International wildlife groups are investigating South Africa’s role in the shipment of highly endangered gorillas to Malaysia by an endangered-species smuggling ring known as ”The Nigerian Connection”.
Four young gorillas aged between 18 and 48 months passed through Johannesburg International airport earlier this year en route to a zoo near Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur. They were exported from Nigeria on documents claiming they were born in captivity at a new Nigerian zoo –but there are no recognised captive-breeding programmes for gorillas anywhere in Africa.
Conservation groups believe they were captured illegally in the forests of Central Africa and smuggled via Nigeria to Malaysia. A keeper at the University of Ibadan Zoological Gardens near Lagos, which arranged the export documents, has admitted the young gorillas ”came from the jungle in Cameroon” and spent seve-ral months at the zoo before flying to Malaysia.
Collectors, poaching and the bush-meat trade are responsible for making Africa’s great apes among the world’s most threatened species. The gorilla subspecies found in Nigeria and Cameroon — the western lowland gorilla — is particularly endangered, with an estimated 200 to 250 left.
The Nigerian zookeeper confirmed to a reporter from Associated Press late last month that his zoo serves as a way station for captured wild primates.
”If anyone wants more gorillas, we can get them some more. But they are very expensive,” he said.
Shirley McGreal, chairperson of the United States-based International Primate Protection League, says South African officials should have picked up that the deal was suspicious.
”It is commonly known that baby gorillas are caught by mother-killing and are totally banned from trade. The animals should have been seized by Johannesburg’s authorities.”
McGreal says Nigeria has long been a pipeline for the smuggling of endangered wildlife out of Africa. She has a copy of a Nigerian dealer’s price list offering four baby gorillas for $1,6-million, though she is not sure this was the same dealer involved in the Malaysian transaction.
After being tipped off that four gorillas had appeared at the government-funded Taiping Zoo in January, McGreal’s league alerted the head of Malaysia’s Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) unit.
Gorillas are listed on Appendix I of Cites, which bans trade for commercial purposes and allows export only between recognised zoos if it is not detrimental to survival of the species in the wild.
The Taiping Zoo maintains the gorillas are part of a legitimate animal-exchange programme with Nigeria, but outrage over the transaction has been mounting among global environmental watchdogs in the past months.
The Nigerian Conservation Foundation and the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums are calling for the gorillas to be returned to a sanctuary in Africa, while the Cites secretariat in Switzerland has asked the Nigerian and Malaysian governments to ”cooperate in an investigation” that may lead to the two countries being banned from any trade in endangered species.
Officials at the South African Department of Agriculture and Land Affairs’s directorate of veterinary services import-export control say they approved the shipment after the Cites permits appeared to be in order.
”We got involved because of the disease implications of the shipment,” says the department’s acting director, Willie Ungerer, ”but we have nothing to do with the protection of endangered species.”
Members of the local NGO Wildlife Action Group (WAG) say it appears neither Cites officials nor the law-enforcement unit at Johannesburg International Airport was aware of the deal.
”This case shows how weak our Cites enforcement is,” says WAG’s Sherryn Thompson. ”The moment veterinary services received the applications they should have notified Cites and the airport. Instead, they were totally ignorant of the significance of the deal.”
The Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, under which the Cites division falls, said this week it was unaware of the case. Spokes- person Phindile Makwakwa added the department encourages parties who know about such deals to report them.
Superintendent Benedict Benson, head of the South African Police Services’s endangered species unit, said it will look into the case.
McGreal criticises South African Airways for moving the gorillas after another airline refused to carry the shipment via Dubai. Officials did not even question why the permits were granted for five gorillas, while only four arrived.
”The Nigerian export document was clearly suspect, but the gorillas sailed right through Johannesburg International. Our concern is that since this method of shipment of smuggled animals worked, it will be tried again.”
She says that there is evidence of a fresh onslaught on Africa’s great apes in recent months, probably for illegal trafficking. After years of no poaching in Rwanda’s national gorilla park, two nursing female gorillas were killed by poachers last month and one of their infants was stolen.
Two chimpanzees being smuggled into Lagos for export were confiscated on the Cameroon border a few weeks ago. Last September a baby gorilla and a baby chimpanzee were intercepted on a flight from Nigeria to Cairo and were drowned in a vat of chemicals by officials who believed they carried diseases — effectively shutting down The Nigerian Connection’s Egyptian link.
McGreal warns that a decline in Asian primates has put pressure on zoos to find African gorillas — and increased the efforts of sophisticated Nigerian middlemen to market these rare species.