A herbivore specific grazing capacity model accounting for spatio-temporal environmental variation: A tool for a more sustainable nature conservation and rangeland management

ScienceDirect - Ecological Modelling : A herbivore specific grazing capacity model accounting for spatio-temporal environmental variation: A tool for a more sustainable nature conservation and rangeland management: "This spatio-temporally dynamic model considers crucial variables at both the terrain and the grazer level, such as (seasonally) fluctuating forage yield, forage quality, plant palatability, accessibility of the area, soil erosion vulnerability, animal nutritive requirements, animal behaviour and general habitat condition. It predicts the optimal grazer species and density, taking into account the seasonal variation in animal needs and fluctuating terrain characteristics. A sensitivity analysis was conducted to define each parameter's relative impact on the final outcome of the model."

Spatial Dynamics and Ecosystem Functioning

PLoS Biology: Spatial Dynamics and Ecosystem Functioning: "Classical theory of species dynamics in ecosystems is built on the concept of homogeneous, reciprocal interaction. The concept is borrowed from that branch of physics and chemistry dealing with reaction kinetics of molecules in well-mixed gases and liquids. It idealizes individual entities—no longer molecules but now individuals of a species—as interacting with each other or with their predators or competitors in such a way that each individual has an equal likelihood of interacting with every other individual in the system. There is no spatial structure in the system; in fact, space is assumed to be immaterial to system dynamics."

Vietnam seizes cache of smuggled elephant tusks, third this year | Earth Times News

Vietnam seizes cache of smuggled elephant tusks, third this year | Earth Times News: "Hanoi - Vietnamese customs inspectors have discovered more than a ton of elephant tusks hidden in a shipping container full of snail shells from Africa, an official said Wednesday.
It was the third seizure of elephant ivory this year and the sixth in the past two years at the northern port of Haiphong, a transfer point for smuggled ivory from Africa to the lucrative Chinese market."

Vietnam discovers nearly 2 tons of elephant tusks hidden in seaweed shipped from Kenya | San Francisco Examiner

Vietnam discovers nearly 2 tons of elephant tusks hidden in seaweed shipped from Kenya | San Francisco Examiner

HANOI, VIETNAM — Authorities in the northern port city of Haiphong have discovered nearly two tons of elephant tusks illegally imported from Kenya.

A customs official says the tusks were discovered on Tuesday hidden in dried seaweed in a container that arrived at the port on April 28. The official declined to be named due to policy prohibiting junior officers from speaking to the media.

The official said Thursday the shipment was bound for neighboring China.

Haiphong authorities confiscated nearly 7 tons of elephant tusks last March smuggled from Tanzania — Vietnam's biggest-ever seizure of tusks.

Kenya weighs options to dispose ivory stockpile, after Cites vote

Kenya weighs options to dispose ivory stockpile, after Cites vote

A ranger shows elephant tusks intercepted from poachers during a commemoration of the 1989 ivory burning at the Nairobi National Park. Photo/FILE 

By COSMAS BUTUNYI  (email the author)
Posted Monday, April 5 2010 at 00:00
Even after successfully waging a campaign that saw the defeat of a proposal for a one- off ivory sale by Tanzania and Zambia, Kenya is considering various ways of disposing of its own stockpiles.
Sources estimate the country’s stockpiles could raise $9 million for the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS).
An assistant director of KWS in charge of species and conservation management, Patrick Omondi, said the disposal plans have been under consideration since 2000. A series of proposals are soon to be presented to the Cabinet.
Among the options that the country is exploring is a non-commercial buyout where the ivory will be offered for sale to a consortium of donors before it is destroyed.
Another alternative is the establishment of ivory museums in one of the national parks where elephant skulls and other body parts preserved after the animal’s natural death would be on display.
Visitors would pay extra and the money charges that would be invested in elephant management and conservation.
“The issue has now been left to the government to decide,” Mr Omondi said.
While part of the ivory stockpile was seized from poachers, the rest was retrieved from elephants that died out of natural causes.
It is two decades since the last ivory stockpiles, then only 12 tonnes, were torched by former president Daniel Moi.
The decision on how to dispose of the ivory will however, have to wait until the expiry of a nine year moratorium against trade in ivory that began in February last year.
In addition to this, the country will have to conform to the proposals laid down in the Elephant Action Plan that was ratified at the recently concluded Conference of Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species held in Doha, Qatar.
At the meeting, the 175 countries that are party to the Cites convention voted against down listing elephant populations in Tanzania and Zambia, that would have paved way for a one- off sale of their 90 and 21 tonnes respectively, and reinstated a nine-year moratorium on ivory trade.
While maintaining that relations between Kenya and Tanzania have not been soured by the conflicting stands, Mr Omondi said the ban is intended to allow for the monitoring of the impact of legal ivory sales on elephant populations, besides implementing an elaborate African Elephant Action Plan across the 36 African range states.
“Our relationship with Tanzania is good and we deal with several cross border issues,” added KWS director, Julius Kipng’etich.
Meanwhile, the KWS is fundraising for its recently established wildlife conservation and management kitty, aimed at cushioning it from external shocks such as the 2007 post election violence that resulted in a drastic drop in tourist numbers.

The East African - Kenya weighs options to dispose ivory stockpile, after Cites vote

Epoch Times - China Fuels East African Elephant Poaching

 

China Fuels East African Elephant Poaching

By Damian Robin
Epoch Times Staff Created: Mar 30, 2010 Last Updated: Mar 30, 2010

An elephant uses its trunk to reach the upper branches of a tree over the dry brush as it searches for food at the Tsavo West National Park in southern Kenya in August 2009. China has been accused of causing a higher rate of ivory poaching in East Africa. (Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images)

China’s influence in East Africa is fueling an upsurge in elephant poaching, gunrunning, and corruption according to a report on U.K. television Friday.
A Channel 4 reporter spoke to people in villages and cities, wildlife managers, rangers, government officials, and illegal ivory sellers in Kenya and Tanzania—all of whom said China is the main buyer of banned ivory.
Filmed secretly, sellers told the journalist from Unreported World that during a presidential visit from Chinese Communist Party leader Hu Jintao in 2009, two hundred kilos of ivory was bought by Chinese diplomats and taken out of Tanzania.
The sellers did not say if Hu knew of the trade, but did say that a prominent diplomat from the Chinese Embassy frequently bought large amounts of ivory from them.
Kooky Gorman owns a wildlife park in Kenya. Accompanied by armed rangers, she took the reporter to many spots in her park, where elephant carcasses rotted, their heads split open to make it easy to saw the tusks off.
Many hides showed multiple bullet holes. The lead ranger said the killers had used AK47 automatic weapons to spray herds. The shootings were indiscriminate, killing young and old.
Gorman said the weapons were bought from neighboring Somalia where the civil war has continued since 1991.
The intensity of the poaching has been increasing for the past two years. In 2007 six elephants were poached from her park. In 2008, twenty-eight were poached. Fifty-seven were poached in 2009.
She says there is a threat of elephant extinction.
The Kenya Wildlife Service has strong rooms full of tusks and carved ivory taken during raids and confiscated at Nairobi airport. It has about 65 tons to 70 tons estimated at $10 million.
The U.N. recently rejected Zambia and Tanzania’s request to hold a one-off sale for their ivory stockpile, valued of approximately $15 million.
Since trade in ivory was stopped in 1989, some countries have been allowed to do a small amount of business in ivory if they have good conservation measures. Zambia and Tanzania are currently prohibited from any trade in ivory. The International Trade of Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora (CITES) annual meeting in Doha disregarded arguments that the sale could help police wildlife parks and stop the burden of protecting the horde of ivory.
Selous Game Reserve in Tanzania has 40,000 elephants.
On the TV program, a police informant who lived nearby in a village known for its illegal ivory deals said armed groups of 30 often came from Dara Salam in Senegal to take back ivory in 440-to-660-pound batches. (An average tusk weighs about 4.4 pounds.)
The informant, whose face was not shown for fear of reprisals, had had his house burned down recently.
Another man, who did not want to be identified as he had received death threats, was a safari operator who brings tourists to the Selous Reserve. “I think the wildlife department knows exactly what’s going on here,” he said. “There are some members of the games department who are poaching to supplement their pay and feed their families.”
He said he thinks movers are coming from China and the Far East to take bones and that they are in collusion with local authorities.
He said they could not get through the 15 to 20 policed roadblocks without help from “some very well-placed people.”
One illegal dealer said he had friends in airport security. “It’s no problem with money,” he told the reporter. “If you have money, it’s easy.”
There is a small industry carving the poached ivory for the East Asian trade. “Many people from China come and buy,” he said. There is a market for trinkets, seals, and chopsticks.
Chinese regime officials told Unreported World that they are against the illegal ivory trade and that Chinese diplomats did not illegally purchase or export ivory by misusing diplomatic immunity in 2009.
Most villagers have stood by while violence around the poaching continues. They felt threatened and were unable to prevent the elephant deaths. Now, many see tourism as the main way they can earn a living, so they are protecting the animals and habitat as much as they can.

Epoch Times - China Fuels East African Elephant Poaching

World Sentinel | WWF and TRAFFIC: Ivory Sales Proposal Fails at CITES Meeting

 

Ivory Sales Proposal Fails at CITES Meeting

Newswire Services

March 28, 2010

Washington, DC -- Requests from Zambia and Tanzania to hold one-off sales of their ivory stockpiles failed during a United Nations species trade meeting that comes during a worldwide poaching crisis.
Governments participating in the United Nation´s Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora (CITES) rejected proposals by Tanzania and Zambia to relax trade restrictions on their elephant populations by moving them from Appendix I -- the highest level of protection under the Convention banning all international commercial trade -- to Appendix II.
The two countries had also initially asked that they be able to hold a one-off sale of their ivory stockpiles. No commercial ivory sale is permitted if elephants remain in Appendix I, but an Appendix II listing allows some regulated international commercial trade.
Neither country was given permission to sell their ivory at this stage or relax trade controls on their elephant populations. The decisions come amid a poaching crisis destroying elephant populations in Asia and Africa.
"WWF and TRAFFIC believe the main factor behind the ongoing elephant poaching is the continued existence of illegal ivory markets across parts of Africa and Asia," said Crawford Allan of TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network of WWF and International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

World Sentinel | WWF and TRAFFIC: Ivory Sales Proposal Fails at CITES Meeting