Victoria Falls Bits and Blogs: china

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Wednesday, 5 August 2020

Zimbabwe slated for live elephant export in contravention of treaty

Earlier this month, Niger and Burkino Faso presented CITES with a new report that detailed Zimbabwe’s gross violation of a COP18 resolution, by its capture and sale of 32 very young, not fully weaned elephants to China in October last year.

The report says that “by any reasonable metric, the conditions of the transfer and housing of the Zimbabwean elephants are demonstrably inhumane” and “the export of 32 live elephants by Zimbabwe in October 2019 not only contravened the will of the CITES Parties, it undermined the good faith and the spirit of the Convention.”

THE TREATMENT OF THE ELEPHANTS

Further harrowing details received of what has become of the elephants, include the pachyderms being trained as circus elephants by mahouts using cruel training methods.

In August last year at COP18 in Geneva, in an historic move, CITES members voted to prohibit the removal of African elephants from their natural or historic ranges except under extraordinary circumstances.

Additionally, according to the CITES resolution, conditions in any ex-situ destination for live African elephants, should be fully equivalent to their social and ecological environment in their wild native ecosystems and those involving the least disruption to social groupings and their natural, normal behaviour.

Also vital is a non-binding guidance for determining whether a proposed recipient of a living specimen, was “suitably equipped to house and care for it”.

COP18 also expressly recognised that elephants “are highly social animals and that the removal of elephants from their social groups disrupts while populations and has detrimental effects on the physical and social well-being of elephants removed from these groups”.

But the CITES report says that: “Based on this guidance and the available literature and information on the housing conditions of zoos in China in general, there is no publicly available evidence suggesting that the safari park in Shanghai which received the 32 young elephants from Zimbabwe in October 2019 can be considered as suitably equipped to house and care for live elephants.”

The report says that analysis of video footage from quarantine facilities in China show the elephants each alone in small enclosed barred cells.

“The cells have bare concrete floors and there are no provisions make for their comfort and well-being, nor any means of environmental enrichment.”

And recent photographic evidence shows the elephants have been undergoing inhumane training by mahouts, to prepare them for entertainment use.

COP18 was perhaps the first time that the convention has recognised the importance of welfare in conservation. If it is complied with, African elephants can virtually never leave their home terrain, which could put paid to the trade in live elephants.

FLYING TO CHINA

But despite the August vote, Zimbabwe ignored the resolution, arguing that it was technically not in force and the elephants were flown to China on 19 October last year in contravention of a court order and Zimbabwe’s own constitution.

The elephants were originally captured from Hwange Game Reserve in 2018 and were held in pens near Hwange’s main camp before being shipped to China on 19 October, 2019. Five of the elephants were not loaded on the Saudi transport plane due to health reasons and are believed to have died. The animals were then flown to China via Saudi Arabia to Shanghai.

Previously, in June 2019 the Secretary General of CITES, Ivonne Higuero, attended the Wildlife Economy Summit in Victoria Falls and visited the captured elephants at Hwange game reserve.

At a press conference right after she had visited the elephants in their holding pens, Higuero said she did not believe that any of the elephants being exported were babies, as some had tusks.

She added, “Elephants start growing their permanent tusks at a year old.”

She said that previous secretariats and the Zimbabwean management and scientific authorities as well as the previous CITES Secretariat had visited the zoos in China and declared the destinations as “appropriate and acceptable”. She however said she would consider evidence to the contrary.

She endorsed the export only to have her decision overruled two months later at COP18. According to a November 2019 report in the Journal of African Elephants on Higuero’s role in the export of the elephants, she had dropped the established protocol of her office when she endorsed the sale.

“Her endorsement was seen as an attempt to influence decisions that for the past year and a half at been debated in a Working Group of the CITES Animals Committee’’, it commented.

What was more tragic, was that her ignorance of basic elephant biology had sealed the fate of the 27 elephants that eventually were condemned to a life of misery in China.

Despite Zimbabwe’s constitutional constraints, between 2012 and 2019, Zimbabwe has exported 140 juvenile elephants for China. To date, 22 of these young elephant calves have died. More have died during capture and in Zimbabwe Parks’ holding facilities.

Michele Pickover director of EMS foundation says she believes that CITES is the lowest common denominator when it comes to its legislation.

“CITES are dragging their heels. They have not even discussed what the definition of a zoo is. They are not fit for purpose. We have already lost 70% of animal species. All their technical solutions and resolutions are not enforceable. It is like hitting a brick wall.”

The latest CITES report says, that if it is agreed that the 2019 export of the Hwange elephants do not meet the conditions clearly laid down in the guidelines agreed at COP18, the next step will be to return them to Zimbabwe where they can be rehabilitated before being returned to the wild.

But Audrey Delsink of Humane Society International feels that this is unlikely.

“The level of trauma they have experienced has been huge. First they were captured, torn from their herd and kept in Bomas in Hwange for a year where they formed bonds with the other elephants, then they were flown to China and separated from each other. It is excessively cruel and one does not know whether rehabilitation is possible,” she said.

Source:

Zimbabwe slated for live elephant export in contravention of treaty (04/08/20)

Sunday, 9 June 2019

Wildlife activists outraged as Mnangagwa offers parks land to Chinese

Wildlife and environment activists are expressing outrage that the Zimbabwean government is offering land in national wildlife parks to Chinese investors for the construction of golf courses.

In May, President Emmerson Mnangagwa promised a group of more than 300 Chinese businesspeople and investors who were on a five-day visit to Zimbabwe that he would offer them land in the country’s national parks to develop golf courses.

“The lovers of golf, if there are any here [among the group of Chinese visitors], I offer you land in the national parks so that as you play golf you can be mixing with elephants and lions,” Mnangagwa said to the group in the capital, Harare.

Mnangagwa’s offer to the Chinese investors enraged environment and wildlife activists.

Sharon Hoole, a Zimbabwe animal rights activist with the UK-based group Bring Back Our Rhinos, told The Epoch Times that giving land in national parks to the investors would be a disaster for the parks.

“[It’s like] putting the hyena in the kraal to guard the goats,” Hoole said.

Mike Hitschmann, a renowned environmentalist and wildlife expert who runs the wildlife sanctuary Cecil Kop Nature Reserve, said the Chinese have a very bad global reputation when it comes to animal welfare, conservation of wildlife and the environment, and environmentally acceptable extraction of natural resources.

“Since the Chinese neo-colonial invasion of Africa, the whole continent is being [abused] like never before,” Hitschmann told The Epoch Times. “Forests are being decimated, [and] wildlife trafficking of endangered species and their widespread mining activities are conducted, without any impact assessments being carried out and zero rehabilitation of the mine sites.”

Several Chinese nationals have been accused of wildlife poaching in Zimbabwe in recent times. Earlier this year, seven Chinese nationals were arrested in the resort town of Victoria Falls for possessing 20 kilograms of rhino horns worth up to $1 million. In 2013, a Chinese citizen was arrested at Robert Mugabe International Airport (then Harare International Airport) with 17 pieces of raw ivory, a few weeks after news emerged that elephants were poisoned with cyanide by poachers in Zimbabwe’s national parks.

Hitschmann said that with China’s growing economic influence in the country, Zimbabweans have become used to seeing their government officials “bending over backward” to appease the Chinese.

“And it doesn’t appear as if this sycophantic and often corrupt stance is going to be reversed anytime soon,” he said. “When a country is in economic tatters like ours is, then you can be sure that the message of the importance of conserving our wildlife and environment will fall on deaf ears.”

He questioned the rationale behind offering land in national parks to the Chinese investors, since Zimbabwe already has numerous golf courses in different parts of the country.

“There are around 50 golf courses in Zimbabwe today. Of those, many are already situated in areas where wildlife can be viewed while playing golf. Leopard Rock Hotel [in Vumba] is the closest to us and then there is the one at the Elephant Hills Hotel in Victoria Falls as just two examples,” he said.

In late 2018, Zimbabwean legislator Prosper Mutseyami opined that Chinese companies enjoy protection from the government as the Chinese regime is currently the biggest investor in Zimbabwe.

The southeast African country has received loans and grants worth millions of dollars from China for energy and agriculture development, airport expansion, construction of a new parliament building, and other key infrastructural development projects.

Source: Wildlife activists outraged as Mnangagwa offers parks land to Chinese (08/06/19)

Tuesday, 27 December 2016

35 elephants captured from Hwange on a 'Flight to Hell'

Zimbabwe - Under cover of darkness on the night before Christmas Eve, 35 young elephants, some believed to be as young as 3 years old, were transported from Hwange to Victoria Falls airport for a flight to China. But it wasn’t to be the secret mission shrouded in tight security that Zimbabwean officials had hoped for. This ‘Flight to Hell’ was soon all over social media, while Zimbabweans slept.

Our investigations revealed that the first to post public news of this was Sharon Pincott, who worked with the Presidential Elephants of Zimbabwe in Hwange for 13 years but left in 2014 frustrated by unethical practices. She was in a different time zone and therefore wide awake. By the time Zimbabweans awoke, her Facebook post had been shared hundreds of times. Other sites were quick to spread the news which has enraged the world.

“Do they seriously think that they can keep doing this sort of thing now without people speaking out? There are a long list of people, from all walks of life, from both the sending and receiving countries who are horrified that ripping young elephants from their families continues to happen. It doesn’t take much anymore to get news out once an operation like this is in full swing,” said Pincott when we spoke to her.

“Those poor elephants were in tiny crates for more hours than I can bear to even think about, while there was delay after delay getting them loaded at Victoria Falls airport. Such Zimbabwean inefficiency and lack of care, on top of everything else, is unforgivable and alarming,” she said.

The elephants were eventually flown out to China on a Russian-registered Boeing 747.

Another source who asked to remain anonymous said, “There is much more to this than meets the eye.”

Indeed, here at the Zimbabwean we ran an article in May 2015 which implicated a Chinese national, Li Song, as one of those involved –http://thezimbabwean.co/2015/05/chinese-agent-named-in-elephant/

Yet another source who also asked to remain anonymous told The Zimbabwean that there is increasing evidence to support the theory that the involvement of one of Li Song’s business associates may end up being even more shocking, in this lucrative market of elephants and elephant products.

“We are looking closely into tying all of the pieces of this extensive puzzle together, including the involvement of some other Parks Authority and Ministry personnel, not yet publicly named,” our source declared.

Source: Thirty-five Hwange elephants flew from Victoria Falls to China on a “Flight to Hell” (27/12/16)

Grace Mugabe 'Pays Military Debt to China With 35 Zim Jumbos' (26/12/16)