The Panel found that the population might actually be declining though still viable. The 2006 best estimate was 142,788 ± 12,405 but the 2009 estimate was only 109,622 ± 6,135. The decline was “attributed largely to the downward trend recorded in the Selous-Mikumi ecosystem.” The Panel described this to be a “significant decline” or “loss” of 31,000 elephant over three years. Some of this may have been due to a “large scale movement” from Selous to Niassa Reserve that had an increase of approximately 9,000 elephant. Regardless, the Panel concluded that illegal killing of elephants in Tanzania “is not only important but has been increasing.” There also have been “progressive increases in the number of large-scale seizures involving Tanzania.” There was a sense that Tanzania has the capacity to better manage its elephant and should better manage them.

Kenya and a number of Parties made a new argument against any downlisting that should be noted. Kenya and 26 primarily West, Central and East African countries have formed the African Coalition which is affecting the political balance over the issues. That Coalition was formed to assist its members to be beneficiaries of the new Elephant Fund that was created at CoP14 at The Hague. Their concept is to give elephant issues a rest for another six years and to build the Fund to help those that need the financial help the most – themselves – not those that are and have demonstrated the capacity to conserve elephant on their own. Their self-serving interpretation of the 9-year waiting period for the four countries already downlisted to Appendix II is that it applies to all African range states.

Of course, that was not the agreement in The Hague. An Elephant Fund was created in The Hague and a partially drafted African Action Plan has since been created that the Fund is intended to serve. It is now clearly in the financial interest of those in the new 26-member African Coalition to focus on their interests and deny the proposals of those successfully managing elephant. That said, though it has taken on form and structure, the divide between those that have managed their elephant the best and those that have managed their elephant the worst dominated the debate. Regardless, the balance may not change much in number or final voting tally.

Tanzania divided and amended its proposal and brought it up again in the final Plenary. In the three instances the best support it received was 57 in favor, 45 against and 32 abstentions, a majority but not the necessary two-thirds of cast votes. The EU obviously abstained in that secret vote.

The 19-page Expert Panel report is too rich with information to repeat here, but is posted on Conservation Force’s website under News and Alerts at http://www.conservationforce.org/news.html.

The few that remain will probably be gradually killed off, I am afraid, and I think it quite likely that before many more years have passed the only buffaloes left in South Africa will be those living in the Addo bush in the Cape Colony.

There was always a considerable difference of opinion amongst South African hunters in the old pre-rinderpest times as to the character of the Cape buffalo, but there is no doubt that this animal was looked upon by all experienced men as a dangerous antagonist under certain conditions, whilst by some it was considered to be the most dangerous of all African game. It is all a matter of individual experience. A man who has shot two or three lions and a few buffaloes, and who, whilst having had no trouble with the former animals, has been charged and perhaps only narrowly escaped with his life from one or more of the latter, will naturally consider the buffalo to be a more dangerous animal than a lion, and vice versa.

Personally I consider that, speaking generally, the South African lion is a much more dangerous animal than the South African buffalo, for not only can a lion hide much more easily and rush on to its antagonist much more quickly than a buffalo, but the former is, I think, much more savage by nature, on the average, than the latter. As regards viciousness I should be inclined to put the buffalo third on the list of dangerous African game, without reckoning the leopard (of which animal I have not had sufficient experience to offer an opinion) and the black rhinoceros (whose true character it seems so difficult to understand); for, whilst putting the lion first, I think the elephant should come second, as I believe that of a hundred elephants shot, a greater proportion will charge than of the same number of buffaloes. However, a charging elephant can almost always be stopped with a bullet, and it is most difficult to stop a charging buffalo; therefore the latter is perhaps actually the more dangerous animal of the two.

To follow a wounded buffalo into a bed of reeds, or into long grass, where it is almost impossible to see it before getting to very close quarters, is a most dangerous, not to say foolhardy, proceeding. It is quite exciting enough to follow one of these animals when wounded into thick bush, but there you have a chance of seeing it as soon as, if not before, it sees you.

I have had a very considerable experience with South African buffaloes, having killed 175 of these animals to my own rifle and helped to kill at least fifty others. When hunting on the Chobi river in 1877, and again in 1879, I had to shoot a great many buffaloes to supply my native followers with meat, as I did not come across many elephants in either of those years.

During 1877 I killed to my own rifle forty-seven buffaloes, and in 1879 fifty. All these buffaloes, with the exception of five, which I shot when hunting on horseback near the Mababi river in the latter year, were killed on foot, and a large number of were followed, after having been wounded, into thick bush, and there finally dispatched.

The solution to Africa’s commercial poaching problem presented above, by comparison, is both reasonable and pragmatic. It is also, by comparison, very cheap. And it WILL work. It WILL work because it removes the HIV infection from the equation and it makes the poacher communities the most important part of the solution. And the black market for ivory and rhino horn will wither away because there will be no poachers to support it.

It also has a double-barreled benefit effect because it both stops the commercial poaching in its tracks and it relieves many localized rural communities, all over Africa, of the continent’s greatest scourge – POVERTY.

It also introduces the probability that ALL those national parks that once supported black rhinos can be assured of successful re-introductions of the species. If the black rhino were included on the community levy price list – at a VERY high price – it would be greatly protected by the local communities.

They would protect the black rhinos because it would cost the community twice its high levy fee for every animal killed by a poacher. It would be protected, too, because within ten years of their reintroduction, small numbers of black rhino bulls would be available for hunting and the communities would gain hugely from the very high community levy fee for every black rhino that is then legally hunted.

The greatest of all this solution’s attributes is the fact that it deals with a uniquely African problem in a uniquely African way. It provides an African solution that WILL work in Africa. It is also a solution that is entirely sustainable BY Africa. Africa’s commercial poaching pandemic, therefore, is one problem that Africa CAN solves on its own. All it requires is society’s understanding and acceptance of the need for a paradigm shift of immense proportions – which is the tallest order of all. BUT … the benefits are immeasurable!

On the negative side, the Tanzania and Zambia proposals to downlist their elephant to Appendix II with an “annotation” that limited trade to a few narrow purposes, one of which was trophy trade, failed to get the required two-thirds vote. The U.S. proposal to downlist the bobcat was also defeated.

Credit must be given to the Wild Sheep Foundation and IPHA for providing extra funding. Also, credit is due to Osprey Film Company and Hunter Proud for their DVD Tembo: Use or Lose that we jointly produced and circulated before the CoP.

In financial terms, this would mean if a poacher killed an elephant he may personally gain US $ 30 from the sale of the ivory into the black market, but the community as a whole would lose US $ 10 000 – twice the listed community levy value for a trophy elephant bull.

And if a flock of vultures was poisoned on the carcass of a lion kill, or a Ground Hornbill was trapped, for the traditional medicine market, twice the listed values of each animal killed would also be removed from the accumulated levy funds.

It would simply not be in the community’s interests, therefore, to have ANY animal poached in the park.

Given the fact that everybody in Africa’s rural communities knows what everybody else is doing, it is unlikely that the activities of individual poachers would be tolerated. So the community itself would control the poaching activities of its own people.

Note: The poachers themselves would be integrated into the park’s anti-poaching effort – as ground coverage personnel outside the park. Their salaries would be paid for out of the community levy fund.

One must gauge the value of this dispensation against what is happening at the moment. ALL OVER rural Africa the proximate causes of the poaching are rife and bubbling, and meat poaching is becoming a commonplace activity in all those rural communities that live on national park boundaries.

The government authorities either don’t care, or they can’t control the poaching with the resources they have to hand. In many places the poorly paid game rangers are themselves a major part of the poaching rackets. The long-term prognosis for African national parks, therefore, given these realities, is bleak.

Dale has spent more than 30 years managing wildlife in the West. As the statewide leader of trophy species programs for the state of Idaho for the past decade, he has managed programs for bighorn sheep, mountain goats, moose and grizzly bears and supervises statewide management of waterfowl and upland game. He has also directed public lands policy for the state of Idaho for more than a decade, managed the Idaho Wildlife Health Laboratory, and conducted and published research on bighorn sheep, elk, mule deer, pronghorns, mountain lions, and many other species.

Dale is perhaps best-known for his award-winning books about elk and bighorn sheep. North American Elk: Ecology and Management (published by Smithsonian Press) has been called “perhaps the best book on a single species ever written,” and Return of Royalty: the Wild Sheep of North America was recipient of the international Prix Excellence award presented by the Conseil de la Chasse et tu la Conservation, the international hunter’s organization, in 2005. He has written a number of other books, such as Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep (for the National Bighorn Sheep Interpretive Center in Duboise, Wyoming) and Desert Bighorn, and was a contributing author to Perspectives on Biodiversity for the National Research Institute of the National Academy of Sciences. In addition, Dale has contributed chapters to many books including the Wildlife Techniques Manual published by The Wildlife Society.

In addition to hundreds of papers on technical aspects of wildlife research, Dale is a member of the Outdoor Writers Association of America and has written many popular articles about hunting and the outdoors, most illustrated with his own photographs of wildlife and wild places. Dale has also written several scripts for the award-winning television series “Leupold’s Big Game Profiles” presented by the Boone & Crockett Club on the Outdoor Channel.

Not an academic, Dr. Toweill is a hands-on manager and avid hunter who has successfully hunted throughout North America as well as Africa, Australia, and Europe. He has harvested all varieties of North American wild sheep and has several of his North American trophies listed in Records of North American Big Game. As a passionate hunter, he is very familiar with the critical role that hunting plays in wildlife conservation around the world.

Well-known among professional wildlife managers, Dale has been a member of The Wildlife Society since 1969 and was among the first recognized as a Certified Wildlife Biologist by that group in 1982. He served as representative of the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies to the Committee on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), and on national review panels dealing with critical and complex land management issues including climate change, forest ecosystem management, and a national review of big game habitat on public lands. Dale also spent more than a decade dealing with public land management policy and state and national legislation on environmental affairs.

Dale is especially interested in conservation and management of African wildlife (he has visited Africa nearly 20 times) and the worldwide conservation of wild sheep. He is another highly qualified professional volunteer joining forces with Conservation Force for the greater good. Please thank him when you next see him.

The smaller streams and dambos, which dry up in the dry weather, they stake across at intervals, to prevent the fish from escaping, and when only a small pool is left, as the dry weather progresses, they spear the fish, using long, unbarbed spears.

The general method is for a number of natives to go into the pool, stirring up the mud, and they spear at random in all directions, the fish they spear floating to the surface. Needless to say, a quantity of fish too small to be of service, are killed also. In the larger rivers and lakes fish are caught with nets made of string from the bwazi tree or of aloe fibre.

These nets are used either cast as a seine or floated with bits of reed, instead of cork. Traps of reeds are made for fish, like large lobster pots or safety inkpots, and fastened in apertures in the staking across streams for the fish to enter as the water recedes.

A shrub called katupi* (Chiwisa, wuwa) is cultivated, which bears a pod the seeds of which, pounded and thrown into the water, poison fish.

Of other ways of hunting, large rings of fire are made during the burning of the bush, great numbers of natives collecting with spears and bows. As the ring contracts, any animal inside breaking through is stabbed. The jungle cat is often killed in this way, as it inhabits the grass and open country.

A row of game pits are often dug in a place where game, such as zebra, are constantly going to or from water. Hippos used to be hunted and killed on Lake Nyasa with large barbed harpoons. These were attached to ropes and poisoned. They were thrown at the animals from canoes. The natives attribute their being able to approach close enough to throw these harpoons to the ” hunting medicine,” a tatoo marking on the right arm at the shoulder and on the back of the right hand. Poisoned spears are also arranged poised in the animals’ run, with a trap to drop them on their backs as they pass.

Huntable male animals, earmarked for culling, would NOT be culled. Instead they would be killed by high-fee-paying hunters, in special hunting zones within the park, under strict game ranger supervision. Removing these animals by this means would achieve the culling objective AND brings huge financial benefits to the park. The removal of non-trophy animals that had been earmarked for culling would remain the responsibility of game-ranger culling-and/or-capture teams.

All this was explained to the people at the inaugural meeting. They were then presented with the price-list. And they were told that IF they stopped poaching, the park would pay the community-as-a-whole the prices shown against every animal on the list that was killed by a legal hunter. The price list, therefore, represented what amounted to a list of community levies.

Every hunter, upon entering the park, would be required to pay the community levy prices for the animals that he intended to shoot – before he paid any other fees. On top of the community levy the park would apply other fees -such as trophy fees, a daily hunting fee, an accommodation and entertainment fee, and a game ranger fee for professional hunter services. These latter fees would all accrue to the park itself.

The park’s CEO would immediately deposit the hunter’s community levy fees into a special banking account that he would open and control on behalf of the park’s neighbor communities. This would eliminate all opportunities for corruption by high-ranking government officials – which is a problem that has consistently plagued similar schemes throughout Africa. The money would remain in the banking account, gaining interest and slowly building up, for a whole year.

The community levy fees would NOT be parsimonious. They would be handsome fees that would be in keeping with the intrinsic economic value of each animal on the list, and in cognizance of the purpose of the levy scheme.

The community levy for a trophy elephant bull, for example, would be US $ 5 000 – which is 125 times higher than what an individual poacher would get if he sold the same elephant’s tusks into the black market. Non-trophy and tuskless males would be allocated a reasonable but lesser value. The black market cannot compete with this kind of remuneration. And it is important to emphasize that the community as a whole would earn the community levy – not just a single poacher.

The community levies for other game animals would be equally appropriate- from buffaloes and lions right down to the smaller antelope. Their respective community levy values would be higher than each animal’s meat-value to the people. Animals such as black rhinos, vultures and ground hornbills would also have a listed value, and fish (per kilogram), even though most of such species would never be hunted.