Kenya starts forest eviction

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Poachers kill 65 elephants, 30 rhinos in Zimbabwe: official
Harare (AFP) Nov 16, 2009 - An international crime syndicate is behind an escalation in poaching in Zimbabwe which has slaughtered 65 elephants and 30 rhinos this year, a wildlife official said Monday. "From January to October this year we have lost 65 elephants through poaching," Vitalis Chadenga, operations director of the Zimbabwe National Parks and Wildlife Authority told journalists. "In the same period we have lost 24 black and six white rhinos. It is true that we have witnessed an escalation of poaching nationwide, particularly on private farms." The black rhino is listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the white rhino is categorised as "near threatened." "We do have a group of international gangsters, who are funding poachers around this part of the world and taking away many horns and it is a major problem," Chadenga said.

He could not provide numbers from last year, but said poaching was on the rise. "We have arrested 2,500 poachers in the same period, ten poachers have been shot dead since the beginning of this year," Chadenga said. Zimbabwe has a population of nearly 100,000 elephants, which Chadenga said has been growing over recent years, and is banned from international ivory trade. The southern African nation has 26 tonnes of ivory in its stocks and four tonnes of rhino horns. Last year, Zimbabwe auctioned four tonnes of ivory to buyers from Japan and China getting 487,162 dollars (380,268 euros). During the same period, Namibia, Botswana and South Africa sold a total of 102 tonnes of tusks. The four countries are home to 312,000 elephants, and their government stocks of tusks came from natural deaths or the culling of herds to keep the population under control.

by Staff Writers
Nairobi (AFP) Nov 16, 2009
The Kenyan government on Monday began evicting settlers from the Mau forest, the country's main water catchment area, which deforestation has shrunk by a quarter in 20 years, an official told AFP.

"The operation commences today. It targets illegal settlers in the southwestern part of the Mau," said Christian Lambrechts, a scientist from the United Nations Environment Programme under contract to the government.

"The people who are in this forest have no title deeds," he said, referring to the bamboo forest affected by the first batch of evictions from the wider Mau complex, which covers 400,000 hectares or almost one million acres.

When the first phase of the evictions is completed, the government will still have to deal with the more sensitive issue of the other settlers who have title deeds.

The fate of the Mau, coupled with one of the worst droughts in years, has sparked an intense political debate and an unprecedented environmental drive in Kenya this year.

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Senegal's dream of a 'Green Wall' against the desert
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There is little to show for it apart from small acacia shrubs, but Senegal's leader believes in a Great Green Wall that will stem desertification across Africa from coast to coast. The project, launched in 2005, was meant to concern nations from Senegal on the Atlantic Ocean to Djibouti on the Red Sea. But four years later, the Green Wall has barely emerged from the dust, and its support ... read more

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