Sniffer dogs, software take fight to poachers

04 October 2016 - 09:08 By Bloomberg
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Sniffer dogs trained to identify ivory and US military software designed to trace militants have contributed to an about two-thirds decline in elephant and rhino poaching in Kenya, making the East African nation an exception on a continent where such crime continues unabated.

"We've been able to buck the African trend," Kitili Mbathi, director of the Kenya Wildlife Service, said. "We've seen a decline of between 60% and 70% in numbers of animals killed since 2013."

Poaching of the two species peaked in 2013, prompting the government to devote more money to hiring and equipping rangers, and stepping up intelligence, Mbathi said on the sidelines of a conference in Johannesburg.

He said a sharp decline in 2014 in numbers of animals killed continued into 2015 and remained stable this year. Exact numbers for wildlife populations won't be available until the government publishes new data this month, he said.

State-run KWS last year began using US military software developed to trace improvised explosive devices and adapted to poaching.

The programme, known as #tenBoma, makes predictions of where poachers are likely to strike, Faye Cuevas, a former US army officer now working as chief of staff at the International Fund for Animal Welfare, said. It uses data such as animal mortality figures, weather information and GPS feeds from collared elephants.

"Instead of finding lower-rung poachers, you find the person who has the greatest aggregate impact on wildlife crime," Cuevas said.

Sniffer dogs that can detect contraband ranging from pangolin scales to rhino horn powder at Nairobi airport had been "enormously successful", Mbathi said.

Smugglers use Nairobi as a transit hub when travelling to Asia and the Middle East.

Kenya has stepped up arrests, with a court in July handing an unprecedented 20-year prison sentence to a trader who was found with more than 300 elephant tusks in Mombasa.

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