E.J. Churchill, who once offered elephant shooting at a not unreasonable £4,700. Company director Sir Edward Dashwood is an admirable old card, once saying of pachyderm poaching, ‘Go and shoot an elephant, it’s like having the most expensive bottle of wine you can have at every meal, with vintage champagne and caviar.’ Although he no longer organizes these worthy African breaks, he may be able to recommend like-minded sorts who still do. If he’s reluctant to help, your third port of call is Zimbabwe-based Nyakasanga Hunting Safaris, who offer professional licensed hunters to target male elephants.
Bull’s-eye
Once you’ve made it to Zim, make efforts to shoot only bulls. Men might be increasingly redundant in human society, but they’re still required to do the business out here on the African plains. Spread the word to the local poaching networks that you’ll pay $1,000 – valuable foreign currency – to anyone who slays an elephant. Alternatively, contact Zimbabwe’s National Parks and Wildlife Management Authority, which has reportedly been offering farmers the chance to buy elephants. According to the authority’s director, Maurice Mutsambiwa, they have at least 55,000 too many. The going price is £1,000. What a snip.
So, hurrah! There is at least some good news coming out of modern-day Zimbabwe. Mugabe may run the risk of being under-appreciated, but you must applaud his well-crafted food shortages which impel his countrymen to kill elephants for food and his officials to deal in ivory in order to feed their families. One national park has, according to reports, been instructed to slaughter elephants to feed the villages on Independence Day. What a feast! All indications are that your poachers will be able to operate with impunity as long as Mugabe gets his return. Zimbabwe’s elephants stand no chance.
Ivory coast
The cull should next be encouraged to move on to Zambia’s 30,000 elephants and then Botswana’s 123,000 creatures, followed by an efficient extermination of Namibia’s 12,000. Next, the 17,000 of South Africa, the 24,000 of Mozambique and, finally, on to Kenya’s population of 32,000. It is now early 2012 and more than 350,000 elephants in Africa have vanished. As southern Africa is cleansed, mobs up north have extinguished the Loxodonta africana in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroon, Tanzania and Nigeria where, in places, the fog of war has abetted your programme.
Unsurprisingly, the massive market of China is obsessed with ivory; its elite will do anything to get their hands on the new ‘white gold’. And while Japan might be the only certified country able to receive ivory stockpiles, all illegal African ivory will be easily diverted en route to this rising star of the East. Chinese traders will facilitate the movement. Dozens of companies there are currently registering in preparation to legally sell ivory. The China National Petroleum Corporation and its Ministry of Defence have both been linked to the ivory trade. Even the Communist Party of China has been involved, which just goes to show that socialism works in mysterious ways. China is currently pressing for the ivory moratorium to be lifted. Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe, meanwhile, are chasing regular export quotas. Even if they fail, it really doesn’t matter as long as the teeth reach China. There they can use it how they want: ivory chopsticks, figurines, spectacle frames – you name it. All that is important is maintaining the fabulously well-formed smuggling route from the poaching camps of Africa to the shipping magnates of China.
African nations should learn from the example of Zambia. A shipment of 6.5 tonnes of ivory – 6,000 elephants’ worth – was intercepted in Singapore, most likely on its way to China. When questioned, Zambia’s government played dumb. Its official documentation claimed that only 135 elephants had been killed in the country during the entire previous decade. Their bluff worked, but in the future countries should at least attempt to make their story plausible.
Keep an eye on other potential markets. Europe has always been partial to ivory. Again, aristocracy may have a part to play. Down the road from Holland and Holland is the barbershop George F. Trumper Ltd, patronized by the royals since Queen Victoria’s reign. The ‘finest traditional gentlemen’s barber in London’ was once fined £10,000 for dealing illegal ivory shaving brushes and the like. Soon after, the Met realized that protecting animals was actually a bit of a lame pastime in the face of real crime, and the four-strong unit was scaled back to two because accountants felt that £40,000 from a £2.5 billion budget could be better spent. And so the ivory keeps on coming. Recent audits found 27,000 ivory items on sale in 1,143 shops across Germany, UK, France and Spain. Germany hoarded more than 16,444 items, with the UK coming in at a respectable second-place with 8,325. If all goes well, one day, quite soon, such figures will seem ridiculously, naively, low.
WHAT’S THE DAMAGE?
* Well-known environmental group calls for large-scale trophy hunting of elephants with proceeds spent on conservation measures. Certain.
* China’s president appears on state television wearing what looks suspiciously like an ivory bracelet, beads and ring. He responds to international opprobrium by explaining it was a gift from his African friends. Chinese media remarks how handsome their leader looks. Unlikely.
* Price of ivory reaches £1,100 in 2014 after conservation groups announce that the wild African elephant population has collapsed. A rare interception of ivory for Beijing is traced back by DNA to Mugabe’s presidential herd. Improbable.
* As poaching spirals out of control, world leaders promise international efforts to save the elephant. Britney Spears goes slightly madder and media attention shifts stateside. The Serengeti is all but forgotten. Probable.
* Intent on proving he is more bonkers than Spears, Mugabe announces he cannot find any of his country’s elephants. Last seen riding naked into the jungle on the back of his last surviving presidential elephant. Feasible.
Likelihood of African elephant reaching unsustainable levels by 2020: 71%
Sea into the future
AGENDA
* Kill the krill
* Vacuum the Southern Ocean
* Up your seafood intake
* Celebrate the health benefits
It is the one that most definitely got away. Amidst the perishing netherworld of the vast Southern Ocean lies the holy grail of fishermen: the krill. Little is known for certain about this bug-eyed crustacean. What is beyond dispute is that it has become the largest marine resource left on the planet. Trillions of krill bob about in these mysterious waters, an estimated 7 million for every person, and their importance to the health of the planet is slowly and increasingly becoming a matter beyond debate.
Between a Rokke and a hard place
The krill supports practically all life in the Southern Ocean, including those lording it at the scenic end of the food chain. Among them, the mightiest animal on the earth, the blue whale; the greatest seabird, the albatross; not to mention all manner of adorable seals and dolphins. Without krill, the ecosystem of Antarctica, the planet’s last unspoilt continent, would collapse and the world’s fourth largest ocean would become a vast and boundless empty space. Hoovering the Southern Ocean of krill would see its freezing depths colonized with nutritionally useless gelatinous blobs called salps. An ocean currently teeming with life would become a wobbling wasteland of jelly.
Time, then, for the great krill cull. Market research suggests that these crustaceans will prove a sure-fire hit in the supermarkets. The meat contains two of the most sought-after health ingredients around, omega-3-rich phospholipids and the antioxidant astaxanthin. If krill could be supplied to those eager to self-improve, millions of the world’s most health-conscious consumers, ready to embrace the newest