Defending icons of Africa
DEC police travel to elephant park to share enforcement expertise
To help stop the flow of poached elephant ivory into New York, sometimes you have to go to the root of the problem.
Five officers from the state Department of Environmental Conservation did just that this month, traveling on their own time and at their own expense to an African wildlife preserve that is home to some of the planet’s largest elephants.
Some 250 elephants roam the 117-square-mile Tembe Elephant Park in South Africa, where armed park staff have fought gun battles with poachers who kill the animals for their tusks.
Worth tens of thousands of dollars or more, the poached tusks eventually get turned into ivory carvings, some of which find their way to unscrupulous sellers in New York City as well as other parts of the state.
As confiscations of illegal ivory mounted in recent years in a state crackdown on the illegal wildlife trade, DEC police Maj. Scott Florence decided it was time to do more to help.
He headed a five-person crew of Environmental Conservation Police officers that traveled to South Africa for 10 days to train about 20 wildlife officers from South Africa and neighboring Swaziland and Mozambique in forensic crime techniques that will help better track and catch poachers.
“Poaching scenes are crime
scenes that can tell a story,” said Conservation Police Capt. Jesse Paluch. “We have experience on processing evidence from such scenes here that we wanted to share.”
The Conservation Police group also delivered four forensic evidence kits that included cameras, fingerprinting equipment, rangefinders, DNA analysis gear, gunshot residue tests, and even tools to take castings of tire tracks and footprints.
“Their equipment in the park is pretty basic. They are taking pictures of scenes with a camera flip phone,” Paluch said. “None of them had ever taken fingerprints before.”
DEC Commissioner Basil Seggos praised the effort, saying the state will continue “its vigilant enforcement efforts to stop the killing of animals for art, and this is just one more action that will help to stop illegal ivory sales.”
Currently, there about 325,000 elephants across Africa, and between 2010 and 2012, an average of 96 of the animals were killed by poachers every day to feed the illegal ivory trade, according to an estimate from the Wildlife Conservation Society.
During the Tembe visit, Florence and his team also set up practice poaching scenes using impala carcasses, blood, tracks, and abandoned vehicles, so the local rangers could learn how to use their new equipment to preserve and assemble evidence.
That equipment was paid for in part through about $400,000 in “forced donations” collected from individuals caught selling illegal ivory, he added. The funds often are earmarked for wildlife conservation groups such as Wild Tomorrow Fund.
In 2014, Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a law that banned the sale of elephant and mammoth ivory, as well as rhinoceros horns, and increased criminal and civil penalties.
Working in the sprawling Tembe preserve to confront armed poachers can be a highrisk affair.
One of the local rangers, who came to his sessions always toting his AK-47 semiautomatic assault rifle, recently had a gun battle with three poachers in the bush, killing two of them, said Conservation Police Lt. Karen Przyklek.
“Another one of the rangers told us about a poacher who got chased by lions up a tree,” added Florence. “On his way up the tree, a lion ripped his pants off, so he was up there without pants when the rangers rescued him.”
Awareness of lions is a key part of working in the preserve, especially at night when both lions and poachers tend to be most active, said Florence. “We were told that the first rule is when you come up on lions, do not run,” he said.
Rangers live in field stations at the preserve for shifts that are 20 days on, 10 days off. The Conservation Police crew spent nights in fenced-in stations where “you could hear the lions outside roaring in the dark,” said Florence.
The preserve, which takes a half-day to drive across on field roads, is entirely fenced in. Large holes cut into fences, with vehicle tracks leading in, give evidence of the frequency of poaching there.
Other members of the DEC training team included Lt. Liza Bobseine and investigator Edward Piwko.
The preserve itself is located in an ecosystem called a “sand forest” — trees and shrubs all rooted in sand, rather than soil — which Paluche said reminded him of the pine barrens on the Albany Pine Bush and Long Island.
Florence said his goal is to establish connections between New York and its African wildlife counterparts. And part of that will include a new park vehicle — bearing a DEC logo — that will be paid for through the “forced donations” made so far by illegal ivory sellers in New York.
“This is a chance for law enforcement officers to get together, network and share ideas, and the skills learned and transferred will help us better protect our wildlife in this critical time,” said Tembe’s conservation manager, Richard Schutte.
Florence said that other groups working with DEC on such efforts include the Wildlife Conservation Society, World Wildlife Fund, and Biologists without Borders.
The Tembe preserve can be found online at https://www. facebook.com/tembeelephantpark.
Working in the sprawling Tembe preserve to confront armed poachers can be a high-risk affair, with danger and humor sometimes mixing together.