Stiff Penalties Needed for Convicted Elephant Poachers and Ivory Smugglers

Elephant ivory confiscated from Nouabale-Ndoki National Park

The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) recently reported that three men have been convicted in the Republic of the Congo of killing elephants for their tusks and sentenced to five years in jail, along with being fined an equivalent of $10,000 each. The trio were part of a group of six poachers who reportedly invaded Nouabale-Ndoki National Park on January 13 and  were first sighted by researchers from the Goualougo Triangle Ape Project working in the southern part of the national park. Following information of gunfire, park authorities deployed four ranger teams who ambushed the poachers on February 2. However, the six-man group was able to escape but left behind sixteen tusks, along with equipment including an AK-47 rifle. Park authorities and local police managed to arrest the first half of the gang in the adjoining town of Pokola. The remaining three members are still at large, including the group's suspected leader. The convicted men reportedly admitted to have illegally entered the national park on several previous occasions in the last four years, and taking some 881 pounds of ivory. They are also thought to have connections to some of northern Congo's most infamous elephant poachers and ivory traffickers, such as Samuel Pembele who also received a five-year prison sentence for elephant poaching in the same area in 2016, and Daring Dissaka who was sentenced last year.

Forest elephants

I really think that sentencing elephant poachers to just five years in prison is not enough to send a message that elephant poaching in Africa or anywhere in the world will not be tolerated. This ongoing issue is known to benefit not just common poachers, but also international criminal syndicates and terrorist organizations. Therefore, I believe it is crucial to impose stiff penalties on anybody involved in elephant poaching and ivory smuggling. This means that instead of five years, anybody convicted of ivory poaching and smuggling should be sentenced to either ten to twenty years or even life in prison, depending on an individual's or a group of individuals' criminal history in these crimes. It is also necessary to impose the death penalty, especially on those individuals who happen to be major underworld figures who specialize in the illegal ivory smuggling. The key is to strike fear in the hearts of these blood-thirsty criminals, who ruthlessly slaughter the world's elephant populations as well as other endangered species in Africa and beyond to feed the insatiable appetite of the global criminal empire.

View article here