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KAMPALA––Did anthrax kill the hippos, or was it poison? What
became of their teeth? Who was responsible?
“We have lost 287 hippos since July 2004,” Uganda Wildlife Authority
veterinary coordinator Patrick Atimnedi told fellow members of the International
Society for Infectious Diseases in March 2005.
“So far, we have lost about 11% of the hippo population.
“August 2004 was the peak of mortality,” Atimnedi continued,
“declining toward December. We were surprised with a resurgence from
January 2005.
“So far the source of infection is unclear,” Atimnedi admitted.
“[Mass] hippo mortalities have occurred in this park in the last
50 years, usually in 10-year cycles. These, however, would affect at most
not more than 30 hippos, and were mainly associated with drought.”
Atimnedi is certain that anthrax is the lethal agent. “All cases
are actually being investigated,” Atimnedi emphasized, mentioning
visits by foreign experts and samples sent to laboratories outside Uganda
to confirm his observations.
“The samples are mainly from hippos,” Atimnedi said, “but
there are also samples from waterbucks, kobs, buffalo, and one warthog.
We continue to investigate cases as they occur.
“Carcass disposal is done as soon as dead animals are sighted,”
Atimnedi explained. “Both marine and terrestrial surveillance teams
are sent out every morning and evening. The hippo carcasses are immediately
buried under lime, while other species, especially buffalo, are burned
on site. Ring vaccination of livestock, coupled with intense community
awareness education, continues in high-risk areas.”
Atimnedi offered a textbook description of how to fight an anthrax outbreak,
but then there was the issue raised on April 20 by Gerald Tenywa of the
Kampala New Vision.
“Many of the hippos were buried without teeth,” Tenywa wrote.
“This has prompted civil society sources to say some of them were
poisoned. Other sources say a Japanese trader based in Dubai, who wants
five tons of hippo teeth, could have fueled the killing of the hippos.
Hippo teeth,” a substitute for elephant tusk ivory, “are used
for making bangles, bracelets and necklaces that are in high demand in
Asia.”
Posing as a trader, Tenywa visited the scene, he wrote. “Some fishers
were keeping the teeth,” Tenywa found, “and an unnamed trader
had already bought some of them from Katungulu village.”
The volume of hippo teeth on the market had apparently driven the going
price down by about 10%. Large numbers of teeth could be obtained from
various intermediaries in villages throughout the area. “The largest
stocks were in Katungulu and Kasenyi, on the fringes of Lake George, within
Queen Elizabeth Park,” Tenywa reported.
Acting Uganda Wildlife Authority executive director Moses Mapesa pointed
out that “The teeth from the hippos were contaminated with bacteria,
and there is no way we can allow anybody to deal in such trophies.”
Mapesa showed Tenwya a letter from wildlife trader Ewa Smith Maku, who
offered to buy the hippo teeth at the outset of the anthrax outbreak.
The Uganda Wildlife Authority turned him down.
“Maku dismissed allegations that he was behind the death of some
of the hippos, and instead implicated other traders dealing in hippo teeth,”
Tenywa wrote. “He declined to disclose where he was intending to
export the teeth and also denied being in contact with the Japanese trader”
from Dubai.
“Vincent Odworu, a councillor in Kikorongo, Katwe sub-county, said
traders made frequent trips to the park at the time when hippos were dying,”
Tenywa concluded.
“He could not name the traders, but described one of them as ‘of
brown complexion.’ He said some fishers ate meat from the carcasses,
defying warnings from the UWA that they could contract anthrax. ‘All
those people ate the meat, and they were not harmed,’” said
Odworu, “adding that it was not clear why they were not killed by
the anthrax,” after removing the teeth from the dead hippos with
axes and acid.
Anthrax
cover for poison?
One
possibility might be that the hippo remains were contaminated with anthrax
after they were poisoned and their teeth removed, to discourage close
investigation.
Another hypothesis might be that the 2004 deaths resulted from an authentic
natural anthrax outbreak, which “recurred” after locals discovered
a strong market for hippo teeth, and along the way became annoyed by hippo
invasions of crops––like the residents of Port Bell, much closer
to the capital city of Kampala, whose elected representatives raised a
ruckus about three marauding hippos at Christmas 2004.
Poisoning, meanwhile, is among the most common yet hardest to detect of
poaching methods, limited chiefly by the risk of poison tainting the meat
and other marketable parts of the victim animals.
Nathan Etengu of New Vision on May 10, 2005 disclosed that Mount Elgon
National Park chief ecosystem warden Joseph Serugo and Pian-Upe Wildlife
Sanctuary assistant warden David Abaho on April 24 discovered that wardens
from the Namalu government prison farm, Ugandan soldiers, and various
others had mixed the pesticide diamacrone with white gin to kill more
than 80 storks. “They disposed of the intestines and ate the meat,”
Abaho said. Poison accumulated in the discarded intestines brought the
case to light, after dogs and chickens ate the intestines and died.
In South Africa the next day, National SPCA wildlife unit manager Rick
Allan described to the Johannesburg Star how poachers poisoned a water
hole at the Lumpepe-Nwanedi Nature Reserve with the insecticide aldicarb,
sold as Temik. The poisoning killed five endangered white rhinos, two
zebras, three blue wildebeest, three impalas, 10 nyalas, seven warthogs,
and numerous birds and baboons,” the Star said. “The horn of
one of the white rhinos was removed.”
Well-known to South African criminals, aldicarb has been extensively used
by burglars to poison guard dogs.
In Cameroon, far to the west of Uganda, wildlife authorities hinted that
there might be an association of anxthrax with the bushmeat traffic.
Two chimpanzees and two gorillas found dead in the Dja Game Reserve during
late 2004 marked “the first time that anthrax––an acute
and potentially fatal disease usually found in cattle, sheep and goats––has
been detected in gorillas and chimps in Cameroon,” Reuters reported.
Officially the anthrax killed them, and did not merely infest their bodies,
but “We cannot deny that these highly valued species of animals are
being poached,” Cameroon national director of wildlife Stephen Tarkang
Ebai said, warning citizens against scavenging the remains of animals
found dead.
Whatever happened to the Queen Elizabeth Park hippos, the Uganda Wildlife
Authority has become testy about further reports of anthrax. On May 4,
for instance, Isaac Kalembe of New Vision quoted tourism minister Jovino
Akaki Ayumu and Damian Akanwasa, one of the UWA directors, about anthrax
allegedly recurring in Lake Mburo National Park.
“We have lost some 40 zebras since May 2002,” Ayumu testified
to the parliamentary tourism, trade and industry committee. “Tests
established the cause as anthrax.”
Sound as the New Vision report seemed, the UWA denied it the next day
through the rival Kampala Monitor. “UWA management wishes to make
categorically clear that the mandate to declare any animal disease outbreak,
or any emerging animal disease, lies with the Commissioner of Livestock,
Health and Entomology in the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry
and Fisheries,” the UWA declared.
Translation: reports of anthrax occurring among hooved stock could play
hell with Ugandan livestock exports.
Longterm
vision needed
Despite
the recent rise in lethal wildlife exploitation, two-time former Kenya
Wildlife Service chief Richard Leakey warned at an early May 2005 seminar
at the State University of New York at Stony Brook that climate change
is a bigger threat to elephants, tigers, and rhinos than poaching. As
habitat becomes stressed, wildlife reserve neighbors are driven by thirst
and hunger to encroach upon the reserves. Wildlife is more inclined to
wander outside protected limits. Crop failures due to drought tend to
escalate reactions against crop-raiding and stimulate poaching.
Current examples include parts of Zambia, South Luanga Conservation Society
chief executive officer Rachel McRobb told Sandra Lombe of the Lusaka
Post on May 4.
“Due to the partial drought and crops being destroyed, there will
be an increase in poaching this year,” McRobb warned. “A number
of elephants have been shot. Some people are using muzzle loaders,”
McRobb said.
The Wildlife Conservation Society “has reformed 32,000 people from
being dependent on poaching to living on agriculture,” in Eastern
Province, Zambia, wrote Stephen Kapambwe in the May 2 edition of the Times
of Zambia, but drought may reverse the gains if food security slumps.
“Are there new land use regimes that could be put in place which
would extend the possibility of ecosystems getting through a climate change
era?” Leakey asked. “Are there things that could be done artificially
that would make it less likely that we would see extinction? Should we
visit the whole issue of ex-situ as opposed to in-situ conservation?
“There are an awful lot of people around the world who have lots
of ideas on this,” Leakey said, “but nobody seems to be addressing
this in a co-ordinated way.”
Leaders
seek quick returns
Discussion
of longterm reform of African wildlife and habitat management tends to
be swiftly sidetracked into get-rich-quick schemes.
Threats to wildlife in Kenya come from both the rural poor, as everywhere
else, and private landholders who are anxious to cash in on the perceived
profit potential in trophy hunting before the boom fades along with the
Baby Boom generation of European and American hunters.
Five months after Kenya President Emilio Mwai Kibaki vetoed a bill by
legislator G.G. Kariuki that nearly repealed the 1977 national ban on
sport hunting, Kariuki has reintroduced a similar measure, again disguised
as a bill to compensate neighbors of wildlife reserves for animal damage.
The boom has waned already, with probably more money changing hands now
in speculative traffic in animals to be shot than in actual revenue from
hunters, but the effect is disguised––temporarily––by
the collapse of trophy hunting in Zimbabwe. Invasions of farms and private
game ranches by landless supporters of the Robert Mugabe regime have compounded
the effects of drought, driving most of the hunters who patronized Zimbabwe
in the 1990s to other nations.
With no hunters coming, “President Robert Mugabe’s regime has
directed officials to kill animals in conservation areas to feed hungry
peasants––a move that could wipe out what remains of impalas,
kudus, giraffes, elephants and other species,” wrote Basildon Peta
of the Pretoria News on April 27, 2005. “National Parks officials
said the recent shootings of 10 elephants for barbecue meat to mark Zimbabwe’s
25 years of independence had been carried out in the broad context of
this directive,” Peta added. “The 10 elephants were killed by
National Park rangers. Four were reportedly shot in full view of tourists
near Lake Kariba.”
The hot-button wildlife issue for animal advocates in South Africa is
a new set of rules for the captive lion hunting industry, to take effect
on July 1, 2005. Former Kalahari Raptor Centre operators Chris and Bev
Mercer in February 2005 published Canned Lion Hunting: A National Disgrace,
a book-length critique of the rules, including submissions from many other
leading South African wildlife defenders.
Focused on the philosophy of South African wildlife management, the Mercers
acknowledge that their critique will probably not receive serious consideration
from the powers-that-be. But the demographics and economics of the trophy
hunting industry suggest that hunting captive-reared lions will not be
a very profitable business for most of the present participants anyhow
within less than 10 years.
The prestige of game ranchers is already sinking. In late March 2005,
for instance, South African Environmental Affairs and Tourism Minister
Marthinus van Schalkwyk ordered the South African National Park Service
(SANParks) to investigate allegations that the Timbavati Private Nature
Reserve, adjacent to Kruger National Park, is exploiting wildlife from
Kruger by promoting “hunting in the buffer zones, where fences have
been dropped.”
About 71% of the revenue from Timbavati comes from hunting.
Van Schalkwyk indicated that game ranchers operating in buffer zones is
a problem at other parks, as well.
The most notorious recent incident involving a game farmer was the April
27 murder conviction of Mark Scott Crossley, 37, who operated a construction
business from his brother’s Engedi Game Farm, near Hoedspruit.
On January 31, 2004 Crossley and employees Simon Mathebula, Richard Mathebula,
and Robert Mnisi allegedly tied former employee Nelson Chisale, 41, to
a tree and severely beat him, then threw him to the lions at the Mokwalo
White Lion Project, 12 miles away. Mokwalo co-owner Albert “Mossie”
Mostert figured prominently in a 1997 expose of South African canned lion
hunting, produced by Roger Cook of The Cook Report, a British TV magazine
show.
Simon Mathebula was convicted with Crossley, Richard Mathebula will stand
trial after recovering from tuberculosis, and Mnisi turned state witness
to avoid prosecution.
A case with similar racial overtones erupted in Kenya as the Crossley
trial was underway. Tom Gilbert Patrick Cholmondeley, 37, was charged
on April 28 with murdering Kenya Wildlife Service ranger Samson ole Sisina.
“Sisina and three wardens were investigating a suspected game meat
syndicate operating between Naivasha and Nairobi,” reported Antony
Gitonga of the East African Standard. “The KWS staff allegedly spotted
ranch workers carrying a buffalo carcass in a Land Rover. They followed
the workers to the Soysamba ranch, where they allegedly found them skinning
the buffalo. Naivasha police boss Simon Kiragu said the officers identified
themselves and arrested 16 workers. He said Cholmondeley rushed to the
ranch slaughterhouse when he learned of the arrests and confronted the
KWS officials, leading to a scuffle in which Sisima was shot. The workers
also allegedly beat up the other KWS staff.”
Added Daniel Howden of the London Independent, “The accused’s
grandfather, Hugh Cholmondeley, the third Baron Delamere, was prominent
in establishing Britain’s colonial presence in Kenya. He fell in
love with the country during a 1895 hunting expedition, and set up the
beef and dairy interests his grandson now runs.”
Noted Francis Ngige of the East African Standard, “Several [of the
Cholmondeley ranches], including Soysamba, have numerous buffalo, giraffe,
impala and warthogs.”
