The Rise of Environmental Crime: A Growing Threat to Natural Resources, Peace, Development and Security

Re-establishing elephant populations

Bringing back brown bears

Elephant populations have suffered greatly from poaching in the last decade. Over 2/3 of Africa’s forest elephants have been killed, 225 and at least 1/4 of the World’s elephant population have been killed by poachers in the same period across Africa and Asia. 226 As a result, efforts not only to curb poaching, but also to bring elephants back are underway. In Africa, countries like Angola are looking into strengthening elephant populations. The partly transboundary elephant populations in the Namibian Caprivi are wedged in between Botswana and Angola. Elephant populations grew to 120,000 elephants in Chobe National Park. 227 Still, numbers remain low on Angolan side. Luiana Partial Reserve (PR) in south-east Angola was used by UNITA forces (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola). They killed elephants for both meat and sale of ivory to purchase arms and pay for salaries. 228 Three aerial surveys of Luiana suggested that elephant numbers increased from 366 in January 2004 to 1,827 in November 2005 and elephants with satellite collars in northern Botswana and the Caprivi Strip migrate across the Chobe river. 229 Indeed, the region, which has only modest potential for agricul- ture but a large one for tourism, has suffered by high abundance of land mines, that have been known to blow off feet and trunks of elephants. However, elephants largely adapted, and began avoiding areas with abundance of land mines to the extent that villagers often use elephant trails as a safe route through land mine infested country side. Indeed, recent research has confirmed these findings, that elephants can smell TNT and detect land mines, and hence, sometimes avoid them. 230 The entire region including Angola, Namibia’s Caprivi strip and Chobe National Park provide a unique opportunity for transboundary parks to help preserve and rebuilt elephant populations. On 18 August 2011 at the SADC Summit in Luanda, Angola, the Presidents of the Republics of Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe signed a Treaty which formally and legally establishes the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA TFCA).

The brown bear populations in Europe have increased both in size and extensiveness since the 1950’s and consist of 17,000 animals, forming 10 populations mostly with native origin, and presently occur permanently in 22 countries. 231-233 The reasons behind the recovery include protective legislation, supportive public opinion, and practices making coexistence with people possible. As an example, the Scandinavian popu- lation, one of the largest in Europe, experienced a historic low number estimated to 130 individuals in the 1930s, due to state driven elimination policies reducing the population from 4–5,000 animals in the 1850’s. The population slowly recov- ered during the last century due to bounty removal and finally official protection by law, and consist today of approximately 3,000 animals and is subject to controlled harvesting. 234 Brown bears are poached in Scandinavia, and remarkably more so in the large protected areas of Northern Sweden with low public presence and low intensity of law enforcement (e.g. patrolling by provincial rangers), implying that although large protected areas can serve as refuges and source popula- tions for large carnivores, these areas can also be sink habitats when poachers face a low risk of detection. 235 Poaching and socio-economic conflicts e.g. depredation on livestock, pose threats especially to the smallest and recently established populations. In Austria the last descendent of three bears released between 1989–1993, had finally disappeared by 2011 likely due to illegal killing in combination with the small population size, and the population is now formally consid- ered extinct. However, most populations of brown bears in Europe are either increasing or stable, but are still facing threats from habitat loss due to infrastructure development, human disturbance and low public acceptance.

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