Ivory poachers switch target to hippos
TANZANIA: Hippopotamuses face being the next African species to become extinct, with poachers targeting them for their teeth as a substitute for elephant ivory.
While the trade in hippo teeth is legal and regulated, academics at the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Hong Kong found substantial discrepancies between official African export numbers and Asian import figures, leading them to conclude that illegal hippo poaching is taking place.
Hippo teeth are prized in Hong Kong, which buys 90 per cent of African exports of the ivory. Hippo ivory is durable, cheaper than that from elephants, and easy to carve into trinkets.
Hippopotamuses have been defined as a vulnerable species, with between 113,000 and 150,000 estimated to be living in subSaharan Africa.
The once large population in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been all but wiped out because of demand for their meat and teeth.
There are fears that in Tanzania and Uganda, from where three-quarters of hippo products originate, populations are under significant and growing pressure.
The demand for hippo teeth escalated sharply after a 1989 ban on the international trade in elephant ivory, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
With concerted efforts to protect elephants from illegal poaching and a clampdown on the trade in their ivory, amid an alarming drop in their numbers, some believe that less-protected hippos could instead fall victim to the sustained demand for Africa’s ‘‘white gold’’.
Hippos are some of the most dangerous animals in Africa, killing 3000 people a year. They are extremely aggressive and territorial, with sharp teeth and weighing on average 1.4 tonnes.
Given growing human populations and rising competition for scarce resources, hippos are increasingly coming into contact with people.
The scientists, who published their findings in the
discovered that the volume of imports declared by Hong Kong was ‘‘substantially different’’ from the volume of exports declared by Tanzania and Uganda.
They found that 14,000 kilograms of hippo teeth were unaccounted for in trade between Uganda and Hong Kong alone, equivalent to 2700 hippos, or 2 per cent of the world’s hippo population.
Pieter Kat, a conservation biologist based in East Africa, called for a study of hippo numbers akin to the great elephant census, which revealed that elephant numbers had dropped by 11,000 in 10 years, prompting a campaign to stop illegal ivory trading.
The study’s authors, Alexandra Andersson and Luke Gibson, called for Hong Kong to check import permits more closely.