Category: Tourism

Kenya rebuked Britain, the United States, Australia and France on Thursday for issuing warnings about travel to the east African country and particularly its main port city after a series of attacks there.

Kenya called the alerts “unfriendly”, saying they would increase panic and play into the hands of those behind the gun and grenade assaults.

Kenya has blamed bomb blasts in the capital Nairobi and the main port city Mombasa this month, as well as other attacks, on the al Qaeda-linked Somali group al Shabaab.

The Islamist movement killed at least 67 people including foreigners in a raid on a Nairobi shopping mall in September, saying it was in revenge for attacks on its fighters by Kenyan troops in Somalia.

The warnings may further damage Kenya’s tourism sector, one that President Uhuru Kenyatta said is “on its knees” following the raids in the capital and along the Indian Ocean coastline.

Karanja Kibicho, the principal secretary at the foreign affairs department, said Kenya was assuring its visitors of “utmost security and safety”, and lamented the advisories by countries also involved in its fight against the militants.

“The advisories therefore are obviously unfriendly acts coming from our partners who have equally borne the brunt of global terrorism and no doubt understand the repercussions of terror menace,” Kibicho said.

“The challenges arising from acts of terrorism require concerted efforts to fight it and not behaving in a manner that accelerates it by causing fear and panic.”

agencies

{{Poachers are slaughtering Tanzania’s elephants for their ivory at such alarming rates that the population could be completely wiped out in just seven years, conservationists told a conference on Friday.}}

The two-day UN-backed conference which opened on Friday aims to come up with strategies to stem worsening elephant poaching in Tanzania, a top safari destination determined to protect its prized wildlife assets but struggling to deal with increasingly sophisticated organised crime gangs.

“Approximately 30 elephants a day are killed, at this rate the population will be exterminated by 2020”, the Tanzanian elephant protection society (TEPS), an independent conservation group, said.

Tanzanian Vice President Mohamed Gharib Bilal opened the summit by asking for international assistance in battling the increasingly well-organised and equipped poaching gangs.

“Organised and intricate poaching networks in and outside the country sustain this illegal trade, thus making it difficult for Tanzania alone to win this battle”, Bilal said, painting a bleak picture of the situation.

Tanzanian police launched late last year a crackdown on suspected poachers amid a spate of killings of elephant and rhino, operating under what was reported to be a shoot-to-kill policy and making sweeping arrests.

While poaching rates dropped drastically, the operation was shut down because of allegations of harassment, rape and murder of suspected poachers.

But TEPS director Alfred Kikoti said he wanted the military to resume its role battling poachers.

“They have to stay in there, protecting our elephants”, he said. “They can’t just be in there for one operation and then pull out. It needs to be a longer term commitment.”

Poaching has risen sharply in Africa in recent years. Besides targeting rhinos, whole herds of elephants have been massacred for their ivory, threatening the tourism sector, a key foreign currency earner for Tanzania.

Organised gangs with insider knowledge and armed with automatic weapons and specialised equipment such as night vision goggles, use chainsaws to carve out the rhino horn or remove elephant tusks.

Millions of dollars of elephant tusks and rhino horns are smuggled out of East Africa each year, according to United Nations experts, with demand fuelled by an increasingly affluent Chinese middle class.

In 2006, the elephant population of Tanzania’s vast Selous-Mikumi ecosystems, once hosting one of the largest elephant populations in the world, numbered 70 000, Bilal said.

Last year, there were only 13 000 elephants there.

Tourism, some 90% of which is wildlife based, accounts for 17% of Tanzania’s gross domestic product and employs over 300 000 people, according to official statistics.

– AFP

{{A new report has listed Africa’s seven “corrupt governments” that support elephant poaching.}}

On the list are Tanzania, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Sudan, Gabon and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The report, Ivory’s Curse: The Militarisation and Professionalisation of Poaching in Africa, released early this week, accuses public officials in the named countries of condoning or arming criminals who kill elephants and rhinos for their tusks and horns, respectively.

The report is a joint effort by the conservation group Born Free USA and C4ADS, a non-profit organisation that analyses the drivers of conflict and insecurity.

It says organised crime, government corruption and militias were all linked to elephant poaching and the illegal ivory trade.

According to the report, poachers in Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Sudan and Kenya moved across borders with near impunity.

Mr Adam Roberts, the Born Free USA CEO, said: “For years, Born Free USA and other animal advocates have campaigned against the trade in elephant ivory, but on conservation and animal welfare concerns.

And we wanted to find a little bit more detail about who was behind the ivory trade.

It’s not just enough to say it’s criminal syndicates, nefarious profiteers. We wanted to know who is really behind it so that we can try and get governments around the world to do more to crackdown.”

{{A defence analyst}}

Mr Roberts said Born Free needed some help in gathering that kind of information.

“That’s one of the reasons that we commissioned C4ADS to do the report for us. Because I think the breadth of our capabilities within the conservation community are pretty much limited to conservation.

But having a defence analyst that looks at the militarism behind all of these poaching incidents gives them access to information that we wouldn’t otherwise have.”

The latest report follows the one released by Interpol early in the year that also named Tanzania as among the leading sources of illegal ivory in the East African region last year, while Kenya and Uganda have become favourite transit routes, according to the international security agency.

The Interpol report showed Tanzania’s elephant population plummeting in recent years and that in the largest Selous Game reserve, which boasted the world second largest elephant population at 70,000 s in 2006, had an estimated 39,000 in in 2009 and currently stands at 13,084.

Ivory’s Curse: The Militarisation and Professionalisation of Poaching in Africa found unique problems in each country — though many of them were marked by conflict.

It says, in Sudan, government-allied militias fund their operations by poaching elephants outside the borders.

In the DR Congo, state security forces provide rebels with weapons and support in exchange for ivory.

NMG

{{Tanzania’s anti-poaching squad in Manyoni District has seized a total of 61 elephant tusks during the past seven days.}}

The head of the special task force, Mr. Robert Mande, said the seizure was a result of a systematic manhunt by the team for a period of almost two months.

“We embarked on a strategy to dismantle the poaching network in this area on February 1, 2014. Through the cooperation with the Anti-poaching Zonal Office for Manyoni, we managed to capture five suspects on Monday,” he said.

The suspects, including a village executive officer, were found in possession of 53 elephant tusks, weighing 169.7Kgs.

Mande said, “To get the tusks, the suspects might have killed some 26 elephants.”

Tanzania government, says it will employ some 450 new game rangers in the coming few days to boost the war on poaching.

{Tanzania’s Natural Resources and Tourism minister Lazaro Nyalandu inspects seized elephant tusks in Manyoni on Wednesday. Five people were arrested in connection with the haul.}

{{The frequency of International tourists to kenya dropped by 7% in the last one year due to terror attacks in the east African country.}}

Tourism Cabinet Secretary Phyllis Kandie said the Westgate Mall terror attack had a negative impact on the number of international tourists visiting the country.

“Tourism is sensitive to terrorism and incidences in the last one year particularly Westgate affected the number of international tourists,” she said.

She was giving a brief to the media alongside other Cabinet Secretaries on Tuesday at Harambee House, Nairobi.

On Monday, Industrialisation Cabinet Secretary Adan Mohamed, Ms Judi Wakhungu (Water), Mr Felix Kosgei (Agriculture) and Principal Secretary Mariam Elmaki addressed the media and outlined their achievements in the last one year.

Ms Kandie said the ministry had to take urgent measures to assure international visitors of their safety in Kenya.

She said domestic tourism increased in the past year with bed capacity increasing from 37 per cent to 41 per cent.

The CS said they were now focusing on enhancing domestic tourism in Kenya and also East Africa.

“We are also looking to diversify from only marketing the coast and safari and focus on business tourism,” she said.

Ms Kandie said Kenya hosted 31 international conferences despite the terror attacks, an indication that there is potential in business tourism.

She said the ministry will construct two conference facilities of international standards in Nairobi and Mombasa.

She also said the ministry was working to boost agri-tourism, sports tourism and adventure tourism.

NMG