African governments and private conservation groups are increasingly turning to militarised anti-poaching tactics to suppress the rise in illegal wildlife trade, a new Small Arms Survey says.

The past few years have seen African countries adopt military tactics in their anti-poaching efforts following an unprecedented spike in demand for ivory, rhino horn and other endangered species in Asian markets.

In Africa, elephant populations are on the decline and the illicit killing of rhinos has risen sharply in recent years, according to the survey.

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The continent has about 650,000 elephants, but more than 20,000 are killed every year by poachers, while the rate at which rhinos are killed, the report says, will surpass birth rates by 2018.

This has made protecting African wildlife a dangerous business as poachers use sophisticated military hardware such as high-calibre hunting rifles, large ammunition and even helicopters.

“Wildlife crime, as we see it today, is like nothing we have ever seen before,” said Dr Paula Kahumbu, one of Kenya’s leading conservationists. “This is organised crime with international criminal cartels working like mafia. You cannot expect a community to respond against such forces and that’s why we need to have paramilitary forces.”

Security issue

Conservation groups have in recent years been calling on governments to treat wildlife crime as an international security issue after reports linked terrorist groups and militias to the illegal trade.

Dr Kahumbu also said that having heavily armed park rangers is not enough to protect the animals as they are protecting communities as well from poachers.

In 2013, more than 100 park rangers lost their lives in the line of duty, with poachers and militia responsible for 69 of those deaths, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

In Africa, poaching has been linked to armed militias, terrorist groups, rogue security officers and organised transnational criminal networks, who often outgun and outnumber park rangers.

Armed groups from the Darfur region have killed elephants in Chad and Cameroon, while militias in the Central African region, including Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army, have been accused of decimating elephants in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

READ: Illegal trade in wildlife, timber funding militia

“It’s now an international security issue,” said Dr Kahumbu.

“We have containers moving through Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania and nobody knows what’s in them... they may be just stealing our national heritage, but they could also be moving weapons and disrupting the peace in the region.”

African governments have responded by militarising wildlife conservation efforts, and some countries have even deployed national armies to protect elephants and rhinos.

Cameroon, Botswana, Kenya, South Africa, and Zimbabwe are amongthe countries that have recently increased military involvement and the use of military techniques and technology in anti-poaching efforts, according to the Small Arms Survey.

“South Africa, which loses up to 300 rhinos a year, has gone completely military. They have trained their rangers as if they are in a war,” said Dr Kahumbu, who is also the head of the Nairobi-based WildLife Direct.

In Uganda, President Yoweri Museveni has given the army the authority to shoot anyone suspected of being a poacher inside the country’s national parks.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes says East African ports are the primary export points for ivory to international markets.

Since 2010, the number of elephants killed has increased by 50 per cent. Since 2009, all large-scale ivory seizures recorded by the Elephant Trade Information System have taken place on routes between Africa and Asia.

Reports show that illicit mineral transporters, freight forwarding companies, shipping agents, and politicians facilitate this complex multibillion dollar trade in endangered species.

Tanzania’s Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism, Lazaro Nyalandu, recently demonstrated how serious the poaching crisis in the region is when he said his country’s elephant population has declined by 60 per cent in just six years.

In Southern Africa, the number of elephants killed is low compared with East, Central and West Africa, which continue to face challenges of weak governance, ongoing armed conflicts, small arms proliferation, and militias.

“Elephant populations in these areas are now low, with some groups nearing extinction,” the Small Arms Survey says.

In most parts of Africa, rhino populations have become locally extinct or are in drastic decline. The majority live in South Africa.

Data from Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Cites) shows that about 20,954 rhinos live in South Africa, 2,274 in Namibia, and 1,025 in Kenya. But South Africa has been the worst hit by poachers, with about 1,004 rhinos poached in 2013 and 1,215 in 2014.

In Kenya, 59 rhinos — or nearly 6 per cent of the national herd — were poached in 2013.

“These states have emphasised the military training of rangers, established special anti-poaching task forces, and enhanced intelligence capabilities with helicopters, satellite imagery, and, in some countries, drone usage,” the survey says.

Most government-run national parks remain ill-equipped to defend against sophisticated poachers, but in the past few years, private conservancies have been borrowing tactics from counterterrorism and special operations to upgrade the abilities of park rangers to match those of the sophisticated poachers.

In Kenya, two private conservancies, Lewa and Ol Pejeta, are leading the way in militarising security in their parks, significantly reducing incidents of poaching.

They have developed reliable intelligence networks with the communities around them, complementing them with sniffer dogs, attack dogs, helicopters and other aircraft for a fast response in case of threats.

Last year, the World Parks Congress recognised the two as the best protected conservancies in the world.

While militarising conservation could in the long run help deter poachers, statistics from South Africa show that the tactic is hardly working. Last year, the country recorded more than 300 cases of poaching.

But, according to Dr Kahumbu, the problem is not on the supply side but on the demand side. “The problem is demand. And it’s coming from China, Vietnam and the Philippines. So long as we don’t put pressure on those governments to eliminate the trade, prices will always continue to rise. It has nothing to do with how many rangers you have,” she said.

Recently, China, the biggest market for ivory in the world, finally bowed to international pressure.

“There has been so much embarrassment for China: People protesting, writing petitions and some surveys revealing that its own citizens want the government to stop the trade,” Dr Kahumbu said.

African governments have also become more aggressive in prosecuting poachers, charging several Chinese nationals, with poaching related crimes.

Two weeks ago, Mozambique authorities arrested five Chinese nationals suspected of poaching, and last year, Kenya slapped a $200,000 fine on a Chinese ivory smuggler, setting a precedent in prosecuting wildlife crimes that often attract low fines.