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Zim charges 8 for poisoning elephants
Johannesburg - Eight men from western Zimbabwe
have been arrested on suspicion of the cyanide
poisoning of more than 60 elephants in the Hwange
National Park in the last three months. They were
arrested by members of the border control unit of
the Zimbabwe Republic Police and Parks and Wildlife
Management Authority and were accused of being
part of a poaching “syndicate”. Details of the syndicate
were not released by the police. Their alleged crimes
include illegal possession of cyanide, firearms, raw
ivory and dagga (marijuana). Forget Shoko pleaded
guilty to possessing raw ivory after police recovered
a pair of elephant tusks, weighing 26 kilograms and
valued at about R100 000, hidden under a bed. He
was sentenced this week to 10 years in the Hwange
prison by regional magistrate Lindiwe Maphosa.
Details of the other charges and sentences could not
be ascertained.
Police also recovered another three tusks and five
kilograms of cyanide in their hunt for the elephant
killers. Wildllife sources said that investigators were
also looking for one ranger from the parks authority
who has fled his job at Main Camp in the Hwange
area. The combined police and parks authority
detectives found two tusks in the boot of a vehicle
in Victoria Falls on Tuesday. The driver of the vehicle
abandoned his car with the keys in the ignition. “I
think we are getting on top of this finally,” said one
insider in the wildlife industry who asked not to be
named. “The new minister (Oppah Muchinguri) seems
to be determined to turn this around and also ensure
that rangers are paid more. We are feeling quite
relieved about the arrests.”
Muchinguri did not answer her mobile phone
on Wednesday but she has addressed the media
several times in the last few weeks, saying she was
determined to stop poaching. She said the Zimbabwe
National Army would be deployed in some wildlife
areas. Insiders told ANA last month that some rangers
may be poaching both as a protest against their poor
working conditions and as income because they are
paid so poorly, while some of the executives at the
administrative headquarters of the parks authority
in Harare paid themselves “inappropriately”. Three
members of the parks authority have been suspended
in the last week. Zimbabwe may be the only country
in Africa where wildlife conservation is not funded
by the government. The parks authority has to raise
revenue from hunting and tourism to cover its costs in
its huge national parks and safari sites.
Its income was hit dramatically when the United
States banned elephant trophies from Zimbabwe last
year and many regular US hunters then moved their
business to South Africa. The British government
has said it may ban the import of lion trophies from
Zimbabwe in the next two years. The wildlife world
was outraged when a lion popular with tourists,
known as Cecil, was killed on a wildlife farm near the
Hwange National Park in July. Theo Bronkhorst, the
Zimbabwe hunter who organised the hunt in which
Cecil died, learned this week his application to have
charges against him reviewed by the High Court had
succeeded. Bronkhorst denies the hunt he organised
was illegal and asked the court to drop charges against
him.
Walter Palmer, Bronkhorst’s US client who killed Cecil
at night with a bow and arrow, will not be charged as
he broke no law, according to Zimbabwe’s prosecuting
authority.
NEWS / 26 November 2015 at 09:13am
By: ANA Reporter
2015
DECEMBER
13