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!