Category
🐳
AnimalsTranscript
00:00 (birds chirping)
00:02 When I look what has happened in Kusungu
00:09 and what I've seen happen in the region,
00:13 I get motivated by a sense of outrage.
00:16 (gunshot)
00:28 (gunshot)
00:30 My name is Michael Abushain.
00:46 I'm currently the program head
00:49 of the IFAW Kusungu Luwambi Lukasuzi
00:54 Elephant Landscape Project.
00:58 If you look at the levels of animals
01:02 that were to be found in Malawi's
01:05 eight national parks and wildlife reserves in the 1970s
01:10 and compare it to today,
01:13 Kusungu is unquestionably the most depleted park.
01:17 Kusungu National Park is about 230,000 hectares
01:25 and it used to be part of a huge and very rich system
01:30 that ran into the Luwango Valley.
01:32 And what we have, instead of animals moving
01:35 through a vast and rich system,
01:38 we've had animals compressed into a tiny part of habitat
01:42 that they're choosing only to escape poaching pressure.
01:46 Now the extent of this destruction is overwhelming.
01:54 You see the absolute collapse
01:57 of all our large mammal populations.
01:59 Elephants declining from 1,200 to 46.
02:05 Buffalo declining from over 1,000 to about 60.
02:10 Zebra declining from about 500 to six.
02:16 You're looking at the loss of the value of the animal.
02:19 You're looking at the loss of the value
02:21 of the tourism product.
02:23 You're looking at the massive cost
02:24 of trying to recreate what we've lost.
02:28 And if you look at Malawi,
02:30 one of the poorest countries in the world,
02:33 to have this type of loss is quite staggering.
02:37 And that is just in economic terms.
02:42 If you look at the extent of the suffering of the animals,
02:45 the extent of the cruelty, that too is overwhelming.
02:52 And we have to ask ourselves
02:54 what is the correct response to this?
02:58 Are we actually going to have what it takes
03:06 to address this problem and confront the people
03:11 that are taking the value from this park,
03:14 from the natural system, and from the people of Malawi?
03:21 Our primary focus is a focus on law enforcement.
03:25 So it's an armed law enforcement operation
03:30 aimed at combating armed criminals.
03:34 One of our huge problems in Kusungu
03:41 that is actually prevalent and rampant
03:44 throughout sub-Saharan Africa
03:47 is your corrupt range of force.
03:50 So a lot of our rangers currently in Kusungu
03:54 are either colluding with poachers
03:56 or actively involved in poaching.
03:58 People often ask me how many officers are needed in the park.
04:06 And the correct answer to that
04:08 is how many officers can you properly train,
04:13 equip,
04:15 monitor,
04:17 motivate,
04:18 evaluate, and deploy?
04:20 The worst thing you can do
04:24 if you've got a corrupt range of force
04:26 is to double it or triple it.
04:28 Our main thrust going forward
04:34 is to identify the honest rangers
04:37 and to reinforce them
04:39 through training, equipment, and leadership.
04:43 Secondly, we're going to evaluate the entire staff.
04:48 And thirdly, we need to do highly selective training
04:53 to identify the right material
04:56 and to bring them into the range of force.
04:59 We've chosen these 12 officers to attend the training.
05:08 And they will have a huge impact
05:12 on the slow turning around of Kusungu.
05:15 - Standing position!
05:18 - This is now the third day of their training.
05:22 Before they're certified as part of the unit,
05:26 they've got to undergo a total of 36 days of training.
05:30 So this is the first step.
05:32 And through the training, monitoring, and evaluation,
05:37 we'll wield them into an effective force.
05:41 - Standing position!
05:45 - Standing position!
05:47 - We find ourselves at Singwe Camp.
05:51 And the reason why we develop in Singwe Camp
05:54 is that it will secure a very vulnerable part
05:58 of Kusungu National Park.
06:00 What we want to set up here is barracks.
06:04 So we want an elite unit to come in here
06:08 where they are secure,
06:10 where we control their communications and their movement.
06:13 We brief them, we deploy from here.
06:16 Here we control them.
06:18 They cannot leak information to the poachers for reward.
06:22 - Sometimes our rangers,
06:27 they fall poachers up to a distance
06:29 of 15 to 20 kilometers overnight.
06:31 The food that we are preparing,
06:34 they will give them energy to fall poachers
06:36 wherever they go.
06:37 We are trying to build them to be strong
06:39 so that when they are encountering those poachers,
06:41 they need to be strong as well.
06:44 - If a poacher shoots an animal
06:46 inside Kusungu National Park,
06:48 our anti-poaching efforts try to track him down
06:52 and bring him to justice.
06:54 If he leaves the boundary of the park
06:57 and he wants to trade with that ivory outside the park,
07:01 that is where our intelligence and investigations focus
07:05 kicks in.
07:09 - So this area here is all the Zambian border.
07:14 And you can see that approximately one third
07:17 of the whole of Kusungu National Park
07:20 is bordered by another country.
07:22 Now, criminals will very commonly use
07:26 an international boundary
07:29 to move contraband from one side to another.
07:32 And this is exactly why we do joint training
07:36 and run joint operations
07:38 so that we can combat the criminal
07:40 on both sides of the border.
07:41 We started our work here in Kusungu in December 2015.
07:50 And in the four months before we got here,
07:53 a total of four people were convicted in court
07:56 for wildlife crimes.
07:58 Since we arrived and since we started our operation,
08:01 we have got 54 convictions in the court of law.
08:06 The fines handed down in the four months before we came here,
08:10 they totaled 40,000 kwacha.
08:13 In the four months since we've come here,
08:16 they amount to over 2.8 million kwacha.
08:19 When it comes to jail sentences handed down
08:22 in a court of law,
08:23 not one offender was sentenced
08:26 to as much as one month in jail.
08:29 In the four months since we've been here,
08:32 courts have handed down a total of 364 months.
08:36 There is no doubt and the track record shows
08:40 that things can be turned around.
08:42 The solutions are easy and they're straightforward.
08:48 The difficulty is implementing them
08:53 in a hostile environment.
08:55 And we're ready for that.
08:56 That is why we're here
08:57 without running water and electricity.
09:00 That is why we're here taking it step by step.
09:03 And that is why we have achieved
09:06 the spectacular results we have.
09:09 This is not a problem that's gonna go away overnight.
09:14 We need to be here for years to come.
09:19 I look at the small core of dedicated rangers
09:25 and they have never given up.
09:27 And they look to me for leadership.
09:31 And I'm not gonna give up on them.
09:34 We're in for the long haul.
09:36 A battle's only lost when one side gives up.
09:40 It's not gonna be us.
09:41 We're gonna see this thing through
09:43 and we will see change.
09:45 And the restoration of Kusumgunu to its former glory.
09:50 (gentle music)
09:52 (gentle music)
09:55 (gentle music)
09:57 (gentle music)
10:00 (gentle music)
10:03 (gentle music)
10:05 (gentle music)
10:08 (gentle music)
10:11 (gentle music)
10:14 (gentle music)
10:16 you