Elephants. (photo: TakePart)
The
'Devil' Gets His Due: Elephant Poaching Kingpin Arrested
By John R. Platt, TakePart
03 November 15
Tanzanian
officials have arrested a poacher and smuggler whom they say is
responsible for thousands of elephant deaths across several African nations.
Boniface
Matthew Mariango—nicknamed “Shetani,” or the “Devil”—was arrested on Oct. 29 in
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, after evading authorities for more than a year.
According to Tanzania’s National and Transnational Serious Crimes Investigation
Unit Task Force, Mariango allegedly managed up to 15 criminal poaching and
ivory smuggling syndicates. He is accused of operating in Burundi, Zambia,
Mozambique, and southern Kenya for several years. Information from an informant
is said to have led to his arrest.
The
arrest comes one month after the similar capture, also in Tanzania, of a
Chinese woman named Yang Feng Glan. She has been called the “Queen of Ivory” and
is charged with smuggling 706 elephant tusks. Authorities allege she has been
an active ivory smuggler for the past decade.
Conservationists
estimate that about 96 elephants are killed every day for
their ivory, which is smuggled out of Africa to countries such as China and
the United States.
Both
arrests come soon after a census revealed that Tanzania’s elephant
population dropped by 60 percent between
2009 and 2014 owing to rampant poaching.
The
Devil’s capture was announced by two related nongovernment organizations,
Elephant Action League and WildLeaks. The latter group
was set up in 2014 to fight wildlife crime by collecting intelligence and
conducting investigations into trafficking and poaching.
“This
arrest is yet another substantial breakthrough in Tanzania’s anti-poaching and
anti-trafficking efforts, with implications also reaching into neighboring
countries,” Andrea Crosta, cofounder of both organizations, said in a
statement. He credited the NTSCIU task force as “real hope for elephants and
for Tanzania.”
Conservation
organizations said these arrests may be signs that things are turning around
for elephants in Tanzania.
“It
was only in June that the true extent of elephant losses in Tanzania became
apparent, but a few months later there are encouraging signs that the
authorities are beginning to hit back at those responsible for orchestrating
the elephant poaching disaster,” said Richard Thomas, global communications
coordinator for TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network.
The
arrest of high-level smugglers, not just individual poachers, also indicates
progress. “It is extremely encouraging to see bigger fish and not just the
low-level poachers being caught,” said Kathleen Garrigan, media relations
manager for the African Wildlife Foundation. “Ultimately if we
are going to dismantle these international trafficking syndicates, we have to
remove the middlemen and bring down the kingpins.”
Neither
the Devil nor the Queen has gone to trial yet. Many poachers and smugglers get
off with little more than a slap on the wrist—or less. “These cases need to be
followed to their conclusion,” Garrigan said. “Too often we see arrests but no
convictions, or else laughable punishments given to poachers and traffickers.”
She pointed to a recent case, also in Tanzania, in which the African Wildlife
Foundation’s partners arrested “a notorious elephant poacher and his gang, only
to have them all released by the courts on bail.”
They,
like many before them, disappeared immediately after their release.
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has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
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