Indian Rhino: Conservation and Poaching Threats

The news about rhinos in India is less depressing than the stories coming out of Africa. Most of the country’s rhinos live in the north-east state of Assam and are held in relatively small national parks that lie along the Bramapuhtra river.

The range of the Indian Rhino, aka the Greater one-Horned Rhinoceros once covered a vast swath of land that stretched across what is known as the Indo-Gangetic plain. 

As this map, taken from a Wiki site shows with the tiny reddish dots, they are now confined to protected populations in Nepal, Bhutan and India’s state of Assam, where about two-thirds of the total number of about 3000 live (claims vary, but not by more than10%).

In an interesting historical note by one RC Beavan of the Bengal Survey the status of this creature was nicely summed up, albeit in 1865, in a journal called the Intellectual Observer. 

He wrote that it “has been driven by the progress of civilization further and further from the haunts of men, until now it is to be found only in the dense untrodden jungles which skirt the base of the Eastern Himalayas, and the branches of that chain which penetrate Assam.”  

I was particularly struck by his spelling of the name of the major river of the region. He called it the Burrampooter.

Of the many images of this live armoured tank available I chose this belligerent-looking character, a photo taken by Yathin S. Krishnappa and available on a Creative Commons  site.  

While poaching is definitely a threat, a surprising cause of mortality comes from the river. Every year it floods in spring when the snows of the Himalayas melt and many rhinos drown before they can leave the riparian swamps and head for the hills.

In a short NDTV news clip video dated 28 Sept 2012 titled FLOODS, POACHING KAZARINGA’S DOUBLE TROUBLE the recent poaching of three rhinos in two days was compared the drowning of some 700 animals in a previous flood seasons. It may be that 700 is a cumulative number, but that is not clear in the news clip. But flooding is very definitely a problem. A recent (Jan 2013) DW report talks of the death of 50 rhinos and also mentions that 30 of them drowned in 2012.

One of the stranger elements of that same NDTV news clip is that the face of a poached rhino, presumably with its horn chopped off, has been blurred as if it were the genital regions of a human.   

More disconcerting than this ultimate homage to the PC world is that two of the rhinos were still alive. This implies that someone immobilized them.  A vet? Maybe. It would not be the first time, as members of our profession have been implicated in some such activities in South Africa. Sad.

In a January 2011 report in the online Save the Rhino magazine the numbers are reported to have “recovered from fewer than 200 animals in the early 1990s to more than 2,850 today.”

The story goes on to relate how translocations from nearby parks is helping to spread the load.

“The translocations are the backbone of the ambitious Indian Rhino Vision (IRV) 2020 – a partnership among the government of Assam, the International Rhino Foundation, the World Wide Fund for Nature, the Bodoland Territorial Council, and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service – that aims to attain a population of 3,000 wild rhinos in seven of Assam's protected areas by the year 2020.”

If you have time you can watch a twenty-minute Youtube video that tells the same story of the rhino and the translocations from Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary and the nearby Kazaringa National Park. Pobitora is really tiny, in rhino terms. It covers only 39 square kilometres and something obviously had to be done. The video is a compilation of previous shorter posts, the first translocation having taken place in 2008.

In that same DW report there is mention that in Kazaringa NP, home to over 90% of the state’s rhinos they “lost 18 animals to poachers last year. Another four were killed in the Pobitora, Orang and Manas national parks.”

As far as the rhinos in Bhutan and Nepal are concerned the animal is not safe in either country. A report in an on-line news letter called Green Fudge dated 24 June 2010 there is an account of the poaching of 24 rhinos in the preceding eleven months. These came from a population of about 400 animals.

Are the reported different poaching rates in Africa and the Indian sub-continent real or imagined? 

It is impossible to tell from local websites and reports, but there is one possible explanation. 

As I wrote in my Rhino Poaching and Possible Solutions blog of Jan 3^rd there is one major difference. In some Indian parks there are two field staff per square kilometre. In parts of Africa a single ranger is expected to patrol thirty-three square km!

Celia Ho's reply on ivory in China

Here is Celia Ho's quick reply to my email and blog post. She wasted no time and we need to encourage her. If you have contacts in schools and so on, please ask them, especially the children, to write to Celia.

To get a better idea of what she is trying to do first of all visit her website here.

Date: 10 February, 2013 8:37:22 PM CST

To: Jerry Haigh

Reply-To: Celia Ho

Dear Jerry,

Many thanks for your encouraging words! Of course you are influential as there are many Chinese people in Canada and your efforts to relay the information could be very important.

Thank you very much for spreading the idea of ivory ban to the next generation who controls the fate of our earth. Would you please tell me the name of the schools you talked to with the number of students so that I can add them to the ‘students supporting ivory ban’ part in my website?

I've visited your website and was very interested in the ‘Rhino Capture’ part in your book 'The Trouble with Lions’, which I would like to purchase after reading Jane’s foreword. Could you please give me a price? I am from Hong Kong.

Wish you all the best in your meaningful work and I would like to tell you that you are living a life which I have been longing for:)

Warmest regards,

Celia

This was my reply

How nice to hear from you Celia,
I hope that you are not being flooded with emails, as you must surely have other school work to do. Or perhaps you have understanding teachers?
If you check out my website pictures you may use any of the elephant photos that you like for your own collection. This may be my favourite one. As you have a yahoo address I am sending it in low resolution only because in my experience that server cannot deal with large files. If you would like it larger please let me know.
I will send you the schools and classes as I speak to them. I do not have any storytelling engagements right now, but next month I am expecting one or two. I have tried to spread the word of your activity as far as I can. Let's hope some action takes place.
Best wishes.
Jerry 
A relieving scratch in Murchison Falls NP, Uganda

New efforts to curb elephant poaching - before it is too late

There is a growing move to try and stop the shattering effect of massive elephant poaching to fuel the ivory carving industry (yes, industry) in China. At least 25,000 elephants were slaughtered last year and the rate has not diminished.

Many of the animals were very young. Some carried almost no visible ivory, but the price of the stuff is so high than even pieces a few centimetres long, and still invisible inside the mouths of the calves, are taken.  The western efforts may not have much effect on the government of a notoriously insular nation and their newish generation of ultra-wealthy businessmen.

After all, as I have reported before after following Bryan Christy’s tweets and FB reports about his work for National Geographic, the Chinese have built a large factory dedicated to this ancient art and there are at least a dozen master carvers at work creating stunningly beautiful works. In one of Christy’s most recent reports, the first installment of what promises to be a landmark story, he shows a set of empty benches in the factory that are waiting to be occupied by apprentices. Here is the trailer. The entire film, titled Battlefor the Elephants is due to be premiered on Feb 27 on PBS.

I have half a dozen blog posts over the last couple of years about this issue, and you can find them under the keyword ivory on this site. I doubt anyone in China either knows about them, or if they do, gives a tinker’s damn. 

One greatly respected man, Chinese basketball star Yao Ming, has visited Africa and made a real effort to curb the violence being perpetrated in the name of human greed. He opens with these words:

“After witnessing how illegal ivory was obtained, I really was speechless. After seeing these animals up close and watching them interact in loving and protective family groups, it was heart wrenching and deeply depressing to see them cruelly taken before their time.”

You can read his entire blog post, titled THE REALITY OF THE IVORY TRADE here.

A much less well-known elephant advocate is a 14 year-old Hong Kong Chinese girl named Celia Ho. Bryan Christy tweeted about her in these terms: This Might Be the Most Important Step Ever to Stop the Ivory Trade.

She may be the new bright spark that could ignite the sort of fire that is needed inside China. Christy has posted a tweet about Celia, who has has started a campaign to try and make more folks aware of the ivory trade and you see her work here.

Celia asks for suport and even supplies an email address. I wrote to her. Why don't you do the same?

This is what I wrote to celiaho.email@yahoo.com

 
Feb 22nd update. Celia now has a new email address. Use it as well if you can
It is: celiahotheelephantgirl@gmail.com

Dear Celia, 

Congratulations on your inspired efforts.

I have worked with elephant since 1970 and write about them, and other conservation issues, on my blog. I'm not sure that I have had much of an effect as my readers are from the west. What you are doing is much more likely to be successful. China's government-sponsored huge ivory carving industry is one of the main problems. 

In my blog of Oct 2 2012 http://jerryhaigh.blogspot.ca/2012/10/elephant-poaching-in-africa.html I quoted J. Michael Fay's National Geographic news watch page titled (Elephant Guards Murdered in Chad)

He wrote: 

“In China if you somehow managed to convince 99.9 percent of the population not to buy ivory, that 0.1 percent who remain unconvinced represents 1.3 million people still wanting to buy ivory.” 

That is a lot more people in China alone than there are elephants in all of Africa.

Good luck with your efforts. I will spread the word about your endeavours when I tell stories to schoolchildren here in Canada.
Sincerely,
Jerry

Will anyone reading this post please do the same to their own friends, FB friends, other social media contacts, teachers and colleagues? Let everyone you know, know.

The sooner the better.

Elephants and ivory. A terrible story

This is a short one. We have just returned from a holiday in sunny Panama. This post was run in several places, the latest being National Geogrpaphic. Here it is again. A desparate situation that needs no further comment from me.
http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/01/31/time-running-out-to-save-elephants-from-ivory-trade/

Better news about rhinos – I hope.

-->Folks maybe fed up with a series of gloom and doom stories about rhinos and the devastation that human greed is creating among them.  I have come across recent posts that shed a much more positive perspective, but sadly not about African rhinos. In December an online magazine called Global Animal carried a story about rhino in Indonesia.

We know that in 2012 the Javan (or Sunda) rhino (Rhinoceros sondaicus) in Vietnam was declared extinct, but according to Lauren Mellela of Global Animal the situation in Indonesia has happier components. The article has an embedded video showing several cow-calf pairs of this species caught on remote sensor cameras in Ujung Kulon National Park. Apparently some 35 different individuals have been filmed or identified. The video is just under 3 minutes in length and is worth a look-see, especially if you have never seen this species. There are few, if any in zoos, anywhere. They bear some resemblance to the Indian one-horned species.

Sumatran rhino at the Molucca zoo. (Note the site of the sawn-off horns)

The Sumatran rhinoceros (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis) is the only Asian one with two horns. It is also the smallest and the hairiest one of all five remaining species. I saw what was probably the first one captured in modern times in the Molucca Zoo in Malaysia in 1985 and was even able to give some medical advice and arrange for some much-needed antibiotics to be delivered to the zoo vet.

Since then a few more have been captured and some success with captive breeding has occurred. In this video a male calf is shown being born in a conservation centre in Indonesia. It is reported to be only the fourth time that such a captive birth has occurred.

As reported in this National Geographic article there are thought to be fewer than 400 members of this species left, so any breeding successes are a positive sign,

FINGERS CROSSED.

     

Rhino poaching and possible solutions

Rhino killing in Africa continues more or less unabated. 

The “official” figure for 2012 is 633 rhinos poached, the majority in South Africa’s flagship Kruger National Park. This is likely to be a low-ball number. One source dated in mid-December has suggested 699. I would not be a bit surprised if the true number was well over 700.

Then of course comes the question of how many of these victims were pregnant females. 

This poignant picture, sent by Dr. CR “Bossie” Boshoff to all members of a wildlife vet listserv shows a tiny foetus found in the uterus of one such animal. 

 

 

Here is another pair of photos, these ones from Dr. Lin-Mari de Klerk-Lorist the State Veterinary office in the Kruger. 

The lactating cow was already pregnant, and her accompanying 2.5 year-old calf was killed. Three animals down in one nasty raid!

There are reports that about 600 people have been arrested in connection with this crime, but how many of them will actually be found guilty, or receive sentences that will send the preventive message?

The recent sentence of 40 years given to  Chumlong  Lemtongthai  might have some effect, but it might not. Life sentences and the death penalty have not stopped murders.

As I have written before, paltry sentences have been quite useless in Kenya and I still wonder how many links in the money chain there are so that the actual real cash goes to some high-placed politician or a person with those sorts of contacts. When the price of horn exceeds the price of gold by a factor of two, temptation is enormous. 

Forty years ago, as Ian Parker wrote in his book What I Tell You Three Times is True, the president’s wife was a major player in the export of ivory. Nobody was going to be able to stop that.

The critical thing to remember is that so far any and all attempts to stop the poaching have more or less failed, at least in parts of Africa. It would seem that an alternative strategy and thinking process is needed. If not an alternative, at least an effective parallel one.

On Dec 16 Robert Godec, the United States ambassador to Kenya, wrote a 134 word op-ed piece in Kenya’s Daily Nation  newspaper titled “We need to work together to save Africa’s threatened wildlife from greedy poachers.”

His most crucial sentences were as follows:
“And most importantly, we need to persuade individuals to stop buying ivory, rhino horn, and other products that require the slaughter of wildlife.

In short, we need to galvanise bold, comprehensive, worldwide action against poaching. We need to stop the organised and criminal slaughter of wildlife.”

In the Oct-Dec issue of Swara  the magazine arm of the East African Wildlife Society there are two articles on the subject of rhino poaching. The first is an opinion piece by Kenneth K. Coe, who styles himself as an Asian American. He is chairman of the Nature Conservancy's volunteer Africa council.   He makes the point that we are wasting our time if we try to change thousands of years of TCM culture. We are also wasting our time if we target the heart of the rhino horn user by appealing to a sort of inner "love" of rhinos. The real approach, he suggests, is to get at the brain of the users by telling them that they are being scammed or "defrauded by rumor-mongering criminals and others on the take.'" His key paragraph starts like this:

This is the message that needs to circulate in Asia. "You are being conned! Who do you think is spreading the cancer cure rumour? It's the rhino horn dealers! Such a rumour is slap in the face to TCM, a 3,000 year old art of healing.

Another way of putting this is that buyers are being sold useless goods by what used to be called snake oil salesmen. They were vilified and run out of town by the (usually) white-hatted sheriff in many a spaghetti western. Let’s get that vilification onto the television, radio and print media in Vietnam, where the cancer cure nonsense seems to be strongest.

In another highly relevant article in the same issue, Esmond Martin and Lucy Vigne have a piece titled Strategies To Decrease Rhino Poaching In Africa: Our Personal View. These two have tracked and followed the rhino and ivory story for three decades. They provide a comprehensive figure of rhino poaching, covering the period 2007 to 2011, of at least 1370 animals. Add the 2012 figures and we are two thousand and counting!

In their article Martin and Vigne compare the protection of rhino in the Indian sub-continent with the apparent failures in some parts of Africa.

The bottom line is that where the poaching is less rampant there is a more coordinated effort by government. Villagers on the fringes of the Indian parks are helped with all sorts of agricultural enterprises and far more money is spent per km² than in Africa. In a couple of parks there are two field staff per square kilometre. Of course this leads to far more buy-in by villagers and if poachers are arrested and tried the local judiciary “usually gives sentences of several years in prison that act as an adequate deterrent.”

In a few African countries (Namibia, Swaziland) there has been much less poaching, which can probably be ascribed to much lower human densities than in South Africa as well as lower rhino numbers, stiff sentences for those found guilty,  and greater buy-in by local communities. One of the problems that plagues the Kruger efforts is the huge size of the park (at 20,000 km² it is about the same area as Wales or about four times the size of Prince Edward Island) and the much lower density of staff (one person per 33 km²). On top of that there is a more-or-less open border with Mozambique all along the eastern boundary of the park. As Martin and Vigne report “There have been a number of arrests of poachers, but overall intelligence and cooperation with official across the border has been inadequate, and Mozambique’s penalties for wildlife crimes are ineffectual.”

It's an interesting read, accompanied by several telling pictures, including ones of fake rhino horns for sale in China.

Rhino horns, real and false

A television series made in 1967 and 68 called Cowboy in Africa was shot in Kenya. It led to a Hollywood movie, starring Chuck Connors playing world champion cowboy Jim Sinclair. You can see a YouTube clip for the opening scenes here. (WARNING The scenes are not exactly animal welfare friendly). In my rating system the movie would not score many stars, if any. There used to be "B" movies that were shown before the main event. This one might not have even qualified for such a position.

Tony (blue shirt) and I prepare darts in Rwanda for an elephant translocsion

My friend Tony Parkinson, with whom I worked on several projects through the late 60s and early 70s was not only the animal advisor but also the film double for several scenes that involved animal capture.

Below left Tony appears in an old Candanian Club whisky advert shot in the days before drugs were used to capture rhino. I began workingwith him a few months after the scene was shot.

In almost all of the roping scenes in the movie it is Tony, not Connors, who is on the horse and twirling the lariat. He learned to use one from the real cowboys who also came on the set and worked in several scenes.

One of the animal stars was a rhino that Tony had captured earlier and held in a pen for the movie scenes. Unfortunately, before the filming was over, the rhino broke his horn off very near the base and so there was a bit of a crisis. He could no longer perform and be accepted by the audience. Solution? Well, Tony had a second skill. He was a boat builder and skilled craftsman. Building a fiberglass replacement horn, and gluing it on with a 5-minute epoxy resin (a version called Araldite was the only one available in Kenya at the time) was no problem.

Fast-forward 45 years and we have more dummy rhino horns being built, but for an entirely different reason. Nowadays museums are having to resort to subterfuge in an effort to deal with theft. In another case in South Africa a would-be thief was fooled by more fiberglass, in this case it was an entire synthetic head, which is now hornless. 

  

There have been recent convictions (and some jail sentences) for other would-be and successful museum thieves in England, Spain, and Germany but in these and no doubt other cases the horns were real.

The most impressive sentence was handed down in South Africa, when a Thai man named Chumlong Lemtongthai was convicted of rhino poaching linked to prostitution and sentenced to 40 years.

The material is so valuable (double the price of gold) that the temptation is obviously severe.

Next week I will take a close look at the new(ish) efforts at prevention, including reports from Swara the magazine arm of the East AfricanWildlife Society, which arrived in the post yesterday.  I need time to organize my thoughts on these issues and of course to prepare the goose for Tuesday’s lunch time bash with family.