Tanzania using dogs to fight illegal ivory trade

Canines try to detect smuggled goods at airport.

The government of Tanzania has gone to the dogs in its effort to stop the flow of ivory taken from elephants.

This spring, four Belgian Malinois, Kyra-K, Messi, Yana and Max-Z, began patrolling the Julius Nyerere International Airport and the Port of Dar es Salaam, looking for smuggled goods.

The four dogs are part of the world’s first canine detection team trained specifically to sniff out illegal wildlife products in shipping cargo and airport luggage. Officials are hoping they will help take a bite out of the illicit ivory trade.

The dogs and their Tanzanian handlers completed a 10-week course at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s canine training center in El Paso, Texas, and a follow-up course in Tanzania. The Belgian Malinois were chosen for, among other things, their ability to work in extreme heat.

Tanzania’s elephant population is shrinking fast. The countr y had 43,000 ele - phants in 2014, down from a b o u t 1 1 0,0 0 0 i n 2 0 0 9, according to the latest available government figures. Tanzania and several other African countries have seen a rise in poaching of ivory tusks by well-armed criminal gangs that have pushed some wildlife species near extinction.

Globally, the trade in illegal wildlife is estimated to be $20 billion a year. Many of t he produc t s , such a s i v o r y a n d r h i n o h o r n s , e n d u p i n A s i a n c o u n - tries, where they are used as ornaments or in traditional medicine.

The Tanzanian authorities reported breaking up a decades-old ivory smuggling ring with the arrest in October of a Chinese woman known as the Ivory Queen, as well as a ring of poachers led by a rogue Tanzanian intelligence officer in February.