Last Chance to See

by Mark Carwardine

  Barack was a 14-year-old blind southern white rhino, living in comfortable retirement at Ol Pej. He had few pleasures in life except for sweet sugar cane, which he chewed all day long, and the radio. While we were there he happened to be listening to a school broadcast teaching children (and, presumably, rhinos) about the colours of the rainbow.

  ‘He likes talk shows most,’ said Kes. ‘He’s not really into music.’

  The rest of the boma was eerily empty. Kes had hoped that this would be the heart of the last-ditch effort to save the northern white rhino from extinction. But the chances of finding any survivors, let alone catching them, were getting slimmer with every passing day.

  Stephen and I watched as she strolled around the boma, looking visibly upset. Kes had devoted most of her life to the northern white rhino and was on first-name terms with the last of the subspecies. She told us afterwards that, as she walked around the deserted boma, she had a terrible feeling in the pit of her stomach that it was game over.

  While we were in Kenya, I introduced Stephen to a couple of old friends. I can’t tell you their names, because they are undercover agents and need to keep a low profile. I know it sounds a bit cloak and dagger, but revealing their identities really would put their lives at risk.

  They work for the Lusaka Agreement Task Force, which is a dreadful name for an absolutely brilliant organisation established in the late 1990s to fight illegal wildlife trade across Africa’s borders. My two friends work in a highly dangerous world of undercover operations, crime syndicates, informants, intelligence gathering, gunfights and double-agents. Talking to them is like watching The Bourne Identity – except, instead of working for the CIA, they risk their lives to protect endangered wildlife.

  After a lot of gentle persuasion, they kindly agreed to show us a haul of confiscated rhino horns. We were led to a darkened vault at a secret location and came face to face with horns representing the deaths of dozens of black and white rhinos.

  Rhino horn is worth more than US$1,500 per kilo on the black market.

  ‘How can you be sure these horns are real?’ asked Stephen.

  One of the agents picked up the nearest horn and threw it hard against the stone floor, making us jump.

  ‘If it smashes, it’s fake,’ he said, ‘and if it doesn’t, it’s real.’

  The horn bounced high into the air, nearly hitting Stephen in the groin, and landed in a corner of the vault. It didn’t smash.

  The heaviest horn in the vault weighed 5.02 kilograms (11.07 pounds).

  ‘That would be worth at least US$8,000 on the black market,’ said my friend.

  We told him about our plans to go to the DRC to look for the last remaining northern white rhinos.

  ‘Those rhinos couldn’t have chosen a worse place to live,’ he said, clearly in despair. ‘Trouble and violence means poaching. Rhino horns fund rebel activity, so the two are intimately linked. And, of course, the poaching itself is made easier by the ready availability of weapons and the inability of weak governments to worry about wildlife. To be honest, I don’t think the northern whites stand a chance.’

  As recently as the 1960s, rhinos roamed across virtually all of sub-Saharan Africa. But by the early 1990s, 95 per cent of them had been killed for their horns. The slaughter was so merciless that it’s a wonder any survived at all.

  Stephen comes face to face with rhino horns confiscated from poachers.

  Yet they are still being killed today.

  Generally speaking, the horn from rhinos killed in East Africa tends to end up in the Middle East, while the horn from those killed in southern Africa and Asia ends up in the Far East.

  In Yemen and Oman it is carved into ornamental dagger handles, called jambiyas, which symbolise the status and masculinity of their owners. The demand was so high by the 1970s and ’80s that one horn dealer alone reportedly produced 6,000 rhino-horn dagger handles in a single year. Fortunately, it has declined since then and more are being made from buffalo horn, plastic or other substitutes (although those made of rhino horn are still regarded as the ‘Rolexes’ and ‘Porsches’ of the jambiya world).

  In the Far East, the horn is ground into powder to make Traditional Chinese Medicine, as a cure for just about everything from poisoning, snakebite and suppressing fever to devil possession, blurry vision and rectal bleeding (incidentally, the idea that rhino horn is an aphrodisiac is a complete myth, originally spread by uninformed westerners). It’s seen as a kind of wonder drug, with magical properties, so no wonder it’s so popular.

  ‘The rhino’s great misfortune,’ commented Stephen, ‘is that it carries a fortune on its nose.’

  ‘Exactly. The horn is its Achilles heel,’ said the agent, proving that he was a grammatical guru, too. ‘And the rarer the rhinos become,’ he continued, ‘the more valuable the horn and the greater the demand. It’s like pouring petrol onto an open fire.’

  I explained to Stephen that, to make matters even worse, most of the rhino goes to waste. The poachers kill an animal weighing several tonnes for a horn weighing just a few kilos.

  ‘Don’t they use any other part of the animal?’ he asked.

  ‘Only very rarely,’ explained the agent, ‘and then for rather odd purposes. Some people hang a bottle of rhino urine in the doorway, for example, to keep away evil spirits.’

  ‘Imagine trying to get a rhino to pee into a bottle,’ said Stephen, who often joked when he was shocked or upset. I think it’s a defence mechanism.

  To add insult to injury, tests in western laboratories have found no evidence whatsoever for the claimed medical properties of rhino horn. There is no reason why it should be considered special, because it is made out of nothing more auspicious than keratin, which is the main constituent of hair, fingernails, claws and hooves. Unfortunately, though, practitioners of Traditional Chinese Medicine have successfully persuaded a lot of people that the uniqueness of rhino horn has no substitute.

  The thing is this. If everyone wants to believe in voodoo, reiki or vitamin C tablets, that’s absolutely fine. But if they believe in a product that has been shown to be useless, is traded illegally and kills endangered animals in the process, then that’s not fine at all.

  I’d been in East Africa the year before, working undercover with my two friends and other agents from the Lusaka Agreement Task Force. It was a fairly daunting experience that illustrates the astonishing efforts being made to protect rhinos and the region’s other wildlife.

  On one particular undercover operation, we were just a short drive from several popular tourist lodges. There were four of us, sitting at a rickety wooden table in a run-down café on the border between Kenya and Tanzania, in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro. Next to me was a senior undercover agent. Heavily scarred from many previous encounters with poachers, he had a pistol tucked into the back of his trousers, hidden under his shirt.

  Two men sat opposite. They were members of the Luo tribe and were acting as brokers for some Maasai warriors who wanted to sell ivory weighing about 150 kilograms (330 pounds). I don’t know if they were armed.

  I was posing as an ivory dealer. We had told them, in a mixture of English and Swahili, that I was a South African, working for the UN in Sudan, and was using my diplomatic privileges to smuggle ivory out of the country. They seemed convinced.

  We talked for an hour and a half. They wanted to do the deal in the bush, about 35 kilometres (22 miles) away, after dark. But we refused. It was too dangerous – in the dark it would be impossible to evaluate how heavily they were armed and how many other men were hiding in the bushes. We made up a story about being tired after the long journey from Nairobi and, eventually, they relented. They would call us first thing in the morning and arrange an alternative time to meet (mobile phones have transformed ivory dealing in this part of Africa).

  I was up and ready at 5am the next morning, waiting for the call. It never came. Eleven hours later I was still waiting, in my grubby, £5-a-night so-called hotel room, trying to resist
calling them to find out what was happening for fear of raising suspicion.

  Another undercover agent had already been working on this bust for more than a week, posing as a scout for ivory buyers such as myself. A hundred and fifty kilograms of ivory represents up to ten dead elephants, so this would be no small haul and we couldn’t afford to muck it up (great care is taken to ensure that the elephants are already dead and are not being killed on demand).

  The proposed deal was going to be fairly typical. We would be taken to the poachers and their ivory to weigh and inspect the pieces. If we were satisfied, we would pay the poachers about £500 (big money for a couple of Maasai) and the brokers about £1,000 (they wanted £2,400 for making the introduction but knew we would pay less than half that amount).

  Then it was dark. I was still sitting in my room at about 7.15pm when there was a knock on the door. It was the senior undercover agent and two of his colleagues from the Kenya Wildlife Service, who were providing essential back-up. The brokers had finally made contact. There was no power in the hotel, so we sat in darkness and discussed the latest conversation. The situation, apparently, had changed. Instead of two Maasai poachers, there were now six. And they were still insisting on doing the exchange in thick bush, in the middle of nowhere, later that night.

  The undercover agents were on edge, pacing around the room. They were making me nervous.

  We called them back and, after a long discussion, agreed to inspect the ivory at first light the following morning. But there was no ivory. The poachers were there when we arrived but, for some reason, were convinced that we were all being watched. The deal was off.

  I was devastated, but the agents took it in their stride. It’s all part of the job. They would reopen negotiations and go back to that run-down café on the Kenya–Tanzania border to start all over again.

  They did succeed, eventually, in arresting all the poachers and both of the brokers. But they weren’t particularly happy with this outcome.

  Catching poachers is relatively easy with the help of motivated, well-trained and well-armed anti-poaching patrols and undercover agents. But the challenge is to tackle the people in the middle and, especially, at the top of the hierarchy. Known in the trade as the ‘untouchables’, they have their own intelligence (the poaching equivalent of the CIA or MI5) and are surrounded by lawyers. They will kill anyone who gets in their way – and frequently do.

  Interpol estimates that global illegal trade in wildlife is worth US$6–10 billion annually – second only to drugs trafficking. But fighting this wildlife crime is unbelievably difficult. There isn’t enough money, time or human resources to do it properly. Investigations take too long, shipments aren’t checked properly, fraudulent documents are overlooked, wildlife legislation is out of date, border staff are poorly trained, poorly equipped and underpaid, and penalties are not sufficient to act as deterrents.

  I’ve been on anti-poaching patrols, involving gun battles and machete fights, when we’ve arrested the poachers successfully but they’ve been back in the bush, poaching again, a few weeks later. In some cases, the patrols and the poachers were actually on first-name terms.

  So the rangers and undercover agents risk their lives while the vast majority of those involved in poaching get away scot-free.

  Stephen and I had a few dangers of our own to worry about.

  We were pinning our hopes on joining one final search for the northern white rhino, but increasing talk of rebel activity in and around Garamba National Park made the prospect seem seriously risky.

  I spoke to a senior member of the UN Peacekeeping Force, which was 17,000-strong at the time. I was on a satellite phone in Uganda and he was on a satellite phone in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, so the line was frustratingly crackly and intermittent. It was difficult to hear exactly what he was saying. But I could just make out enough to ring alarm bells: ‘situation getting worse’, ‘Garamba extremely unstable’, ‘thousands of people on the move’ and ‘dangerous to travel’ gave me the crucial headlines.

  I discussed the call with Stephen.

  ‘My God,’ he said. ‘We don’t realise how lucky we are living in Britain, do we? We moan about the weather and the trains and bloody Dan Brown’s Da Vinci whatsit, but can you imagine all the things we’d have to moan about if we lived in the DRC?’

  We sat down to discuss our plans and, sensing rebellion in the ranks, I began by letting Stephen know what he’d be missing if we didn’t go.

  Garamba National Park is a very special place. One of the first national parks to be established in Africa (it would have been the first – but Virunga, to the south, just pipped it to the post), this vast wilderness of undulating savannah grassland, rivers, swamps, woodland and rocky hills is considered so important that it has been declared a World Heritage Site. Home to no fewer than 138 different mammal species, and more birds, reptiles and other wildlife than anyone has properly counted, it is as wild as wild can be.

  The northern white rhino has always been the jewel in its crown. Losing it would be like Buckingham Palace losing the Queen – suddenly, the place would seem considerably less important. It’s hard enough protecting a national park that is home to one of the rarest animals on the planet, let alone one that has failed to protect one of the rarest animals on the planet. Losing the rhinos would spell disaster for the whole park, so there was an awful lot at stake.

  Elephant ivory confiscated from poachers.

  ‘Yes, but … call me an old-fashioned coward, if you like,’ said Stephen.

  ‘You’re an old-fashioned coward,’ I said, trying (but failing) to lighten the mood.

  He gave me the kind of glare he normally reserves for sycophantic journalists and incompetent hotel check-in clerks.

  ‘But,’ he continued, ‘I find myself questioning the wisdom of going into a war zone on the off chance of finding four animals that are virtually identical to one I have already seen in a perfectly peaceful part of Kenya.’

  ‘I know this will sound strange,’ I replied, ‘but I just feel that we’d be letting the rhinos down, not to mention the rangers who are risking their lives every day that they refuse to abandon Garamba. They need all the help they can get. If their home is so perilous that we daren’t even visit, what chance do they have? I believe we have a duty to tell the world what is happening.’

  ‘But then you also believe you should give up drinking vanilla lattes and watching The X Factor,’ said Stephen. ‘Anyway, can’t we tell the world what is happening from a comfortable hotel across the border in Uganda?’

  He did have a point. I didn’t admit it at the time but, in my heart, I knew he was probably right.

  For better or for worse, we continued heading west in the vague direction of the DRC, leaving Kenya and crossing the border into Uganda.

  Chimpanzees share many of our own characteristics – good and bad.

  The first thing we did was to drop in to see the relatives – the noisy, boisterous, furry side of the family, otherwise known as chimpanzees. Chimps are, of course, only collateral relatives – nth cousins, n times removed – but they are the closest relatives we’ve got.

  The chimpanzees, gorillas and orang-utans are all great apes. So are we. The distinction we have put between ourselves and the others is blurred, to say the least.

  Humans and chimps are particularly close – we have more in common, genetically, than chimps do with either gorillas or orang-utans. We descended from a common ancestor (sadly, no longer with us) and were in the same ancestral line for the first 99.99999 per cent of our history. In fact, you could argue that there are really three species of chimp: the common chimpanzee, the bonobo or pygmy chimp, and the human. If we were to apply the same classification principles to us as we do to other animals, we would all belong to the same genus – let alone the same family.

  Incidentally, given those three choices, I think I’d like to be a bonobo. We don’t know all that much about this principally vegetarian, female-dominate
d great ape, but what we do know is greatly appealing. It is a good-looking animal, with a slender body, a neat haircut (it has a central parting on top) and natty sideburns. But, best of all, it lives a hippie lifestyle, making love not war and resolving conflict with sex instead of violence.

  The main difference between us and the other great apes is that they are all endangered and we are not. You might even say that they are all endangered primarily because we are not.

  During the past century alone, chimpanzee numbers have plummeted from more than two million to as few as 100,000. We’ve been logging their forest homes, hunting the adults for bushmeat and capturing their babies for the international pet trade.

  We are definitely the black sheep of the family.

  Anyway, an old friend of mine, Lilly Ajarova, happened to be in charge of the Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary and had invited us to meet some of the animals in her care.

  As we set out across Africa’s biggest lake, and sailed over the equator, Stephen seemed relieved.

  ‘I’ve always wanted to see chimps,’ he enthused. ‘Especially if it involves delaying our travels into a war zone.’

  We had worked hard for this visit. Before leaving the UK, Lilly had insisted that we endure an awfully long list of injections. She warned us that we wouldn’t be allowed ashore without written medical proof that we had been vaccinated recently against hepatitis A, hepatitis B, meningococcal meningitis, polio, tetanus and yellow fever. We also had to provide proof of immunity to measles, as well as letters from our doctors stating that we’d had Mantoux tests and were definitely TB negative.

  But Stephen was worried. He had developed a bad cold.

  Lilly met us at the wooden jetty and, before we’d even unloaded our bags, he asked her the inevitable question.

  Stephen and his cold stay on the human side of the fence, while Mark and the crew are allowed onto the chimp side of the fence.