Wildlife officers seize Asia-bound ivory

The Spokesperson of South Sudan’s National Wildlife Service, Khamis Adieng Ding, said wildlife officers intercepted 1,286 kilogram of ivory packed into boxes labelled as food on June 15, 2016. Ding said the consignment seized last week was shipped into South Sudan from Uganda’s Entebbe International Airport, two days before the seizure. “It is a network. We cannot determine now but there are people in Entebbe of course and some people were here,” said Ding.

“It’s now under investigation by the police and the ivory is now in the Ministry of Wildlife Conservation and Tourism in our stores and we are making an inventory to register it and to put the South Sudan code and to measure it,” he explained. Ding said the police had arrested and detained two suspected traffickers, one South Sudanese and one Ugandan, and were working to apprehend their accomplices.

The seizure came barely a week after wildlife officials burnt five tonnes of ivory in Juba on World Environment Day to show the government’s commitment to fight poaching across the country. The destroyed ivory had been confiscated from poachers or traffickers since 2011, according to officials.

The Deputy Director of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WSC) office in South Sudan, Michael Lopidia, said in recent months the illegal exploitation and trafficking in the country’s wildlife products has increased. In a statement published in March this year WSC said it had documented a sharp rise in ivory trafficking and illegal logging in many parts of South Sudan. WSC said both local and international individuals and members of the country’s military were involved in the illegal activities.

 Ivory trafficking is something that will not stop in a short time.

Lopidia said wildlife authorities should be more vigilant in order to prevent ivory traffickers from using Juba International Airport. “The wildlife forces anti-crime unit should really keep on monitoring and checking that cargo at Juba Airport because ivory trafficking is something that will not stop in a short time. And it is good that they are using the skills they acquired from their recent training,” said Lopidia. He said wildlife officers and other law enforcement agencies needed to be vigilant. “And it is good to have some networks with neighbouring countries so that people monitor together,” he added.

Ding said wildlife officers believe the traffickers work as a network with collaborators in different countries. He said police and wildlife officers were working with neighbouring countries and the airlines to end the trafficking. “We will try to communicate with Uganda, which in this case is the source of the ivory. And we will also try to communicate with the Ethiopian Airlines. They are the carrier, which shipped the ivory to South Sudan,” Ding said,

The traffickers were due to ship the ivory to Malaysia using an Egyptian airline, Ding explained. “So we will also contact the management of Egypt Air. We will tell them to let them know about it. And we will as well communicate with the World Customs Organization so they can be informed and we will also copy all these things to Interpol’s main office in Paris, said Ding.

Lopidia said wildlife officers and conservationists should not relax following the recent seizure of ivory but should instead work harder to end illegal trafficking of wildlife products. “Each time they develop new strategies of how to smuggle. And therefore people should not just lie down and say okay it will be the last seizure. All the responsible organised forces, the responsible citizens of South Sudan should be vigilant and they should report any other activity that they think does not follow the law,” he said. 

Growing demand for ivory products in Asian countries including China and Thailand was fuelling elephant killings by poachers across Africa, Lopidia said.