Poachers kill Kenya’s most rare antelope

 Nationmedia.com – Issa Hussein

Four poachers have been arrested for trapping and killing Kenya’s most endangered antelope, the Hirola, which is threatened with extinction.

Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) wardens on patrol in Kilindini area along the River Tana arrested the poachers who had trapped the antelope using snares. 

Officers led by Cpl Ibrahim Haro saw suspicious footprints in the grazing field frequented by the Hirola antelope and after tracking them found four poachers skinning the antelope in a thicket. 

The poachers were forced to surrender at gunpoint and were arrested.

Cpl Haro said the poachers, who are being held at Masalani police station awaiting referral to a Hola magistrates court, had also killed a buffalo a week earlier and were on KWS officers’ wanted list. 

He appealed to communities living along the Tana River not to hunt the Hirola antelope as the species, which is only found in Kenya, was in danger of extinction. 

He said the Kenya Wildlife Society officers will continue to mount patrols to ensure the endangered species was safe from poachers. 

The Hirola weighs between 75 and 160 kilogrammes and, according to KWS officials, is threatened with extinction from poachers and competition from domestic livestock.

The antelope is one of the world’s rarest animals.

The KWS and donors translocated 29 of the animals to Tsavo East National Park in 1995 and 1996 to try and protect it from decimation by poachers.

Armed with bow

In Tana River District, the district warden, Ibrahim Osman warned residents against hunting dikdiks which he said were also facing extinction.

He said Kenya Wildlife Society wardens recently arrested eight poachers with 187 dikdik carcasses.

He said the game that used to be common near Hola town had now fled to other areas.

He warned that anyone found with game meat will face heavy penalties.

Meanwhile, a suspected poacher was arrested yesterday morning after he was caught in Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Laikipia East District armed with a bow and poisoned arrows.

Yesterday’s incident comes a month after suspected poachers killed a black rhino at the largest black rhino sanctuary in East Africa.

No one has been arrested in connection with the incident.

With eye on economy, India may be blind to endangered tigers

Environmentalists fear that the new Act could reverse decades of progress in preserving the tigers, forests.

LiveMint.com

Kailashpuri, India: A tale about the forest dweller and the tiger sounds like some ancient Indian fable, a parable of man versus beast handed down through the ages and adapted by Rudyard Kipling for Western consumption.

But this is a real-life story unfolding today, as India’s government seeks to protect the country’s dwindling population of Bengal tigers while balancing the privileges of man. India has nearly half the world’s estimated 3,500 tigers. But in a country where the human population has ballooned to more than 1.1 billion—most of whom live on less than $2 (Rs79) a day—the government is also focused on expanding the economy and reducing poverty.

Parliament recently passed a law that enshrines the right of forest dwellers to remain in the forests and could allow the return of hundreds of thousands of people who abandoned their claim to the forest decades ago.

Environmentalists fear that the new law—known as the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, and due to come into force in the coming weeks—throws open the gates of India’s national parks and reverses decades of progress in preserving the country’s shrinking forests and the tigers that live in them.

“The economy is the priority now and everything else can go to hell,” said Valmik Thapar, a conservationist and author who for more than a decade has publicized the plight of India’s critically endangered tigers.

As more and more of India’s forests are logged or turned into farms to feed its ever-expanding human population, the number of tigers has plummeted from an estimated 40,000 in 1925 to fewer than 1,500 today, a figure that some experts say is the tipping point for extinction. Protecting the animal has long been a national goal.

In Rajasthan, the Ranthambore National Park attracts tens of thousands of tourists every year eager to glimpse the elusive orange-and-black striped cats, the core of a growing tourism trade here that brings in more than $22 million a year, including at least $300,000 in park entry fees. But the potential strains created by the Forest Dwellers Act are plain to see here, too.

About 200,000 villagers live just outside the national park, many of them former forest dwellers. They were coaxed out of the forest over the past 30 years with promises of schools, health clinics and electricity—all part of a government-backed programme to protect the tiger habitat.

“By now, most of us have forgotten how to live in the forest. We are farmers now, not hunters,” said Chittat Gurjar, 67, a slim man in a white turban. Another villager, Kastoori Gurjar, 78, said she has no intention of returning to live in the forest. But she does want to visit.

“We just want to be allowed back in to worship our gods, who stayed in the forest,” she said, with tearful eyes as she recalled her childhood in the thick woods of the park.

The rights of India’s forest dwellers need to be protected, the Act’s supporters say. Media reports that thousands of forest dwellers have been evicted and many forest communities violently harassed in recent weeks, which some analysts say is an effort to limit the number of people eligible to initiate land claims underthe Act.

Environmentalists and wildlife experts are lobbying Parliament and the courts to strike down the law, widely seen as a populist vote-getter in the lead-up to next year’s general elections.

“This is legislation that no one in Parliament can say no to. It’s part of India’s romanticized notion of forest dwellers as people who live in harmony with the land,” said Goverdhan Singh Rathore, whose non-governmental organization, the Prakratik Society, provides schooling and medical care for many of the villagers who were once forest dwellers.

“That might have been true in the past, but the reality now is that if the growing numbers of forest dwellers are allowed to remain in the national parks and others with historic claims to the land are allowed back in, India’s forests will be gone very soon, and with them, the tigers,” Rathore said.

Luxury hotels and “eco-lodges” have sprouted on the edges of the Ranthambore National Park. Tourists pile into open-roofed jeeps and 20-seater buses that rumble along dirt roads through nearly 800 sq. km of forest, passing langurs, elk-sized deer called sambhars and monitor lizards that dart back into the brush as the cars pass.

But here, as throughout India, the chances of seeing a tiger are getting slimmer.

At least four of India’s 27 tiger reserves no longer have tigers. Some observers believe that at least nine other reserves in India also are in danger of losing their remaining tigers to poachers or to villagers who set out poisoned carcasses to kill animals that venture beyond the boundaries of the reserves to attack their livestock.

N.S. wildlife officials seek public’s help in finding moose poachers

The Canadian Press

HALIFAX – Natural Resources officers are asking for the public’s help as they investigate an second incident of moose poaching on the Nova Scotia mainland within the past month.

A hide was discovered floating in the South Branch Apple River last week. It’s presumed the moose was killed Thanksgiving weekend, the meat was taken and the remains dumped in the river.

“We can’t stress enough how detrimental poaching is to the moose population on mainland Nova Scotia,” Natural Resources Minister David Morse said in a release Wednesday.

“Each and every moose we have left is precious and, in an effort to increase the mainland moose population, we need the public’s help to enforce a zero-tolerance policy for this offence.”

Moose in mainland Nova Scotia have been listed as “endangered” under the Nova Scotia Endangered Species Act since 2003. There are about 1,000 of the animals in that part of the province.

Individuals convicted of illegally killing the animal have received fines of about $7,500.

Under terms of the act, a first-time offence can face a $500,000 maximum fine for individuals and $1 million for corporations. These fines can double with each additional mainland moose killed.

Workers find innards of endangered moose

 Chronicle Herald Nova Scotia

TRURO — Woods workers found the discarded innards of an endangered mainland moose near Debert on the weekend, prompting a provincewide hunt for its poachers.

Chris Ball, regional enforcement co-ordinator for the Department of Natural Resources in central Nova Scotia, says the moose had already been field-dressed and was gone when workers discovered the remains, he believes on Saturday.

They reported it to the department, prompting an investigation and an appeal for public assistance.

“We’re looking for any information we can get,” Mr. Ball said Thursday, adding there are roughly 1,000 mainland moose left in the province, and more than half are in the Cobequid Hills area where the remains were found.

The mainland moose was killed in the Farm Lake area north of Debert, Colchester County.

“Usually, and in this case, it’s in an area far from houses so there’s no one directly near the area,” Mr. Ball said. Nevertheless, he’s hoping someone saw a suspicious truck or all-terrain vehicle and will report it.

According to the Natural Resources Department, the mainland moose was listed as endangered under the Nova Scotia Endangered Species Act in October 2003.

Anyone convicted of killing one faces a fine of $7,500, a 20-year hunting suspension and confiscation of hunting equipment related to the offence.

A department spokesman said in a news release officers are working hard to enhance the population and distribution of the moose, but the task becomes increasingly difficult when poachers continue to take the lives of these rare animals.

Anyone with information is asked to call 1-800-565-2224.

Upstate NY company admits illegal trading in rare ocelots

Newsday

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP) _ An upstate New York company involved in a nationwide scheme to buy and sell rare, endangered ocelots has pleaded guilty to federal charges in Oregon.

Finger Lakes International Inc. admitted violating the Endangered Species Act by buying and transporting two ocelots, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said.

The company admitted illegally buying the animals for commercial use and prosecutors in Portland agreed to drop similar charges against company owner Glenn Donnelly.

Donnelly, of Weedsport, is the co-founder of DIRT Motorsports and the former owner of the Cayuga County Fairgrounds.

He was indicted last year in connection with a nationwide ring selling the rare cats. Authorities charged that Donnelly knowingly purchased two ocelots in Oregon and moved them to New York in April 2002, a federal crime.

Donnelly was also accused of creating a fraudulent document stating the cats were donated to him, which would have been legal under federal law.

As the successor company after DIRT was sold, Finger Lakes International agreed in U.S. District Court on Sept. 13 to plead guilty to a misdemeanor that can carry a maximum fine of $200,000 and 18 months probation. Judge Michael Mosman scheduled sentencing for Dec. 3.

All charges against Donnelly, who is chief executive officer of Finger Lakes International, were dropped.

Donnelly had a history of keeping exotic animals on his property, including a caged bear that mauled a 22-year-old woman in 2004.

Donnelly could not be located for comment.

The Finger Lakes plea was the last in an investigation known as “Operation Cat Tale,” said Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman Joan Jewett. Six other pleas led to fines and community service penalties totaling more than $100,000, she said.

The ocelot is an endangered, mid-sized cat found in Central and South America. In the United States, as few as 80 to 100 remain in the wild, according to the agency. Most of those live on the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge in Texas.