KRA Suspends Official Over Sh570 Million Ivory

By Gilbert Koech

Kenya: A Kenya Revenue Authority officer who handled the Sh570 million illegal ivory shipment seized in Singapore was yesterday suspended.

KRA Commissioner General John Njiraini said in a statement the directors of the exporting company that handled the cargo and the driver of a truck used to ferry the two 20-foot containers containing the wildlife trophy are being sought.

“So far, the truck owner has provided statements to the investigation team but the driver is still at large. The directors of the exporting company have absconded but are being sought,” he said.

Njiraini said other KRA port staff are being investigated for “appropriate actions to be taken after relevant details emerge".

Customs officials in Singapore on Tuesday seized 3.7 tonnes of illegal ivory from Kenya in the second-largest haul since 2002.

The ivory was hidden among tea bags, the haul consisted of 1,783 pieces of raw ivory tusk, four pieces of rhino horn and 22 teeth believed to be from African big cats — cheetahs and leopards and were on the way to Vietnam.

Source: allafrica.com

Kenya nabs Vietnamese for alleged rhino horn smuggling

NAIROBI: A Vietnamese citizen has been arrested in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi for smuggling rhino horns out of Mozambique, APA learnt Monday. According to media reports, the arrest however took place, not in Maputo, but in Nairobi as the Vietnamese, named as 47 year old Vuanh Tuan, awas on transit at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport from Maputo and bound for Hanoi.

The head of the criminal investigation police at the airport, when he arrived at Nairobi on board a scheduled Kenya Airways flight from Maputo.

He said the police decided to search his luggage and found seven pieces of rhino horn, rhino tails and lion teeth weighing a total of 12 kilograms.

According to the Kenyan media reports, the value of these illicit wildlife goods amounted to $123,000.

The horns loaded onto the Kenya Airways flight in Maputo almost certainly came from some of the rhinos slaughtered across the border, in South Africa’s Kruger National Park.

Mozambique where many of the poachers hail from, certainly tops the list of poaching activities on the African continent.

Source: customstoday.com.pk

South African rhino survives horrific attack by poachers

Veterinarians in South Africa removed maggots and dead tissue from Hope, a 4-year-old rhino attacked by poachers, and applied dressing and fastened a fiberglass cast with steel screws.SUZANNE BOSWELL RUDHAM — AP

Read more here: http://www.sunherald.com/2015/05/25/6244662/south-african-rhino-survives-horrific.html#storylink=cpy

BY CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA

Associated Press

JOHANNESBURG — The rhino’s rescuers gave her a name: Hope.

Poachers in South Africa had darted the rhino with a tranquilizer and hacked off her horns while she was sedated, leaving the animal with a horrific wound covering much of her face. A couple of days later, staff on a wildlife reserve found the grievously injured rhino – alive.

Last week, veterinarians operated on the 4-year-old female, a rare survivor of increasing attacks by poachers who killed more than 1,200 rhinos last year in South Africa, home to most of the world’s rhinos. They removed maggots and dead tissue, applied dressing and fastened a fiberglass cast with steel screws. The wound measures 19.6 by 11 inches, the biggest of 10 similar cases that the team has treated in the last three years.

“If we can save Hope and she can go back and produce more offspring, then in her lifetime she would have contributed to the survival of the species,” said Dr. Gerhard Steenkamp, a veterinarian from the University of Pretoria. He is a member of Saving the Survivors, a South African group that treats rhinos with gunshot wounds, facial gouges and other injuries inflicted by poachers.

Demand for rhino horn is high in parts of Asia where it is seen as a status symbol and a cure for illness despite a lack of evidence that it can heal.

The rhino called Hope was attacked in Lombardini, a wildlife reserve in Eastern Cape province where several rhinos were poached recently.

Hope’s nasal bone was badly fractured and part was removed, exposing the sinus cavities and nasal passage. Surgery occurred May 18 after the rhino was transferred to another reserve. It could take at least a year for Hope’s wound to heal after multiple treatments, Steenkamp said.

It cost $75,000 to treat Lion’s Den, a rhino with a similar but less severe injury, and Thandi, a rhino whose horns were hacked off in 2012, recovered and gave birth in January, according to Saving the Survivors.

Group spokeswoman Suzanne Boswell Rudham said Monday of Hope: “She’s doing really well.”

Source: sunherald.com

Rhino horn smuggling ringleader jailed for 70 months

Hidden camera photo of Li purchasing rhino horns from an undercover USFWS agent © New Jersey U.S. Attorney's Office

Wildlife trafficker Zhifei Li has been sentenced to 70 months in prison for his role in trafficking 30 rhinoceros horns and numerous other rhino horn and elephant ivory artifacts from the US to China. The sentence is one of the longest ever handed out in the US for wildlife crime.

Zhifei Li, who owns an antique business called Overseas Treasure Finding in Shandong, China, admitted he was the “boss” of three antique dealers in the US whom he paid to obtain wildlife items and smuggle them to him via Hong Kong.

His arrest in January 2013 happened when he was caught purchasing two endangered black rhinoceros horns from an undercover US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) agent during “Operation Crash”. This was a US nationwide effort led by the USFWS and the Justice Department to investigate and prosecute those involved in the illegal wildlife trade.

“Li was the ringleader of a criminal enterprise that spanned the globe and profited from an illegal trade that is pushing endangered animals toward extinction,” said Sam Hirsch, Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division. “As this case clearly demonstrates, rhino trafficking is increasingly organised, well financed, and a threat to the rule of law. The United States is resolved to bring wildlife traffickers to justice.”

All species of rhinoceros are protected under United States legislation and commercial trade in rhinoceros horn is also not permitted under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). 

USFWS Director Dan Ashe said: “The sentence handed down today serves notice to other organised trafficking and poaching rings that their crimes will not go unpunished. We will relentlessly work across the US government and with the international law enforcement community to destroy these networks, while strengthening protections for rhinos in the wild and reducing demand for horn in consumer countries.”

Source:  wildlifeextra.com