The Phirilongwe Elephants Need Your Help Now!!!

Phirilongwe forest, where the famous Phirilongwe elephants live, is under threat. Not from the elephants or even the slash and burn wood cutters who are encroaching deeper into one of Malawi's most pristine and beautiful unprotected areas. This threat comes from the donor money of people who have mistakenly given to the International Fund For Animal Welfare for a misguided move of elephants out of the area.

The Friends of Phirilongwe would like IFAW contributors and staff, the Malawi Parks and Wildlife Service, and concerned elephant and environment lovers throughout the world to know the truth about what is happening this week on the shores of beautiful lake Malawi. This is not a rescue but a relocation, operating as a rescue mission.

There has been no environmental impact assessment on what this move will do to the area, this is in violation of the constitution of Malawi. One of our members, and a resident of the Mangochi area, Mr. I Khan has today filed court papers requesting that an Environmental Impact Assessment be done immediately, and that IFAW, who is paying for the move of the elephants, wait until the results of the assessment before making their final decision about where their donors' money should be best spent. He has also lodged a request for an EIA with the Ministry of Environment and Tourism. The request is included with this mail.

The Forest is being cut down, but according to satellite data there is a very large undisturbed area of at least 14000 hectares still standing, with rivers, hidden rock pools, hardwood forests and more. This forest is important to the area. The World Wide Fund For Nature's2005 paper outlining the creation of a park in the area says that without the protection that elephants give the forest, it will disappear in 10 to 20 years. Without the forest, the local NGO HEEED (Health, Education, Environment, and Economic Development) explains that without the trees, silted water running off the Phirilongwe mountains will cause irreversible harm to the lake, reduce local water tables and rainfalls in Malawi's most populous rural area and hence reduce already marginal crop yields and do nothing to uplift the local communities. Ignasio Mlande, the HEEED manager, explains that if the money is there to build a fence and create a protected park, that is preferable to the people than to take them away.

Many people are upset over their crops being destroyed and lives being lost to the elephants, but kept in perspective, this are problem that exist outside Botswana's Chobe Game Reserve and throughout the Okavango Delta, both unfenced wild areas of Africa, like the Phirilongwe forest, but just more well known. No one suggests taking those park's elephants because the people are in conflict with them, and there too they have had snares and injuries and deaths of both elephants and people. The difference is that unlike Chobe or the Okavango, this is relatively small area, and it is cost effective to fence it, if done in the right way, according to the South African company that fenced nearby Liwonde National Park.

The Friends of Phirilongwe believe that only by conserving the forest and elephants together, and creating a world class park out of the 14,000 hectares available that is already under marginal conservation, will the area's environment be saved for future generations.

A fence, protecting the park from people and people from the elephants would solve all of the problems that IFAW has put forward as reasons for the move. In 2005 all of the chiefs signed a WWF document saying they would prefer a fence to the elephants being moved out of the area. Today they have been told to be quiet and not disrupt the move or else.

IFAW claims there is no water available in the mountains, but they have conducted no scientific survey of the area at all. The 72 page WWF report details many water sources coming from the mountain that provide water all year around.

There have been no biologists studying the impact of the Primary species loss from the area, and they do not know even how many elephants there are. IFAW's website says there are between fifty and one hundred. This is not acceptable, for a major move like this there should be EIA's outlining how many animals there are and what their removal will do to the ecosystem. IFAW claims that the area is too marginal to support elephants, but where is the science to support this statement?

That IFAW claims that the elephants will be shot in a mass cull if they are not moved is nothing short of ridiculous. Throughout the network of Friends of Phirilongwe, there has been no suggestion that the elephants would otherwise be killed if they are not moved, and challenges the government of Malawi to make this statement to the press in the first person so it can go on record and be attributable.

The friends of Phirilongwe request a proper EIA immediately to assess all of these concerns. The elephants are in danger, the people living around them are too. Without a doubt the current status quo cannot continue, but to summarily remove them from an area they have lived successfully in for so long under the guise of a rescue without any respect for the other pillars of the local environment when there is another happy solution possible is nothing short of criminal.

The following questions should be raised by donors to IFAW:

Why has no scientific study been conducted on this move?
What information was used and by whom has it been supplied when IFAW decided this is the best way to protect the environment and the people?
Why has IFAW chosen to say the elephants will be killed unless they are moved?
What role has parks and wildlife played in the move and is it in the environmental interest? or is it in personal interest of the director?
If there is money for a move, why is there not money to build a fence?
Why has parks and wildlife not deployed game guards into the area to monitor the elephants and help protect the wildlife and people?
Why has IFAW ignored proposals put forward by both HEEED and WWF to create a park in the area?

It is our sincere belief that IFAW means well but they have been badly misinformed about the situation on the ground in the Mangochi area. The following excerpts from their blog and website need immediate reply:

"The elephants that inhabit the Phirilongwe Forest Reserve and the surrounding area in the Ndowa Hills are the remnants of once large herds that occupied southern Malawi". This is not proven and seems to be spurious. The herd in the Mangochi area has increased since the poaching wars of the1980 s, and according to one biologist seems to indicate that there was room for more elephants in the area, IF a fence is put up. We challenge IFAW to show us the science that they used for this statement.

"The elephants will be translocated to the Majete Wildlife Reserve, about 250 km south of Phirilongwe". The people who manage and run the reserve there performed an in-house study and survey in the Phirilongwe area that IFAW in2008 is basing its information on. The beneficiaries of an elephant move should not be conducting investigations that a funder like IFAW is paying for. There should be an independent study.

The director of Parks and Wildlife in Malawi, Leonard Sefu, who signed off on this move, also sits as a private citizen on the board of Directors of Majete National Park, which is privately run and will be getting the elephants from the move from Phirilongwe. Again this is a clear conflict of interest. If indeed the Parks and Wildlife Department has claimed that they will shoot the elephants, unless they are moved to a park run by the director of the department....this seems more than a conflict of interest.

"The capture itself will require the elephants to be darted and tranquillised from helicopter and on foot." This is true, and the contractor who has been paid to do the move, South African based Conservation Solutions, is alleged to have killed a bull while trying to collar five of them in2007 . This is not proven yet, but shows the dangerous nature of this sort of trans-location out of a rough mountain environment, and that was only trying to collar five elephants, not capture more than fifty.

For this move roads have been ploughed into the bush right up to the forest edge. These roads will further degrade the forest and without the elephants as protection, or a fence, it will be cut and made into charcoal. This is not an acceptable outcome, to save 50 elephants at the expense of southern Malawi's biggest woodland.

IFAW donors have spent at least half a million dollars to pay for this move. Could there not be a change? If they knew the facts on the ground, would the donors not prefer their money was spent on long term solutions that really do: %u201Cset an example for taking an ethical approach to elephant management practices." As IFAW claims in their press statement?

A copy of the EIA request and a letter from I. Khan of Mangochi outlining the area and how a park could help uplift this area is included with this statement.

The friends of Phirilongwe request a proper EIA immediately to assess all of these concerns. The elephants are in danger, the people living around them are too. Without a doubt the current status quo cannot continue, but to summarily remove them from an area they have lived successfully in for so long under the guise of a rescue without any respect for the other pillars of the local environment when there is another happy solution possible is nothing short of criminal. We hope that IFAW will comply with our request for a properly conducted Environmental Impact Assessment.