashioned from ivory.
“Just last week I was in the markets in Thailand making assessments and fi nding lots of ivory and lots of people buying it, including young people,” says Milliken. “I think they know it’s ivory but I’m not sure whether they know it’s from poached elephants.”
And the West cannot escape with-out blame as there are European tourists purchasing these goods.
These products eventually fi nd their way back to Europe as a variety of trinkets and this is a trade that’s very much Western based.
“There’s a faux antique trade but I’d say there are mounds of bangles and beads and brooches and earrings and things for adornment and there are lots of small sculptures, anything from elephants to symbols to Christian crosses that are popular with tourists.”
Goodall is saddened by the figures. “Our attitude in the West is different but we’re not that marvellous in protecting our animals either. Elephants are so beautiful.
I spent a long time watching them.
"They have these amazing social lives and the mother/calf relationship is wonderful. They’re so highly intelligent and they have emotions.
"They grieve. If you think of the slaughter going on, the abandoned calves, it’s really, really tragic.”
"But there is hope. “Extinction isn’t imminent,” says Milliken.
“Large scale losses yes, but there probably still are close to half a million elephants left in Africa and we’re not at the point that perhaps pandas are, yet.”
In fact the Chinese government has in recent years become increasingly diligent, making on average two ivory seizures daily and scanning ships’ containers from Africa.
“They are also looking at the luggage and the carry-on bags that Chinese nationals are bringing back into the country,” says Milliken.
“They put pressure on intelligence networks on the border with Vietnam and they’ve made some spectacular discoveries. They are actually doing a lot for the cause – 32 people have received life imprisonment for ivory trading.”
So China is sensitised to the trade issues yet it has not decreased the fl ow of ivory into the country.
“All of these efforts are not seen as enough of a deterrent,” explains Milliken. “Countries which have never reported a seizure to us are heavily implicated in the illegal trade because so many of the records we get also give us a trade chain. A seizure may have taken place in China but it fl owed through Thailand, Nigeria and Cameroon to get there and none of those countries reported anything to us but we know about them through others’ reports.”
According to Goodall, education is the key. “What we’re trying to do is mount a campaign to raise awareness across China of what’s going on because people don’t know.
"Some people who are smuggling ivory across the Chinese border don’t even know it’s illegal. But it’s a question of money too unfortunately. Unless we can stop the demand, poaching will continue.”
Chinese basketball star Yao Ming (the country’s equivalent of David Beckham) has joined the fight.
But there is hope. “Extinction isn’t imminent
MILLIKEN says: “He’s making films and has gone to Africa and stood next to dead rhinos and elephants so I’m working with him to put out very powerful messages about what consumption is doing in other parts of the world. It’s an important gesture because someone like Yao Ming is possibly the best known individual in China. Jackie Chan has also been doing similar things.
“We are making progress. If we go back to the Eighties, Japan had half the illegal ivory trade in the world and today they account for just over one per cent. So this idea that you can never turn things around in Asia, that the Chinese are inscrutable, it’s wrong.”
Goodall’s campaign to raise awareness about ivory poaching is to launch this year and she has appealed to Attenborough for help.
“He hasn’t got back to me just yet but I have faith,” she says. “It’s not just the elephants, there are human casualties too.”
In Tsavo National Park, southern Kenya, 12 wildlife rangers and 60 poachers have been killed in six years but still they keep coming.
“We need to raise funds to help pay the rangers and look after their families,” says Goodall.
“When the rangers are killed their widows are thrown out of government accommodation and the children have to stop going to school.
“The situation is desperate. It’s a worldwide war that we need to help fight.”