This is the story about Kasungu National Park in Malawi, as told by Mike Labuschagne, who has been working there as a ranger for more than 30 years. He used to have funding from the US-based animal rights organisation IFAW, the International Fund for Animal Welfare, to help the elephants of Kasungu. Now he believes that IFAW should be charged with the murder of local people for wilfully releasing 263 elephants into the area, which can’t support them.
“It was completely unprepared to receive them,” he says.
According to IFAW, the government of Malawi chose to relocate elephants from one park, Liwonde, that was at capacity for elephants, to another park, Kasungu, that had space, which IFAW paid for. Mike says that Kasungu didn’t and doesn’t have space.
IFAW is unwilling to shoot elephants and is opposed to hunting tourism. Locals are taking matters into their own hands, killing 11 elephants, so far, that Mike knows about. He says that number could be as high as 90.
Mike says that elephants have killed 13 people, created more than 50 orphans and impoverished 11,500 people by raiding crops and foodstores.
In a statement, IFAW says: ‘Several human/wildlife conflict events affecting communities living close to Kasungu have occurred since 2022, leading to the deaths of several individuals, causing trauma, and negatively affecting bereaved families. We are deeply saddened by the deaths or injuries of each person impacted by the elephants that strayed into the surrounding communities. Our thoughts remain with their families.’
Before the ‘criminal dumping of elephants’, as Mike puts it, Kisungu was an elephant conservation success story. The British High Commission and the German Embassy in Malawi’s capital Lilongwe commissioned research which found that, up until 2003, the park’s population of up to 1,000 elephants had been poached and poisoned down to around 45. With IFAW funding, the Malawian minister of tourism installed Mike in 2014 to solve this problem.
Mike identified the main problem as corruption – park rangers paid to do a job they were not doing. He moved to the area and his first act was to set up a network of informants.
“This modern idea that an African conservationist is some deskbound urbanite – it’s ridiculous,” he says. “If you are sitting in Washington, Berlin or London and you imagine that by some mystical power you can change what’s going on in Africa from there, then you are a fool, and you need to be removed from the picture, just like, at a lower level, the corrupt ranger needs to be put in jail or at least chased away.”
Mike’s work produced a population of elephants that could live alongside the burgeoning local human population without undue conflict. All that changed after IFAW paid for a major translocation of elephants to the area in 2022.
According to IFAW, ‘Work undertaken in the region is solely done by nationals, and executive decisions made are by African leadership and regional staff. IFAW employs local experts, local staff and local management, and operates in consultation with national and regional decision-making bodies and local communities.’
Mike says: “IFAW – whatever they may be – are not a conservation organisation. They are a fund. It’s in their name. Their expertise is raising funds. They want to hear a story and give you money and hear a good story back. They cannot deal with complexities.”
According to Mike, the population density of people in Kasungu in 1992 was a quarter of what it is now. That’s why a park that once held 1,000 elephants can no longer support 263. He says that, as soon as the elephants arrived in Kasungu, his informants started to send him details of human/wildlife conflicts. News of the deaths of local people soon came.
Mike worries that IFAW will not learn its lesson from the Kasungu experience. The fund aims to use its cash to set aside vast tracts of Africa as protected elephant reserves. People live in these areas, too.
“There are 9 billion people on the planet,” says Mike. “So, your ‘room to roam’ – well, you’ve now got to roam over people. It is a conflict. It is a problem that organisations like IFAW wish away.
“I have put hundreds and hundreds of people in jail from five years to 18 years for crimes that do not compare with what is happening in Kasungu”
IFAW did not want directly to answer Mike’s charges against it. Instead, it points to a press release on its website about the Kasungu elephant relocation.
There is some controversy about how IFAW made its statement, as detailed on South Africa’s Daily Maverick news website.
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