IT’S reported that nearly half the declared natural World Heritage Sites are threatened by poaching, illegal fishing and logging.
CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) says 45 percent of the more than 200 such areas are facing serious problems because of such illegal activities.
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Threatened World Heritage Sites include Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, the Virunga National Park in the Congo and the Galapagos Islands, all with unique populations of flora and/or fauna.
Species under threat include the African elephant, rhinos, tigers, the vaquita (the world’s smallest porpoise found in Mexico), the giant Mexican fish and the totoaba (a fish prized in China for its swim bladder).
Illegal logging includes the felling of rosewood and ebony trees, and many other species. Illegal logging alone is worth some R1,400-billion a year. And it’s been calculated that the African tourism industry loses about R350-million a year because of elephant poaching.
The illegal trade in wild fauna and flora is now one the world’s big five of organised crime, along with drugs, money laundering and counterfeiting, the arms trade and human trafficking.*
Moving on to India for some positive news, farmers in a remote village in the eastern Indian state of Orissa have finally solved the problem of elephant raiders, it’s solar power.
The village of Baghuapat is not on the national electricity grid and it abuts the Mahanadi Elephant Reserve, so elephants are bound to be a problem.
However, an Indian NGO heard of the villagers’ plight and introduced them to solar power.
The villagers soon found that lights set around the edges of the village at night kept the elephants out and thus encouraged they set up an electric fence around their vegetable fields, the result is an elephant-free zone.*
Certainly an interesting development and one that can quite easily be copied here in Africa, where there is also much negative inter-action between elephants and farmers.
More news of India’s hungry elephants comes from the north eastern state of Assam, where in the middle of the night elephants raided a compound on a tea estate, damaging a number of houses and a shop.
If that wasn’t bad enough, in the morning the shop keeper discovered that the elephants had broken the till and eaten over R5,000 in 2,000 and 500 rupee notes. They apparently ignored the notes of lower denominations. One has to wonder if the local police are on the lookout for elephants on a spending spree.*
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Finally, floods have apparently always been an issue in China, but as long ago as the 3rd century BC engineers were working on solutions. The Dujiangyan Irrigation Project in Sichuan Province in south western China has been operating successfully for 2 300 years.
Engineer Li Bing organised the diversion of the Min River via a system of weirs and irrigation canals to bring an end to the annual flooding and resultant chaos in the Chengdu Valley. The most important part of Li Bing’s plan is a water diversion levee, a permanent structure that separates flood water at different levels and channels it into the canal system. **
*Save the Elephants News Service. ** The Digging Stick, magazine of the South African Archaeological Society.
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