Bid to save Congo wildlife
Newly established crime unit sees rangers taking fight to poachers
THE REPUBLIC of Congo has witnessed war and human tragedy, but a war of another kind is being fought – a war to save endangered wildlife, particularly elephants from poaching syndicates which have ravaged the country.
However, an integrated approach, with on-the-ground patrols coupled with intelligence-driven operations, is effectively taking down the patrons of elephant poaching and dismantling the criminal syndicates, according to a press release by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).
Weapons
This summer, wildlife rangers from the Nouabale-Ndoki National Park, a protected area managed by the society, arrested more than 30 poachers; seized over 100kg of ivory; and detained six semi-automatic weapons around the limits of the park.
This includes the arrest and conviction of an ivory trafficker tied to one of the most notorious poaching rings in northern Congo. Samuel Pembele has been sentenced to five years in jail by Ouesso’s criminal court, the maximum penalty under Congolese law. Pembele of the 2Pac trafficking network has been operating in the area for several years, commissioning elephant hunts and moving and selling large quantities of ivory.
“The Wildlife Conservation Society’s newly established wildlife crime unit offers unprecedented access to the higher-level players in the Congo’s northern poaching circles,” said Mark Gately, the WCS Congo country director. Effective application of Congo’s wildlife laws relies on a watertight law enforcement chain – from the forest patrols to the court trials.
Evidence must be well documented, cases put forward with coherence and justice served.
The conviction of Pembele was pivotal in the fight against the poachers.
“With increased coverage, staff power, and the use of real-time communications technology, wildlife rangers are bringing the fight to poachers,” added Gately. The Wildlife Crime Unit is starting to play an important role in following up cases, publicising the events in the local media, closely monitoring court proceedings, and stamping out the ever-present risk of corruption.
During the summer, on July 25, a ranger team on a routine forest patrol startled a group of four poachers on the Ndoki River, a notorious poaching corridor that leads to the park.
The incident was immediately communicated to the park’s control centre and the rapid reaction unit, a specialist force of elite rangers, was deployed to contain the fleeing poachers.
Three days later, the unit stopped a suspect, Pemeble, crossing the containment zone and he was transferred to the wildlife unit.
Coincidentally, Pembele had been subject to an ongoing undercover investigation, which had him tied to a chief poaching ring operating in northern Congo recently implicated in a major ivory deal.
Intelligence
This intelligence was used to leverage several critical admissions, including the denouncement of a fellow ringleader, leading to both their arrests. Pembele was convicted on November 10 and sentenced to five years in prison.
“The conviction of Pembele signals a significant change for elephant conservation in Congo.
“A strong message has been sent to all poaching networks across the Ndoki landscape that wildlife criminals cannot go on breaking the law with impunity, a positive shift in ensuring the future of elesaaaaphants in Ndoki is se- cured,” said Gately.
“This kind of collaboration between the newly created WCU, a team of investigators and legal experts fighting wildlife crime in the urban areas in northern Congo, and the Park’s ranger force are increasingly bringing about high impact arrests.”
This arrest and conviction underlines several key advances in the park’s anti-poaching efforts over the past two years.
Ranger numbers for the park have quadrupled since 2014 and have undergone several rounds of paramilitary training.
Technological advances are becoming pivotal too, with the deployment of new real-time satellite tracking devices that have revolutionised patrol operations.
Ivory poaching and trafficking in northern Congo is controlled and financed by a select group, locally referred to as “patrons”, who lurk in logging towns, discreetly provide poachers with weapons and commission elephant hunts.
Taking a “patron” like Pembele out of the system has a far-reaching reductive effect on poaching pressure. Patrols in Ndoki are becoming more and more intelligence driven, targeting known access points and poaching grounds.
The additional intelligence that the WCU brings to the table further targets patrols and offers the opportunity to act preventatively as well as reactively.
Pembele was not travelling along the logging road passing through the checking zone by chance; follow-up questioning revealed he was returning from a mission to look for an elephant gun, in a logging town north of the park.
Where remoteness has long provided a blanket of protection for the Ndoki forest, today’s rapid encroachment of logging roads outside the park limits, alongside a fast growing population and a ten-fold rise in the local price for ivory, has brought unprecedented levels of illegal hunting.
Ivory trafficking networks continue to flourish in Congo and across the border to the Central African Republic and Cameroon.
These networks are exploiting new communication and transport links that arrive with logging.
Almost one-quarter of the world’s remaining forest elephants reside here in northern Congo.
Having suffered a serious decline of more than 60 % across Central Africa over the past decade, protecting these elephants and their forests is of global importance. – ANA