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Fol­low­ing the July 24 mas­sacre of dozens of ele­phants in south­west­ern Chad (see map), Pres­i­dent Idriss Déby Itno sent heli­copters to the Mayo Lemie — Chari Baguirmi area to catch the poach­ers, accord­ing to Stephanie Verg­ni­ault, pres­i­dent of SOS Ele­phants, a wildlife NGO. Pres­i­dent Déby also gave orders to check all the country’s exit points for both the poach­ers and smug­gled ivory.

Reput­edly, Pres­i­dent Déby is per­son­ally con­cerned about ele­phant poach­ing and was unhappy to learn of last week’s inci­dent. The poach­ing inci­dent occurred while Déby was in Congo (Braz­zav­ille) for the 11^th Heads of State Sum­mit of the Cen­tral African Eco­nomic and Mon­e­tary Com­mu­nity (CEMAC).

« Stephanie Verg­ni­ault, pres­i­dent of SOS Elephants

The President’s action fol­lowed inter­na­tional report­ing on the inci­dent. Mongabay​.com broke the story on July 26. Fol­low­ing this, Chad’s Min­is­ter of Envi­ron­ment and Fish­eries Resources, Mr. Mahamat Bashir Oko­rmi, issued a state­ment on July 27 say­ing that a group of poach­ers was oper­at­ing around the cities of Massenya, Bug-​Moro and Guélen­deng and ask­ing for “the coop­er­a­tion of the peo­ple to facil­i­tate their arrest.”

Accord­ing to Verg­ni­ault of SOS Ele­phants, the ini­tial effort by gov­ern­ment troops was unsuc­cess­ful since the poach­ers were likely camp­ing deep in the bush and were sup­ported by a local well-​organised syn­di­cate. She said the local ivory smug­gling group uses “cars with tinted glasses with no num­bers on their cars to sup­ply the poach­ers with weapons and food.” As a result, the poach­ers “do not nec­es­sar­ily need to go to the local vil­lages to buy what they need” and are thus dif­fi­cult to find. While many Cha­di­ans may know about the ivory traf­fick­ing, Verg­ni­ault says “they are so afraid to lose their life that they shut their mouth.”

Ear­lier this week, accord­ing to Verg­ni­ault, Pres­i­dent Déby sent 200 sol­diers in two heli­copters and 15 pickup trucks to patrol the area. He also sent inves­ti­ga­tors to search for infor­ma­tion around Zak­ouma National Park, pre­sum­ably to ascer­tain if there might be a con­nec­tion between the poach­ers oper­at­ing there, who are said to be from the Jan­jaweed mili­tia, and those oper­at­ing into the Mayo Lemie and Chari Baguirmi region.

The President’s involve­ment made Verg­ni­ault more opti­mistic that the poach­ers will be appre­hended. “I really believe he will catch some poach­ers soon,” she said.

SOS Ele­phants is call­ing for the estab­lish­ment of a per­ma­nent Mobile Brigade for the Pro­tec­tion of Wildlife and a secu­rity cor­don around the area where the mas­sacre occurred or estab­lish­ment of a for­mal pro­tected area in the Mayo Lemié — Chari Baguirmi area. SOS Ele­phants, with its camp in the area, mon­i­tors the region. This week it reported that the ele­phant herds that had been chased by poach­ers have now “crossed the river [and] are again nearby our camp and appar­ently they are look­ing for protection.”

The above news item is reprinted from mate­ri­als avail­able at Mongabay​.com. Orig­i­nal text may be edited for con­tent and length.

(Source: Mongabay, 03.08.2012)