The US has warned Taiwan and China that it will introduce trade sanctions
against them unless they destroy their stockpiles of rhino horn by the end
of August. Sanctions would be limited to exports of wildlife products.

But burning the horn could be counterproductive in the battle to save the
rhino, say the southern African countries, led by Zimbabwe’s environment
minister Herbert Murerwa. ‘Presumably, this spectacular move by the US has
been made to assist us,’ said Murerwa. ‘But Namibia, South Africa and
Zim-babwe, which hold by far the majority of rhinos in Africa, were not
consulted and do not support such measures. In fact, we want the opposite.
We want to trade – legally and now.’

Despite the 15-year ban on trade in rhino horn, the number of black rhinos
has crashed – from around 65 000 in 1977 to 2500. Numbers are still falling
by 28 per cent a year. ‘Black rhino are being hunted to extinction while we
are watching. The international community must drop the complacency and
identify additional ways of conserving rhinos. What we have done so far has
clearly not worked very well,’ says Tom Milliken, director of the
East/Southern Africa branch of TRAFFIC, the organisation that monitors trade
in endangered species.

Concerned that time is running out for Africa’s black rhinos, TRAFFIC has
set out a range of options to rescue the rhino – including legalising trade
in horn for the market in traditional oriental medicines.

The TRAFFIC report stresses the urgency of trying out ‘bold new
conservation initiatives’. It suggests a more concerted effort to establish
rhino sanctuaries. More controversial ideas include organised trophy hunting
or darting safaris where hunters pay to dart and dehorn rhino; sale of
live rhinos; and controlled sales of rhino horn from stockpiles.

China officially has 8500 kilograms of horn, and Taiwan 1465 kilograms.
Other countries, including India, Nepal, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe,
also have significant stockpiles.

Zimbabwe alone could supply enough horn for use in traditional medicines for
ten years from its stores. Dehorning 59 rhinos would yield 240 kilograms of
horn, the equivalent of Taiwan’s annual consumption. Although currently
illegal, parties to the Convention on Trade in Endangered Species ‘might
consider trade options for such stocks’, says TRAFFIC.

The idea of resurrecting trade in horn is heresy in many circles. Ros Reeve,
campaign director for the Environmental Investigation Agency, says: ‘We
support the calls for sanctions against Taiwan and China, and we support
upholding the ban on the rhino horn trade. There should be a campaign
against using horn in traditional medicines, combined with effective
enforcement against smugglers.’

But Raoul du Toit, on secondment to the Zimbabwean Department of National
Parks from the World Wide Fund for Nature, says: ‘The stance taken by
animal rights agencies on these issues is irresponsible, irrational and
self-serving.’ Long-term conservation strategies, he says, ‘must heed the
requirements of the (rhino) states rather than being influenced by Western
pressure groups.’

Rowan Martin, who had worked for the parks department for 20 years, lost his
job after a long power struggle between those who believe that some wildlife
can be privately owned and managed for profit, and those who think all
wildlife should belong to the state.

As part of a World Bank exercise to restructure the wildlife department,
Martin was one of three assistant directors chasing one new post of deputy
director. ‘Rowan Martin was widely regarded to be the favourite for
promotion, but shortly after the restructuring was announced in June 1992,
he was arrested under the Prevention of Corruption Act,’ says a senior
member of an environmental organisation. Martin was later released, but was
rearrested last January, charged with receiving a vehicle from conservation
supporters in the US in exchange for 18 endangered black rhinos which were
sent to breeding centres in the US and Australia last year.

The International Black Rhino Foundation, which was responsible for
establishing these breeding groups as insurance against the rhino’s
extinction in Africa, was outraged at the charge in which it was implicated.
Conservation groups in Zimbabwe saw the arrest as a ploy to remove Martin
from the promotion race. ‘In practice, it was difficult to consider him for
the job while he was on trial for corruption,’ says a colleague. Martin was
later exonerated by the Zimbabwe Supreme Court but only after he had been
overlooked for promotion.

Martin is suing the Zimbabwe Public Service Commission, claiming that the
service’s own regulations were not followed when the deputy director’s post
was filled.

Without Martin’s influence as one of the department’s top decision makers,
the shift away from wildlife management and towards the Western
protectionist approach seems to have begun already. This year’s scheduled
cull of 5000 elephants has not taken place. Willie Nduku, the director of
the national parks, says the department wants to remove 2000 elephants from
parts of Hwange National Park, the country’s largest park, where there are
more than the park can support. ‘If someone comes up with funds to capture
and move the ele-phants, then we will sell them,’ he says.

Many Western conservation groups, long-time critics of Zimbabwe’s wildlife
management policies, especially culling and the belief that wildlife must
pay for itself, will welcome a change of direction. Dave Currey of the
Environmental Investigation Agency applauds Martin’s removal. ‘He has been
promoting ivory trading and culling for so many years, so we are pleased to
see his voice removed from the international debate.’

Zimbabwe’s own wildlife groups are not so happy. While despondent over the
government’s apparent lack of political will to save black rhinos, they have
always supported the wildlife department in its culling programmes and even
the resumption of trade in ivory.

Jon Hutton of the Africa Resources Trust, a group based in Harare, says:
‘The fact is that Zimbabwe’s pragmatic wildlife conservation policy is
exactly right. I sincerely hope that the department does not cave in to
outside pressure.’

There is also concern that the new policy will bring back the old-style
state control of wildlife, ending promising initiatives based on wildlife
management and supported by mainstream conservation organisations, including
the World Wide Fund for Nature and the World Conservation Union. Local
conservation groups fear two key projects, the CAMPFIRE programme and
private breeding strongholds for black rhino, are threatened.

Martin was one of the architects of the CAMPFIRE programme, in which rural
communities earn money from wildlife. Because it has been so successful, the
amount of land given over to wildlife in the past five years has increased
from 12 to 35 per cent. ‘If the government moves away from sustainable use
and tries to bring wildlife back under direct state control, the CAMPFIRE
programme, which relies on rural communities having the legal right to
manage their own animals, will fail,’ says a spokesman for a wildlife group.

‘Already, huge swathes of private land which has been switched from cattle
to wildlife, because it gives the farmer a better economic return, is
considered to be land that is underused and liable to be reclaimed by a
government keen to keep its election promise to resettle people on farms,
and wildlife would once again be restricted to small national parks.’

Rhino conservancies, privately owned strongholds to protect black rhinos,
are already threatened. The government has started proceedings to forcibly
buy two large ranches, a majorpart of the Save Conservancy programme, as
part of its resettlement scheme.

In an experimental scheme code-named Operation Radio Rhino, transponders
will be implanted under the rhinos’ skins. The devices, which are 15 centimetres
long, will be shaped to fit the curve of a rhino’s neck. They will be covered
in inert beeswax to minimise the chance of rejection by the animal’s epidermal
tissue.

The transponders will allow staff at Zimbabwe’s national parks to monitor
the rhino’s movements 24 hours a day.

A central computer will from time to time instruct a transceiver to
transmit a radio signal which turns the transponder on. The transponder
replies with a short, powerful signal and another signal from the transceiver
then turns it off to conserve its batteries. By comparing the signals received
by at least two transceivers from the transponder the computer plots the
animal’s position.

The computer can be programmed to contact the rhinos at regular intervals
and to raise the alarm if the rhinos wander into an area where there is
a high risk of poaching. The vehicles operated by anti-poaching units can
also be fitted with transponders so that the computer can keep track of
where they are. Vehicles can then quickly be mobilised to ward off poachers.

The system can be set up to sound the alarm if a rhino is killed. Transponders
could also be implanted in the horn, so if it is chopped off, the computer
can track the horn and direct anti-poaching units to the area to arrest
poachers.

The system will also be used for research, such as monitoring where
animals roam. ‘Once you have established your receiver stations and your
computer base then you could put these transponders in elephants if you
wanted to know where the elephants were going,’ says Mike Kock, a vet with
the National Parks and Wildlife Department. Researchers working in remote
areas could also carry transponders to summon help in an emergency.

A £50 000 pilot system, developed by a South African electronics
company called UEC Projects, is being set up in Matusadona National Park
on the Zambian border, where the rhino population has dropped from an estimated
150 to just 16 in the past five years. Zimbabwe’s pilot scheme is being
run in parallel with another in the Natal Parks Board’s Umfolozi game reserve.
If successful and could be extended to other national parks.

‘We are now in a situation where we know how many rhino we have in Zimbabwe,
and we have a few crucial areas where we still have viable populations.
We really need to get on top of monitoring and identifying those animals,
setting up a system where we know where they are all the time,’ says Kock.

Poachers can easily enter national parks undetected and it may take
a while to find carcasses of the animals they have killed. ‘By the time
we react very often the poachers have gone back to Zambia, or wherever,
having killed rhino and taken the horn,’ says Kock. ‘This way, their chances
of being caught will be much greater.’

Since 1984, armed anti-poaching units from the Zimbabwe government and
Department of National Parks have been patrolling the Zambian border. The
government’s shoot-to-kill policy has cost the lives of over 200 poachers,
but in spite of this 1170 rhinos have been shot dead in the past eight years.

In the dry season, the male millipede spends most of his active periods
above ground in search of females to mate with. Once he finds a female he
grabs her, coils his body around her and then quickly moves, corkscrew-like,
up her body towards the head, where the female genitalia are located. Both
male and female reproductive organs are on their second body segments.

Males also have secondary genital appendages, called gonopods, which
are modified walking legs on the seventh segment of the body. The male
millipede must get into the coiled position with the female to transfer
sperm from his penis via the gonopods to her.

Now Mandy Barnett, a research student from the University of Cape Town,
has discovered that the males of some species (Orphorporus pyrhocephalus)
have twisted gonopods with scoop-like structures and a region of spines.
The male millipedes use their gonopods to scoop out sperm, which is then
scraped off onto the spines.

‘We have discovered that females are promiscuous and store sperm. This
leads to a process of sperm competition between the males that she mates
with,’ says Steven Telford of the University of Pretoria. The female’s sperm
storage organs, known as the spermathecae, can keep the sperm viable for
at least the duration of the breeding season. This may be as long as six
months.

To ensure that his sperm takes precedence, the male simply has to remove
the sperm from previous matings. Once the male has disposed of rival sperm
and deposited his own, he stays copulating with her for up to two hours.
‘This is a form of mate guarding,’ says Telford. ‘The male’s entire reproductive
investment in a female will be completely devalued if once he completes
his copulation the female then goes on to mate with another male.’

Sometimes a solitary male encountering a copulating pair will remain
in physical contact with them until the first male has had enough. Once
the female is freed the other male will take over and mate with her.

Mating can be brutal affair in these animals. The males are often much
larger than females and if a large male attempts to copulate with a small
female, he can snap the head clean off her body, says Telford. Doing what
comes naturally to get the right response

All trade in ivory has been banned since 1989, when the elephant was
added to Appendix 1 of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered
Species (CITES). SACIM was set up in response to the ban with the aim of
controlling sales of the region’s stores of ivory, which continue to accumulate
from the cropping of nuisance animals. Under the new plan, all future profits
from the trading of tusks and skins will be ploughed back into conservation
programmes in the member states, Botswana, Malawi, Namibia and Zimbabwe.

The southern African countries argue that a total ban on trade is not
the way to save the elephant and that their well-managed herds have become
so large that a regulated trade is in the best interests of both the species
and their economies.

Between them the four SACIM countries have some 144 000 elephants. A
recent aerial survey in Zimbabwe suggests that there are 45 000 elephants
in the Hwange National Park alone, three times as many as the vegetation
can support. Zimbabwe’s Department of National Parks says it will have to
begin culling animals next year.

‘People seem to think we are culling elephants because we want the ivory,’
says Mick Townsend, president of Zimbabwe’s Wildlife Society, ‘but we are
culling elephants because we have to.’

Development groups also want the trade ban lifted so that local people
can earn an income from managing wildlife. Rob Monro of the Zimbabwe Trust
says: ‘We are denying the right of people to utilise their resources.’ Since
the elephant trade ban was imposed, 200 hides worth about $50 000 from
one impoverished peasant farming area, Nyami Nyami, have rotted.

Wildlife activists reject southern Africa’s pleas to reopen a controlled
trade in ivory and skins, saying poaching has soared in spite of the ban.
SACIM countries insist poaching has increased because of the ban. ‘The illegal
trade has a monopoly on the market,’ says Monro, ‘If legal trade was opened
between, say, SACIM and Japan, there would be no middle men and the cost
of the end product would be lower, which would make the illegal trade uneconomic.’

At last year’s CITES meeting in Japan, the SACIM countries called for
the elephant to be downgraded to Appendix 2, which would allow controlled
trade in ivory. When it became clear that their request would not be granted,
the countries withdrew their application. They preferred to fall back on
‘reservations’ that all four tabled when the elephant was placed on Appendix
1. A CITES member with a reservation on a species is considered not to be
a part of the convention as far as that species is concerned and it can
trade with countries that have not signed CITES.

Last week’s talks in Harare centred on a report about possible ways
to control legal trade in ivory, prepared for SACIM by Richard Luxmore,
a Cambridge conservation specialist. Luxmore examined seven schemes for
marking tusks, and the board of SACIM opted for a self-adhesive strip with
a hologram, like those on a credit card, plus a bar code and a number. The
label can be used only once: pulling it off would destroy both the label
and the hologram. SACIM members hope that illegal traders will be unable
to copy the official hologram.

The ivory marketing controls will also include setting up a central
database in Gaborone, Botswana, into which the four countries will feed
data on the tusks they are trading. For each tusk, the database will hold
details of where the elephant came from, when it died, how it died, when
the ivory came into government possession and how it got from the field
into the SACIM store.

Chris Huxley of the Southern African Development Council in Malawi rules
out the possibility of poached ivory finding its way onto the market through
the system. ‘What we are talking about is four governments jointly marketing
their ivory. It would require all four governments to be corrupt in some
way or other for that to work, and that situation does not warrant consideration.’

The centre will set quotas for ivory production. Zimbabwe has more than
25 000 kilograms of stored ivory, worth about $500 a kilogram, and Malawi
2000 kilograms.

At the end of the meeting, delegates from the European Community and
Japan were invited into the discussions. Japan, traditionally a big buyer
of ivory, is keen to see trade start again and discussed how it could cooperate
in making controls watertight. ‘If a proposal was accepted by CITES, trade
between (SACIM countries) and Japan would be possible,’ says Huxley.

All the affected elephants live around the lake in the northwest of
Zimbabwe, a region in the grip of severe drought. As the lake has shrunk,
the concentration of lead in the water and in the vegetation around the
shore has increased.

The first case of flaccid trunk paralysis was in an old bull elephant
three years ago. This year observers have seen 10 elephants suffering from
the syndrome, but believe there may be many more. ‘It looks like an outbreak,’
says Nancy Kock, a vet at the University of Zimbabwe.

The paralysis is caused by degeneration of peripheral nerves and wasting
of the muscles. It starts at the tip of the trunk, preventing the animal
from picking things up, and travels upward until three-quarters of the trunk
is useless. By this stage the elephant cannot use the trunk to eat or drink,
and slings it across its tusks to avoid treading on it.

‘If it wasn’t for the fact that they live by the lake, they would die
from dehydration,’ says Kock. The elephants must walk deep into the lake
to drink with their mouths.

The elephants have also been seen using their feet to scoop food from
the ground. They can browse a little by throwing their trunks over branches
and dragging food into their mouths but they feed very slowly this way and
waste away.

According to Kock, the cause of the paralysis is probably lead poisoning.
‘It is not infectious, and it is not trauma, so that probably leaves some
form of toxicosis,’ says Kock.

Lake Kariba is one of the biggest tourist resorts in the country; water
skiing, fishing and houseboat holidays are very popular. Large commercial
fishing boats criss-cross the lake at night, looking for small fish. Fishing
weights, petrol, batteries, discarded oil filters and engine exhausts are
all sources of lead pollution.

The Zambezi Society, a local environment group, is assessing the impact
on the shoreline. ‘We are concerned about the heavy tourist use on the lake
and its potential impacts on water quality,’ says Dick Pitman. ‘We are not
jumping to any conclusions. We need to do more studies, analyse samples
for lead and do quantitative analyses of hydrocarbons.’

More than 75 per cent of Zimbabwe is not served by the country’s electricity
grid. Darkness falls year-round at about 6 pm. For emergency operations
later in the evening doctors are forced to work by candlelight or paraffin
lamps.

A year ago, a small wind generator was installed on the roof of the
clinic at Chayamiti, which is at an exposed site high on a plateau in the
eastern highlands. The injection and medicine preparation room, and the
main treatment room are now well lit. Lincolyn Sigauke, senior nurse at
the clinic is pleased with the wind generator’s performance. He says: ‘The
wind power is very good. It is very useful at night when we have serious
cases or emergencies.’

The generators were developed in Britain. Power generated by a windmill,
which has a 1-metre span, passes down a cable through a charge controller
to the storage batteries. There is enough power to run up to four lights.

‘It is a small machine, neat, easy to erect and easy to maintain,’ says
Nick Murga-troyd, a consultant on the wind-power programme in Zimbabwe,
which is funded by Britain’s Overseas Development Administration. ‘We have
had a similar machine operating in a hilly area further north for two years
with no maintenance and no operational problems at all.’

Before the windmills are installed, anemometers are used to monitor
winds at the site. From these measurements it is possible to calculate the
output of the turbine.

Wind power is a relatively new concept in Zimbabwe. The main thrust
of the country’s programme to use renewable energy is concentrated on solar
power.

‘It is unlikely in the near future that many communities and insstitutions
like scholls and clinics will ever be connected to the national grid,’ says
Murgatroyd, ‘So there is a pressing need to develop alternative sources
of energy supply.

In the rainy season between December and April, the area normally receives
540 millimetres of rain. This year only 50 millimetres fell. The rest of
the year is dry. The country’s maize crop has been hit badly and in several
cities, riot police were called in when people queuing for food went on
the rampage. Meteorologists say the severe drought this year is linked to
the worst El Nino in the Pacific for a decade (This Week, 21 March).

Gonarezhou’s hippo population of 200 is at risk and 13 carcasses have
already been found. The toll will increase as the Department of National
Parks and Wild Life cull hippos, elephants and impala to ease pressure on
vegetation. Meat will be distributed to local villagers and the hides tanned.

Grazing animals are the first to be affected by drought, but browsers,
especially kudus, eland and elephants will be next. ‘In the 1983 drought,
80 per cent of game animals died,’ says wildlife manager Clem Coetsee. ‘Then
we had surface water, but now the surface water just is not there. Unless
it rains I don’t believe there are going to be any animals left in the low
veld (lowlands) by September.’

There are still remnant pools dotted along the parched Lundi river in
the park, but there is no grass. Most hippos have left their pools in search
of grazing. Their normally rounded backs now have spines sticking out like
boat hulls, and activity is minimal. One desperate hippo cow and her calf
walked across the scorched riverbed at midday, to certain death. Hippos
cannot tolerate the sun: their skin blisters and cracks, they dehydrate
and die.

Local conservationists and game ranchers are feeding some hippos with
cane tops from a failed harvest, but fodder will soon run out. Last year
there were 24 000 cattle in the lowveld, now they are down to 9000. Many
former cattle ranchers in the area, who have switched to more lucrative
game ranching, are trying to save their animals by herding them into pens
using an air force helicopter. The cost of this, added to that of feeding
the animals for the rest of the year, could be prohibitive.

Penny Havnar, a local conservationist, is concerned that hippos are
less valuable to ranchers. ‘They are going to save useful species first,’
she says.

Donald Rule, the manager of a crocodile farm, is having problems keeping
his 15 000 crocodiles alive. He has already slaughtered 3000. ‘The drought
can only get worse,’ he says. ‘We have either got to find water or lose
all the crocodiles.’

Zebras have been transported to ranches in the north where more rain
has fallen. But cloven-hoofed animals such as buffaloes and kudus must stay
put or go through two months’ quarantine because they carry foot-and-mouth
disease. Gonarezhou is capable of sustaining 4000 elephants, but officials
say the numbers need to be reduced to save the damaged vegetation.

It is important to keep a breeding nucleus of each species alive, says
Rowan Martin, deputy director of National Parks and Wild Life. ‘ In Gonarezhou,
the elephants tend to have small bodies and big tusks,’ he says. ‘Blood
samples have been taken which show there has been no mixing of Gonarezhou
elephants and elephants in the west in Hwange National Park for several
hundred years. They are totally different genetic stock.’