Police Alert for Smugglers after Elephant Massacre in the Congo. (3 October, 1996)

Customs officers and wildlife officials have been put on the alert througout South Africa for a massive consignment of smuggled ivory after poachers slaughtered nearly 200 elephants in the Congo. The elephants, which appear to have been mown down with machine-guns and assault rifles, were discovered in a salt marsh near the Odzala national park, about 800 km north of Brazzaville.

Pieter Lategan, a senior investigator for the SA Police Service, said: 'It looks like it was a massacre. The animals were lying around in one big area.' The discovery of the carcasses was a major ecological blow, he said. 'What defence has an elephant against a gang opening fire with machine-guns? Whole families of elephants were sprayed with machine-gun fire by the cowardly poachers. It was a crime against nature and a crime against humanity.'

Superintendent Lategan, head of the SAPS' Endangered Species Protection Unit, said a large reward, possibly as much as R100 000, was being offered in South Africa for any information leading to the recovery of the ivory. Police suspect the smugglers plan to follow the usual route out of South Africa with their haul. They travel south by road or air from the Congo and enter South Africa making for one of the ports, from where the tusks are shipped out to the Far East.

Supt Lategan said if an attempt was made to smuggle the tusks through South African harbours, it was likely that they would be carefully concealed or disguised. Popular methods include placing tusks in hidden container compartments, chopping them up into 2cm-square blocks or staining the ivory to resemble tropical hardwoods. Special Correspondent. Courtesy of the Pretoria News.