Eyewitness to Leadership: A Long Career in South Africa that Witnessed Profound Change

Kobus de Wet, National Head of Environmental Crime Investigation in South African National Parks, has had a career in law enforcement that has seen major changes in his country and in wildlife protection.

He joined the police in 1978 and was still serving in 1994 when Nelson Mandela was elected as the country’s first black president in the first all-race elections. The African National Congress, which had been banned for 30 years, then came to power.

De Wet said that without Mandela’s philosophy of peaceful reconciliation, this could have been a bloody transition, but it was peaceful.

“It is my opinion that Mandela was a God-given president. He was the father of the new South Africa,” De Wet said. “He brought peace and harmony.”

During this change in government De Wet said his job as a police officer didn’t change. “I was in the police. You serve the government. It doesn’t matter which one,” he said.

What many Americans know about South Africa probably comes from the film “Invictus,” directed by Clint Eastwood, that tells the story of a rugby tournament in 1995 in South Africa and the role Mandela, who was newly elected, played in getting black South Africans to join white South Africans to support the country’s team. The underdog South African team, the Springboks, won in overtime.

“Hollywood basically got it right”, de Wet said, although he didn’t get to watch the game. At the time he was in Mozambique overseeing the destruction of weapons that had been used in crimes in South Africa.

De Wet held several jobs in his 22 years with the police, working in the detective branch, stock theft unit, crime intelligence, firearm unit and organized crime unit.

Conservation career

In 2000 he left the police and joined an anti-poaching unit in Kruger National Park in northeastern South Africa. This is the largest of the country’s 22 parks, at over 7,500 square miles.

During his first years there the poaching they dealt with was mostly setting snares for smaller animals for meat, but that changed abruptly in 2009 when poachers began targeting rhinos for commercial sales of their horns.

Poachers can enter the park through a border with Mozambique. The poaching peaked in 2014 with 827 rhinos killed.

Last year and so far this year the number of rhinos killed has declined somewhat in Kruger through targeted enforcement actions.   

Unfortunately, poachers are mobile and if enforcement is increased in one area they will move their activities to another.

A positive development for rhinos is that some people are allowing them to live on private land, at considerable expense. Some of the private landowners are experimenting with cutting off the rhinos’ horns to take away the incentive to poachers for killing them. De Wit said that would not be practical for large parks like Kruger where there are many rhinos.

Another issue in protecting wildlife is the “criminalization” of villages near parks, where poachers are seen as local heroes because they bring money to the community.

There is a saying “We will get rich without working, but we will die without illness,” he said. “Getting rich without working” refers to the money to be made from poaching, and “dying without illness” refers to the risk of sudden death that comes with poaching, including being killed by animals.

The solution lies partly in educating locals on the value of parks and wildlife, but also tangible benefits from living near a park, like jobs, he said. Kruger has 2,500 employees.

In 2013 he was promoted to the head of Environmental Crime Investigation for South African National Parks. Despite the challenges, he sees the future of African wildlife as “brilliant”.

Exercising Leadership on Problems With No Easy Answers and Colliding Perspectives

Brad Hovinga

For Brad Hovinga, being a conservation warden was sort of the family business. His father was a warden in Utah who frequently took him along as a boy. “I grew up in the passenger seat of his warden truck,” he said.

His brother is also a Utah warden.

Brad has strayed from this pattern slightly. He is also in conservation law enforcement, but his career has been in Wyoming. He was a field warden for 23 years, serving in Big Piney in western Wyoming for 13 years and Lander for seven more.

He is a published author, with two stories in the fourth edition of “Wildlife Crime: Stories from Wyoming’s Wildlife Officers”. Both his stories involved the killing and wasting of a moose by individuals who did not have moose permits.  They were caught by Hovinga and prosecuted.

Two years ago, he became the Jackson Regional Wildlife Supervisor. Now he not only supervises field wardens, but also wildlife biologists, as well as education and office staff.

Hovinga said he loved being a field warden, but it was time for him to take on more responsibility.

“It just hit a point in my career where I could contribute more to the mission.  I saw the potential to have a greater impact on things that really matter, so I decided to take on more challenge.”

The new job brought him to one of the most beautiful spots in the world with the Teton Range in his backyard, but also one of the most expensive areas to live.  He couldn’t afford to live there if the department didn’t rent a house for him, he said.

Development in the area poses a challenge for wildlife management. People attracted to the area by its natural beauty like being able to see elk out their front windows, but farmers who own the nearby fields where the elk graze are not as happy.  Managing human/wildlife conflict is one of the challenges he faces daily.

Hunting is not usually allowed in national parks, but elk hunting is allowed in Grand Teton National Park under an agreement with the state.  “In order to manage our elk we need to harvest elk.  Without that ability, we would not be able to control elk numbers,” Hovinga said. In 1950, when the park was expanded, this was done with the condition that elk would be co-managed by the state and National Park Service. 

On a daily basis, Hovinga works at the intersection of colliding interests, values and mindsets regarding wildlife, and best how to management it in the public interest.  For example, his department cooperates with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service operating a winter elk feeding ground at Jackson. This is a compromise that does increase the possibility of disease, but it keeps the elk away from agricultural areas and allows the department to keep elk numbers at level the public wants, he said.  Statewide there are about 22 winter elk feeding grounds.

He is heavily in involved in managing grizzly bears and wolves, two species that always generate attention. Wolves were recently delisted and are now managed by the state.  “We’ll have the first wolf hunting season in several years this fall,” he said.

“As society changes, we find ourselves with many adaptive challenges in carrying out our public trust responsibilities concerning wildlife in Wyoming.  My experience at the academy helps me approach these types of problems, problems with no easy answers that requires everyone to learn their way into a solution.”

Colonel Sow and the Sultan

Colonel Mamadou Bhoye Sow of Guinea

Colonel Mamadou Bhoye Sow of Guinea was a warden in Badiar-Niokolo Transfrontier Park, which is partly in Guinea and partly in Senegal, when he learned that preparations were being made for a visit from a Sultan from Arab Emirates, a great honor. It was 1996 and the park was newly formed. The Sultan was apparently a friend of the president of Guinea, Sow explained with the help of a French interpreter.

The Sultan arrived with an escort of vehicles that included a car full of local dignitaries from Guinea, including the governor of the region.  There was also a car full of commandos – body guards of the Sultan.

Sow was invited to ride in the Sultan’s vehicle. They had somewhat of a language barrier because the Sultan and his escort spoke Arabic and he spoke French. He was alarmed to see that the back of the Sultan’s vehicle was filled with firearms, and as they approached the park boundary it became clear that it was the Sultan’s intention to hunt in the park, which was illegal.

Through an interpreter Sow explained that hunting was not allowed in the park, and that he could show the Sultan other places to hunt.  The regional governor and other dignitaries said Sow needed to make an exception for the Sultan because he was important and they would all lose their jobs if he didn’t get to hunt in the park. He said: “I would rather have them shoot me than any animal in the park.” Sow said he would never accept the shame of having someone shoot an animal while he was there. He also explained that other rangers in the park would come running at the sound of a shot, and that any hunting would violate an agreement they had with their colleagues in Senegal who were joint-managers of the park.

The Sultan and his group got back into his car and sped off from the direction they came from, followed by the local dignitaries and the car full of guards.

Sow was left standing alone in the bush with no vehicle and no radio. This was before the time of cell phones. He started walking. He knew they had planned to camp on a hill a few miles into the park. When he got to the hill, he found a radio and called some of the other rangers, telling them to bring up a truck. He also found a great amount of food had been prepared for the Sultan, including the local dish mechoui, a roasted lamb.  Sow and the other rangers decided it shouldn’t go to waste. “We had a feast,” he said.

As for being fired, the governor was replaced within a month. Sow stayed on as the head warden and went on to a successful career. He is currently the Deputy Director General of the Office of Guinea Parks and Reserves.

The Fight to End Corruption as a Key Strategy in Combatting Illegal Wildlife Trafficking Globally

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Drori Ofir, founder of LAGA (http://www.laga-enforcement.org)

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Ofir Drori was trying to talk about corruption that is enabling wildlife trafficking in Africa.  But he kept getting interrupted by incoming messages from commrades fighting that corruption half way around the world.

Ofir is one of the instructors at the International Conservation Chiefs Academy.  He is sitting on a bench in a quiet corner of the courtyard in front of National Geographic Headquarters in Washington, D.C. trying to explain the workings of EAGLE NETWORK, a nonprofit organization he founded to counter corruption in the illegal wildlife trade to a writer. But he keeps pulling out a cell phone in a weathered leather case and responding, in French, to incoming calls from Cameroon, where it is now midnight.

His organization reports they have arrested two traffickers with body parts of pangolins, and a baby mandrill, a type of monkey. They are now dealing with corrupt enforcement officials trying to free the traffickers, and the problem of what to do with the little mandrill overnight.  They decide he’ll be fine if they keep him for a night in their office.

This has been a productive day for EAGLE.  Earlier in the day they were involved in the arrest of seven ivory traffickers in Uganda. “A military officer tried to release them, so we arrested him as well,” Drori said.

Drori grew up in Israel, but discovered Africa at age 18 as an adventurer, traveling the content alone on foot, horseback, dugout canoe, even by camel.

“I fell in love with Africa,” he said. “I was given so much by Africa. I wanted to give back, both for people and nature.”

He began writing and doing photography about Africa, first focusing on social justice issues. Initially, first he sold stories to publications in Israel and in flight magazines.  He spent some time in Nigeria, writing about the plight of women in portions of the country affected by Shiria law.  When he began to feel that he was wearing out his welcome in Nigeria, he crossed the border into Cameroon, where he planned to write a story about great apes.  He had read a story by Jane Goodall that large apes might be gone in 15 years. This was in 2003.

“I volunteered in a sanctuary and it was easy to see, with the gorillas and chimpanzees, how similar they are to people,” he said.  But it also became apparent that the meat and body parts of large apes were being sold openly, despite laws prohibiting it.  “I was going to markets and seeing the skulls and hands of apes being sold and the police officers who were supposed to protect these animals, they were going around selling them.  They were the ones giving instructions on who was going to get what.”

This was not an isolated case. “I would see that people charged with protecting these animals were at the top of the trade.”

His frustration came to a head when vendors offered to sell him a baby chimp.  It was not uncommon for baby chimps to be sold. When poachers kill the adults, the young cling to the bodies of their mothers, which makes them easy to capture.  Young chimps are slow developing and typically ride on the backs of their mothers until they are a year-and-a-half old.

Drori felt that if he bought the baby chimp for the modest price they were asking, he was only furthering the illegal wildlife trade. But he wanted to do something.  He approached law enforcement and told them about the proposed chimp sale, which under Cameroon law was punishable for up to three years in jail. “I said,’let’s go and arrest them and rescue the baby chimp. They said ‘give us money’.  I said, “no, this is your work.”

They were confused about his concern for the chimp. “They said ‘what’s wrong with you? If you want a chimpanzee, we’ll sell you one’.”

Drori went back to his hotel, but couldn’t sleep.  He took out a piece of paper and began writing criteria for how a non-profit organization should deal with corruption in wildlife trafficking. Among the goals was that it should put one wildlife trafficker in jail per week.  He didn’t know it at the time, but was writing the founding principles for LAGA, the Last Great Apes Organization, but that was a few years away.

The next morning he went back to the chimp traffickers and, lying blatantly, said he was part of a huge NGO that prosecuted wildlife violations. He showed them the law on chimp sales, but said he could get them off if they provided information and released the chimp.

They agreed. “I opened my arms and this baby chimp crawled up and gave me a hug.”

He had been adopted by chimp, whom he named “Future”.  Future later went to live in a sanctuary with other chimps.

Drori founded LAGA (http://www.laga-enforcement.org), with like-minded individuals in 2003. Although they had no formal enforcement credentials, they found they could get results by fighting officials who were taking bribes or ignoring the sale of protected animals by confronting corruption head on.

By 2006, they reached their goal of jailing one trafficker each week.  Another goal was to have the media report on these arrests.  That has happened also, and awareness of LAGA has led to this model being adopted in nine additional countries, a network called EAGLE (http://www.eagle-enforcement.org ). 

Collectively, EAGLE has been responsible for jailing over 2,000 wildlife traffickers.  According to EAGLE, corruptive influences were encountered in 85% of arrests involving major traffickers, and corruption was encountered in 80 percent of the time during the legal process involving these cases.  Those going to jail include military officers, wildlife officers and police.

Drori was in Washington to address a group of wildlife officials from 17 African countries and state and federal enforcement staff from 31 states who are training jointly for a week.

On Tuesday night the officials attended a banquet hosted by National Geographic, where, among other activities, an award was given to the delegation from Tanzania in honor of Wayne Lotter, co-founder of PAMS Foundation Tanzania, and a leader in the prevention of wildlife trafficking. Lotter, 51, was murdered August 16 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, after the cab he was riding in was stopped by another vehicle.

Driori, who was a collegue of Lotter, said death threats are common for officials and activists fighting wildlife trafficking, but it doesn’t deter them.

“We now have a community of activists in 10 countries. They all get threats,” he said, but you can’t kill an idea.”

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The ICCA training is jointly coordinated by the National Association of Conservation Law Enforcement Chiefs, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Office of Law Enforcement and the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL).   The purpose of the ICCA is strengthen international law enforcement relationships and collaboration in combatting illegal wildife trafficking globally.

For more information see the ICCA webpage: https://www.fws.gov/le//icca/index.html.   Follow the events of the International Conservation Chiefs Academy on the National Conservation Law Enforcement Leadership Academy Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/NCLELA/

Operation Roadhouse: how inter-agency collaboration stopped illegal paddlefish depredation.

“One nation’s extirpation of a species leads to another nation’s species being targeted for exploitation,” said Larry Yamnitz, Chief of the Protection Division of the Missouri Department of Conservation, as he accepted the 2017 National Geographic Wildlife Trafficking Investigation Award at the National Geographic Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Larry Yamnitz, Chief of the Protection Division of the Missouri Department of Conservation

Yamnitz received the award in recognition of a two-year undercover operation that his division ran in order to stop the illegal trafficking of American paddlefish and their eggs, which was putting increased pressure on these primitive fish.

Paddlefish have been around since the dinosaurs, but today they are facing modern challenges from dams, development and illegal fishing.  The demand for caviar from the European paddlefish has nearly wiped out, or extirpated, the fish, which has led to a growing illegal commercial use of paddlefish from Missouri, whose eggs are being substituted for European paddlefish eggs in caviar.

Paddlefish are named for the long, flat snout which accounts for a third of their length. They feed on tiny zooplankton, but they eat well enough that they may grow to over 100 pounds.  Because the fish eat only zooplankton, they won’t bite on lures or bait like sportfish, but they may be snagged during the spring season. 

A large female may yield 20 pounds of eggs, which may have a value of over $3,000 when processed into caviar according to some estimates. "The caviar is not only considered a delicacy by many people of eastern European descent, but for some it is considered to have medicinal qualities," Yamnitz said in a discussion of the sting.

Missouri conservation staff knew something was going on when they began getting complaints from anglers that people were taking eggs from paddlefish they caught during their annual spring snagging season.

Much of this activity was coming from the Lake of the Ozarks near Warsaw, Missouri, which bills itself as the "Paddlefish Capital of the World".  "When word gets out that the paddlefish are running, enthusiasts converge on Warsaw from around the country," said Dean Harre, Ozark Unit Field Chief of the Missouri Department of Conservation.

To document illegal sales and overharvest of paddlefish, wardens went undercover, setting up an operation where anglers paid a small fee to use a pier for snagging paddlefish. People signed in to use the pier, and often had their paddlefish photographed and weighed, so wardens had evidence if the fishermen kept too many paddlefish or sold the eggs for caviar.

The daily limit is two paddlefish during the spring snagging season. The project was called “Operation Roadhouse,” which is the local name for the area around the pier.

The two-year investigation took place in 2011 to 2012, and resulted in 256 citations being issued to 112 individual in 19 states. Combined federal and state fines totaled over $83,700, with a few cases still pending.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and conservation officers in many states helped with the investigation. 

Operation Roadhouse visitors by zipcode

“The cooperation and teamwork from all the states involved and the USFWS made a case of this scope possible,” Harre said.  “Additionally, we had really good prosecutors, both on the state side and the federal side.”

The Takedown

The special investigation culminated in a coordinated, nationwide takedown that began at 7:00 a.m. CST on March 13, 2013.  Approximately 85 Missouri Conservation Agents and 40 USFWS Special Agents traveled throughout Missouri, Oregon, Colorado, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Illinois, South Carolina, Iowa and Kansas to execute arrest warrants, conduct interviews, issue citations, and gather intelligence on over 100 suspects.  This nationwide takedown included arrests for eight individuals indicted for federal crimes involving the illegal trafficking of paddlefish and their eggs used as caviar.

Arrests

Upon completion of the investigation and takedown, 256 citations were issued to 112 suspects.  These individuals were from: Missouri, Illinois, Minnesota, Colorado, Kansas, Oregon, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Iowa, Alaska, California, Florida, Kentucky, Nebraska, South Dakota, Tennessee, Washington and Wisconsin.

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From left: Randy Stark, Executive Direcotr National Association of Conservation Law Enforcement Chiefs, Ed Grace acting Chief of USFWS Office of Law Enorcement, Larry Yamnitz, Greg Jackson Special Agent in Charge USFWS Midwest.
 

Convictions and Penalties:

State Summary: 112 defendants pled guilty.  240 of 256 charges resulted in convictions with fines of $44,600 and court costs of $17,888.50 for a total of $61,488.50.  35 defendants’ fishing privileges were revoked or suspended (one life, one 17 years, one 9 years, two 7 years, four 6 years and the rest under 5 years).  The 16 cases left open are on 10 suspects and Failure to Appear (FTA) warrants have been issued by the Benton County, Pensylvania Office.

Federal Summary: 13 defendants for illegally trafficking in paddlefish; 12 plead guilty and 1 found guilty by jury trail.  5 felonies and 8 misdemeanors convictions, $22,250 fines, community services 750 hours, 10 years of probation, 2 on house arrest for 3 months, forfeiture of $2,000 for a van, and 2 defendants were revoked from fishing or accompanying anyone fishing anywhere in world for 2 years.  Combined state and federal totals: $83,738.50.

Participating Agencies

Benton County, Missouri Prosecuting Attorney’s Office

Benton County, Missouri Sheriff’s Department

Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) Law Enforcement Division

Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR) Office of Law Enforcement

Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism (KDWPT) Law Enforcement Division

Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (MDNR) Enforcement Division

Nebraska Game and Parks Commission (NGPC) Law Enforcement and Fisheries Divisions

New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife (NJDFW) Bureau of Law Enforcement

Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation (ODWC) Law Enforcement and Fisheries

Oregon State Police (OSP) Fish and Wildlife Division

Pennsylvania Game Commission (PGC) Bureau of Wildlife Protection

South Carolina Department of Natural Resources (SCDNR) Law Enforcement Division

U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Missouri

U.S. Department of Justice Environment and Natural Resources Division

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) Office of Law Enforcement