IVORY - ILLEGAL TRADE

African Elephant Illegal Trade

When I visited Botswana in 2007, and spent some time at the "Chobe National Park" I became aware of a huge problem that the Park administration was dealing with: ELEPHANTS

Their number had rised to an alarming figure of 120.000,  40.000 individuals beyond than what the Park itself could shelter, according to their estimated resources.

One of the solutions, besides misplacing some of the herds, was to arrange some old fashion AFRICAN SAFARIS which could allow the Park's Administration to control the species, therefore protecting others, with the advantage of rising some money to hire more rangers in order to look upon the park conservation.

Although shocking, the measure seemed to be focused on the protection of the various species which all depend on the Park resources. 

I had the opportunity to see what enormous herds of elephants can do to vegetation. It simply disappears and the horizon looks like Ground Zero. The image I had was that a bomb had dropped and nothing was left besides brown dry land. All around me there wasn't  literally nothing left. The land was absolutely flat. No trees, no flowers. Nothing. When we talk about a group of 20 or 30 individuals, each one of them consuming trees, trunks, grass, leaves, that may reach to 300 kgs a day, we are getting numbers like 9.000 Kg of vegetation in just one day. After a week the region is flat.

Following these sustainability problems some Parks tended to be more tolerant with poachering leaving some space for the quick development of trade channels, which tend to grow very quickly, due the enormous amount of money associated with IVORY TRADE. Quickly the situation involved to a dark elephant slaughter with thousands of elephants being killed every year, wiping out these big mammals from the face of the Earth. Tourists which have visited Africa for the last 5 years, say that the specie may have decreased enormously once they are now scarcely seen around.

China stays in the corner of the trade, (not only for elephants, but by far, for the dramatic outraging poaching of the last black rhinos) and ultimately that's their marked which is fueling the elephants slaughter and the underground ivory trade which is becoming increasingly militarized. Ivory is sold at $1,000 per pound in the Beijing streets which gives us a figure of the numbers involved.

Africa is in the midst of an epic elephant slaughter. Conservation groups say poachers are wiping out tens of thousands of elephants a year, more than at any time in the previous two decades. 

Some parks are now in a the middle of a battlefield trying to stop trade and the slaughter. Therefore it was with great joy that I heard last week's news about TANZANIA's government decision on not to trade 137 tons of ivory stockpiled in their warehouses, representing millions of dollars.

"We want to sell part of the stockpile. We plan to use revenue from the sale to beef up measures to fight elephant poaching, which is becoming more and more worrying," Nyalandu told journalists.

He said the government was not going to sell smuggled ivory but of those which died of natural causes, noting that Tanzania has more than 137 tonnes of ivory stockpiled.

Good News!

Smuggled Ivory being burned - a way of demotivate poaching 

Will Burrard-Lucas and His Beetle-Cam at the Masai-Mara Reserve

BeetleCam is Back Teaser from Will & Matt Burrard-Lucas on Vimeo.

In what concerns nature photographers I can tell you that CLOSE in never enough. So, conservation photographer Will Burrard-Lucas has created a high-tech solution that has helped get him amazing images that would otherwise be impossible - such as lions feasting, or Komodo dragons flicking their tongues at the lens. 

Most recently Burrard-Lucas has made modifications to their "BeetleCam" that provide photographers with even more flexibility for getting images, and these incredible photos of lions show off what is possible. Watch the movie. from here

Ethiopia - The Erta Ale Volcano

Ancien lava and salt deposits surround Erta Ale Volcano and the inhospitable Afar Depression  - Photo George Steinmetz

In 2005, the ground suddenly opened and swallowed goats, camels and all sort of living animals which were on the surrounding area of the Erta Ale Volcano.

The scene looked like came out of a movie. For 3 days clouds of ashes dimmed the sun and flew through the air coming out from the subterranean caverns like huge black birds thrown away through the sky, landing all over the surrounding areas of the Erta Ale crater.

Although we may be talking about one of the most inhospitable regions on Earth and when seen from above it may look like an Artic frozen desert, geologically the Afar Depression is one of the most active regions on Earth.

Erta Ale boiling magma lake at the crater

In fact, underneath Afar' s timeless visage there's a much different nature well hidden below surface. Earth's rocky rind is ripping apart, 12 active volcanoes underground, chambers of magma, steaming geysers, boiling cauldrons and a fiery lake of lava which boils constantly making the region a clock bomb ready to explode at any moment. Nature's fury is well covered under a desert which few would dare to cross.

Not much is known about Erta Ale and the fact that the native Afar people have a legendary reputation for viciousness towards outsiders also doesn't help. Travel guides always recommend hiring "one or maybe two armed guards or police" to visit Erta Ale otherwise the adventure can cost your life.

However, they welcomed and helped recently a team from BBC, but that was an exception.

On January 16, 2012 a group of German, Austrian and Hungarian scientists was attacked on their way to Erta Ale. Five scientists/tourists were executed on site, some taken as hostages others were injured while trying to escape. Afar people still fight, in some sort of middle age form, for their desert lands where they extract salt, with 30.000 years, from a time where the Red Sea floods reached the region.

Geologically, scientists predict that, in some million years, there will be dramatic changes in Africa 's geography: The Afar depression, and the entire Great Rift Valley, will cradle a new sea which will connect the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean and cleaves the Horn of Africa from the continent. more here