NAIROBI, Kenya (PAMACC News) - Rural communities are the biggest losers in Africa’s war against poaching, scientists have revealed.

In most of the countries where resources are being channeled to fight poaching, marginalized communities are getting zero benefits from the conservation revenue stream, according to the Africa Wildlife Foundation (AWF). 

“When a lot of resources are being used to fight poaching, benefits to the communities and the economy go down or are no-existent,” says Philip Muruthi, the vice president, species conservation at AWF.

As a professor in ecology, Muruthi, recommends that communities must be wholly involved in conservation, if Africa is to significantly reduce poaching and trafficking of wildlife trophy.
Lack of cross border cooperation against poaching has also undermined Africa’s efforts to fight wildlife crime.

For instance, he says, it has been proven that criminals are coordinating their operations from countries which are not friendly to Africa’s anti-poaching call, to raid neighboring countries’ wildlife.

“Poaching and trafficking is like an amoeba,” says Muruthi. “You push it in one corner, it simply moves to another.”

But the cloud should not obscure the silver lining, Muruthi told a gathering of conservation detectives and officers working at transit stations in Africa, in a Nairobi meeting.

New technologies and innovations like the use of drones and sniffer dogs are giving the crackdown on wildlife crime a facelift.

For instant, sniffer dogs are able to detect illegal wildlife products, track the scent of a poacher, and even lead the charge in areas where weapons are used heavily by criminals.

“Dogs are incorruptible, accurate, efficient and are even feared by poachers and traffickers,” says Mark Kinyua, an expert in canine handling.
About 35,000 elephants are poached every year in Africa, out of a population of 415,000.

“At this rate, in 15 years Africa will have no elephants,” says Muruthi.