The privately-run Lewa Wildlife Conservancy in Kenya provided a sobering reminder this week that even though wildlife conservation issues have largely disappeared from the broader China-Africa agenda, the fate of some of Africa’s most endangered animals is becoming increasingly perilous.
Last Friday, heavily-armed poachers snuck into the conservancy, a vast territory that covers 62,000 acres in northern Kenya, to shoot a pair of male white southern rhinos and saw off their horns. The poachers escaped before rangers arrived on the scene.
The horns from those rhinos are now making their way through a vast, sophisticated underground network where they will likely end up somewhere in China or Vietnam where demand for rhino horn remains stubbornly high.
Ever since China banned the elephant ivory trade in 2018, there have been widespread public awareness campaigns across the country to rally support for the ivory moratorium. But very little has been done to educate consumers about other endangered African wildlife, namely rhinos and pangolins.
In Vietnam, the situation is even more dire where corruption has made it easy for illicit wildlife trafficking and consumer awareness about the impact of this trade is low or non-existent. Conservationists report that it is still relatively easy to buy rhino horn on the streets of Hanoi.
The fact that last week’s killings occurred in Kenya is notable since the Kenyan government has significantly improved conservation and anti-poaching efforts. Now, experts say poachers have moved to other countries in East Africa and to South Africa where enforcement measures are not as strong.
How to Get Wildlife Conservation Back on the China-Africa Agenda:
FOCAC: The triennial Forum on China-Africa Cooperation summits have long been an effective venue to discussion African wildlife conservation issues. Well, until recently. Conservation had been a prominent topic on the agenda until the last summit, in 2018, when it was hardly mentioned at all. The next FOCAC summit will take place in Dakar in 2021. Now is the best time for Chinese and African wildlife conservation activists to pressure their governments to ensure that rhinos, pangolins, and even donkeys are on the diplomatic agenda.
MASS MEDIA: African media coverage of wildlife and conservation issues has fallen off dramatically over the years, likely due to limited newsroom resources and the pressure to cover so many other, seemingly more pressing topics in the broader China-Africa relationship (debt, infrastructure, etc…).
In China, following the ivory ban, a lot of people mistakenly thought “well, the big problem’s been solved, so we can move on” and attention shifted to other environmental issues like global climate change. Similarly, the hugely effective mass-market campaigns that helped sway public opinion and push the leadership to take action on ivory faded away.
Activists in both China and Africa will need to aggressively ramp up social media campaigns, build a targeted press relations strategy, and recruit high profile international celebrities to get the message out.
There’s probably somewhere between 6-9 months left before the FOCAC agenda for the Dakar summit is locked. That, of course, is just a guess but the idea is that time is very limited. If leaders don’t feel the pressure from their constituents, as they did on the ivory issue, then it’s pretty certain rhinos, pangolins and a number of other species may not be around for many more FOCACs in the future.
