The Rapeutation of Kevin Dowling, Excerpt From "Panda Leaks"

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The Rapeutation of Kevin Dowling, Excerpt From "Panda Leaks"

Postby admin » Thu Jan 28, 2016 10:19 pm

Panda Leaks: The Dark Side of the WWF, by Wilfried Huismann
© 2014 by Nordbook UG (haftungsbeschrankt), Bremen, Germany
Original title: Schwarzbuch WWF - DunkJe Geschafte im Zeichen des Panda
© 2012 by Gutersloher Verlagshaus, Gutersloh, Germany

Part 1 of 2

5. It All Began in Africa

To really understand the WWF and its political role, you must go deep down into the catacombs of the British Empire, the demise of which gained momentum in the 1950s and 1960s with the loss of almost all the African colonies. Africa is the birthplace of the WWF. The prologue to its story began in the year 1940, when Great Britain declared the Serengeti the first national park in East Africa -- an area the size of Northern Ireland. The colonial authority had made the plan palatable to London on the basis of two arguments: there were no major mineral deposits in the Serengeti; and the terrain was unattractive for European settlers -- it didn't rain enough and there were too many tsetse flies. The Serengeti would become a "worldwide tourism sensation".

The only problem was: the Massai, the indigenous tribal people who for centuries had lived with their cattle herds in the Serengeti. The British decided to legally guarantee them the right to remain -- they were only herdsmen after all; they didn't work the land or hunt protected animals. The Massai were relieved. But they hadn't reckoned with the Western conservationists and the white park rangers who had nothing but disdain for the natives. Many tourists also complained about the sight of the "dirty" Massai and their "barbaric ways". In the 1950s the colonial authorities introduced a new policy, offering the Massai the option of voluntary resettlement. But the tribal chiefs rejected the offer. Where else would there be so much wonderful grazing land and rivers to water the cattle? And wasn't it their land and that of their forefathers anyway?

The conservationists ramped up the pressure, which prompted the colonial administration of the Tanganyika Territory to make a Solomonic decision: the Serengeti National Park would be reduced from 5,000 to 1,800 square miles. The Massai would then have to leave the smaller park. A storm of protest was unleashed in Europe and the USA. It would soon develop into a tornado for the British colonial authority, when German wildlife conservationist Bernhard Grzimek got involved. He showed the world how a radical PR campaign could force a political about-face. Through his Serengeti mission the celebrated director of the Frankfurt Zoo became the ideological role model of modern nature conservancy -- and the WWF.

Image
Bernhard Grzimek on a stamp

Grzimek's Mission

Prof. Bernhard Grzimek flew with his son Michael over the Serengeti to observe the migrations of the big game animals. He published the results in his 1956 book 'No Place for Wild Animals'. It contains such apocalyptical declarations as "Africa's wild animals are doomed to extinction" with no scientific evidence to back his claims. According to Grzimek, too many people lived in the Serengeti, and the forests and steppes would be transformed into deserts because of it. He was convinced that pastoral tribes inherently destroy the ecosystems in which they live. A gross misconception, as prominent scientists of the day could have told him. Conservationist David Western for example, who lived in Kenya and had spent many years studying the Massai, had come to the conclusion that: "The herdsmen are actually the reason that there are still so many wild animals here." [5] But the ignorance of outsiders was mightier than the experience of experts on site.

In 1959 Bernhard Grzimek followed up with the bestseller: 'Serengeti Shall Not Die'. The book was translated into 17 languages and served son Michael as the template for a film of the same name, which promptly received an Oscar nomination. The Grzimeks' main message: If we want to save the Serengeti, the Massai have to go. Nature as a human-free zone -- no one formulated and propagated this mantra of an elite Western Nature apotheosis better and more incisively than the Frankfurt Zoo director. Grzimek concealed his racist-tinged views behind the stilted vocabulary of the well-meaning: "We Europeans must teach our black brothers to value their own possessions, not because we are older or cleverer, but because we do not want them to repeat our mistakes and sins." [6] The general public and Hollywood applauded, and the British colonial administration tried -- shortly before the launch of 'Serengeti Shall Not Die' -- to pull its head out of the noose.

In 1958 the colonial authorities submitted a declaration to the Massai chiefs for their signature. It stated that they and their people would agree to leave the Serengeti Park "voluntarily". 30 years later, Raymond Bonner, a New York Times reporter, tracked down one of the few surviving signatories: Tendemo ole Kisaka. The old man told Bonner how the "signing" of the contract had gone down: "We were told to sign. It was not explained to us. None of the tribal leaders could read or write." The old man then added, grinning "You white people are very tough." [7]

A people that had lived in the Serengeti for 4,000 years was expelled -- a cruel and bloody operation in which 100,000 Massai lost their homeland. From faraway London a tight group of aristocratic big game hunters-cum-nature-conservationists looked on with approval as the German zoo director carried out his plan. Grzimek's sweeping Serengeti campaign presumably inspired the elite old boys' club to come up with their own, much bigger project: the WWF -- a sort of international avant-garde advocating for the wilderness.

Most indigenous tribal languages have no word for "wilderness". They simply exist, as do the plants and animals with and from which they live. "Environment" is the material basis of all life: no indigenous people on earth would ever dream of willfully destroying the wilderness. Their "nature conservation" is an organic outgrowth of the oneness of man and nature. For Western conservationists, on the other hand, the "virgin forest" is a nostalgic notion; the dream of a paradise lost -- Europeans and North Americans have, of course, long since thoroughly annihilated their own primeval forests. A subconscious collective sense of guilt now motivates us to try to save the last remaining "paradises" in the Southern Hemisphere, whatever the indigenous people think of the methods. Indigenous peoples and the vast majority of Western conservationists do not speak the same language.

The expulsion of indigenous tribes on the grounds of nature conservancy is a US American invention, introduced in practice for the first time in 1851 in Yosemite Valley, in California, when Governor Peter Burnett threatened the local Indians in the valley with a "war of extinction". Major James Savage, who went on to execute the plan, spelled out exactly what the governor's statement meant: "Satan entered paradise and did all the mischief he could. I intend to be a bigger devil in this Indian paradise than old Satan ever was." [8]

Some Native Americans managed to survive the asymmetric war. But then naturalist John Muir, founder of The Sierra Club, the world's first nature conservancy society, came along and took care of them, too. Muir knew the Yosemite Valley from his own wilderness wanderings. He, too, expressed revulsion for the indigenous people there. He found them to be "unclean", and was repulsed by their eating habits: a fruit and vegetable diet supplemented with protein from flies and ants. John Muir pressured the federal government in Washington to rid the valley of "such debased fellow beings", and to declare it a US National Park. He maintained the Indians were just "nomads" passing through and had never had permanent settlements in the valley. That was an outright falsification of history: for about 4,000 years the Yosemite Valley area had been a cultural homeland and botanical breadbasket of the Miwok, Yokut, Paiute and Ahwahneechee tribes -- with fields, meadows, fruits and medicinal herbs.

In 1964 the Wilderness Act was signed into law in the USA giving legal footing to the romantic fiction of a nature paradise untouched by humans. The text of the act defines wilderness as ': .. an area where the earth and its community of life are untrampled by man, where man himself is a visitor and does not remain". Yosemite National Park has served as a model for the WWF and other major conservationist organizations, such as Conservation International, who have exported the scheme throughout the world. Since the founding of the WWF, the national park ideology has led to mass resettlement in the name of nature conservancy. An estimated 20 million people worldwide have fallen victim to these initiatives. These conservation refugees are without exception people of color: First Nations; black tribes; Adivasi, Pygmy; Dayak and Papua peoples.

Prince Philip Comes Aboard

A final impulse for the establishment of the WWF came from Sir Julian Huxley, evolutionary biologist and president of the British Eugenics Society. In his view "The expansion of humanity is secondary to the preservation of other species." [9] Apparently that was especially applicable when the humans poised for "expansion" were black. Huxley also held a post at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, a foreign policy think tank that looked at population control, and how the Empire could continue securing natural resources long-term after the loss of its colonies.

In 1960 Huxley headed for Africa to see how the national parks were doing. In some countries the park grounds, with their valuable game stocks, covered more than 20 percent of the nation's total surface area. For three months Huxley travelled through eastern, central, and southern Africa and came to the conclusion that the nascent black governments were ruining the game reserves and national parks. He wrote articles about his observations for The Observer: In Kenya, Tanganyika and Rhodesia the wild animals had all but disappeared, he claimed: "Throughout the area, cultivation is extending, native cattle are multiplying at the expense of wild animals, poaching is becoming heavier and more organized, ... large areas are being overgrazed and degenerating into semi-deserts, and above and behind all this, the human population is inexorably mounting to press even harder on the limited land space." [10]

Huxley turned to Max Nicholson for help. The founder of the British organization Nature Conservancy was equally concerned about the developments: "We felt that under the African governments, all prospect of conservation of nature would be ended." [11] The two joined forces with respected ornithologist Peter Scott and together came up with the idea of founding a supranational organization that would use powerful financial backing and structural dominance to save the last of the African wilderness paradises that the white man called his own.

On an excursion on the sailing yacht Sceptre in the spring of 1961 Peter Scott asked HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, if he wouldn't like to become president of the new organization. In February 2011, in an interview my colleague Tibet Sinha conducted with Prince Philip at Buckingham Palace for our film 'The Silence of the Pandas', the Prince couldn't remember if the decisive conversation with Peter Scott had actually taken place on the yacht or on land. He had a vivid recollection, on the other hand, of Peter Scott's leadership proposal, and the fact that he had himself collaborated on the WWF charter. Ah, those happy and glorious early days! His clear, lively eyes sparkled cheerfully. The WWF is Prince Philip's life's work -- the only public arena where he can move at his ease, without having to fulfill the role of Prince Consort to the Queen.

Prince Philip summed up the founding story for us in his inimitable laconic upper-crust style: "Peter Scott said: 'We're going to set this thing up, would I be president?' I said: 'Well, I'll be president of the UK thing, but I won't be president of the international.' Because I happened to be president of the International Equestrian Federation at the time, and I said: 'I can't do two international things at once.' But I said that I happened to know that Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands is very interested in wild animals and conservation, and he happens to be staying at Claridges, so if you pop along and ask him, you may get him, which is what he did."

Prince Bernhard had, in fact, agreed to take on the presidency, and threw himself wholeheartedly into the task. He and his fellow WWF founders dreamed of creating a contiguous supranational park system stretching from Kenya to South Africa -- under their control. On September 11th, 1961, in one of the last convulsions of Empire, the World Wildlife Fund was born, with headquarters in Gland, Switzerland, on the shores of Lake Geneva.

Gerti the Rhinoceros

To get the national parks of Africa whipped into tiptop shape the WWF would need a lot of money -- from rich philanthropists and the general public alike. To induce the average working stiff to donate generously, WWF PR tacticians came up with a commercial strategy that the designated Vice President Peter Scott referred to as a "shock tactic". The ad agency Mather & Crowther had apparently searched worldwide for horrifying images of animal massacres. The result was a WWF brochure entitled 'Save the World's Wildlife.'

To effectively spread its message among the common folk, the WWF did a deal with the Daily Mirror, which still had a circulation of over 5 million at the time. On October 9th, 1961 a special issue hit the newsstands: six pages chock-a-block with the most gruesome pictures from the WWF brochure. The front page sported a photo of mama Rhinoceros Gerti side-by-side with her baby, along with a dramatic appeal to the conscience of readers: "DOOMED to disappear from the face of the earth ... UNLESS something is done swiftly, animals like this rhino and its baby will soon be as dead as the dodo." The ill-fated dodo bird, that iconic poster child of extinction, was an effective reference for stirring public sympathies.

The shock treatment had encouraging results: within four days 20,000 people had donated money to the WWF to help save the endangered animals -- in the belief that their hard-earned savings would actually go to help Gerti and her kind. But according to the research of British journalist Kevin Dowling the WWF did not invest a single penny of the proceeds from this first big fundraising campaign in saving the endangered rhinos. Not until twelve years later, it seems, did WWF funds finally make their way into an initiative to help save the rhinoceros. [12] I wanted to dig deeper, so I contacted WWF South Africa, but they refused my request for an interview.

Apparently the WWF had no guilty conscience about manipulating the good will of the donors. On the contrary, it took unscrupulous advantage of people's sympathy with the plight of the animals. Clear evidence of this can be found in a lecture given by WWF co-founder Max Nicholson shortly after the first big donation drive at an event with WWF campaign managers in Zurich. Nicholson blithely enthused: "We have, therefore, good confirmation of our diagnosis of the publicity value of the world wildlife emergency and the possibilities of converting it into effective money-raising." [13]

The ploy was so effective that the WWF has continued to use it, more or less unaltered, to this day. The focus shifts every year to a different protagonist from a roster of "charismatic" animals -- tigers, whales, elephants & Co. take turns strumming the heartstrings of the public.

Oil in Their Blood

In 1962, when Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands took office as President of WWF International, he brought an old friend on board as a major sponsor: John H. Loudon, General Director of petrochemicals giant Royal Dutch Shell. That was a bonanza for the WWF, but was also the source of much friction with other nature conservancy organizations -- at the time, Shell was generating its biggest profits with patents on pesticides based on chlorinated hydrocarbons. [14]

In that same year of 1962 several scientific journals revealed that these very pesticides were extremely hazardous for wild animals. There had been repeated mass die-offs of birds that had pecked at grain and seeds treated with Shell products. Instead of a serious self-critical response to the findings, the company responded with a salvo of counter-studies from subservient scientists.

In its effort to fend off the unpleasant truth Shell could rely completely on the help of the WWF. Prince Bernhard himself distributed an argument paper from Shell boss John H. Loudon to the WWF Board of Trustees. In his paper, Loudon asked the WWF to refrain from expressing criticism about the hazardous substances. He emphasized the "humanitarian usefulness" of the pesticides, which lay in their ability to prevent famine in the world. [15]

Sir Peter Scott, the renowned British bird lover, was the only one at the meeting of WWF leadership elite to raise a voice of dissent against the audacious argumentation advanced by Shell. Sir Peter said that, in truth, "greed" and the "total disregard of the natural environment" posed the largest threat to life on earth. But he, too, failed in the end to insist on a public condemnation of WWF sponsor Shell. It was agreed that a decision on the matter be postponed -- in fact, the WWF remained silent on the subject in the years that followed. The silence lasted until the mid-1970s, when the subject of CHC pesticides conveniently took care of itself: they were finally banned in the USA and most other countries on earth.

Over the years there were repeated debates in the WWF Executive Committee about whether they should be accepting financial contributions from "irresponsible" businesses. After protracted consideration, in the early 1980s the committee finally arrived at the definitive decision: better not to be so strict. It was "difficult to impossible" to make a moral judgment about a company. According to the minutes of an Executive Committee meeting, one member even quoted the Church as a precedent: "It was observed that no church refused donations from sinners."  [16]

Three years after the pesticide scandal the relationship with the oil multinational had grown even closer. In 1966 John H. Loudon, by that time no longer General Director of Shell but Chairman of its Supervisory Board, became a member of the Executive Committee of WWF International, on the recommendation of Prince Bernhard. The oil industry could now have an even more direct influence on the environmental strategy of the biggest nature conservancy organization on Earth. That would payoff just a year later.

On March 18th, 1967 the oil tanker Torrey Canyon ran aground on a reef in the English Channel. The supertanker, which was chartered by British Petroleum (BP), broke apart; 200 kilometers of British and French coastal areas were contaminated by a massive oil spill -- the first in post-war history. 15,000 seabirds died an agonizing death, and the oil industry came under massive public fire. The WWF alone showed polite restraint. The International Executive Committee decided not to join other environmental groups in their condemnation of BP and others "as this might compromise further fund-raising efforts and approaches to certain industries, particularly in the United States."' [17] The WWF top brass made only one concession, allowing the British section to launch a "seabird appeal", which went on to raise 5,000 pounds sterling. The money was used to support the de-oiling and resettlement of the birds. The WWF contented itself with cleaning up the mess made by its industrial partner. A business model with a future?

Old Pals

In 1975 a US Senate sub-committee led by Senator Frank Church was convened to investigate alleged illegal payments by the arms manufacturer Lockheed. The hearings revealed that the US firm had also arranged for bribery payments to Prince Bernhard, in exchange for orders by the Netherlands for Lockheed's Orion fighter jets. In its own investigation report from August 1976 the Dutch government acknowledged that the corruption charges had been founded.

Denial would have been folly anyway, as Prince Bernhard had left an all too obvious trail of evidence behind -- including a handwritten letter to the arms company in which the Prince petitioned them for two million dollars commission. Too much, said the Lockheed bosses and sent manager Roger Bixby Smith to the Netherlands. At a meeting with the Prince at Soestdijk Palace they agreed on a compromise: Lockheed would transfer one million dollars for Bernhard to a numbered account in Geneva, on the condition that the Dutch government ordered at least four Orion jets. When the story eventually came to light, Prince Bernhard said in his defense that the money had all been for a good cause -- the WWF. However, he was never able to prove this.

In 1995, while researching the history of the WWF, British journalist Kevin Dowling discovered that Prince Bernhard had acted as a lobbyist for the US Lockheed concern since 1959 -- long before the bribery scandal. Dr. Max Ilgner, an old friend from the Nazi era, had brokered the contact. The former management board member of the notorious IG Farben chemical company had done his time for war crimes, and was now working for Lockheed. At IG Farben Max Ilgner had headed the NW7 department (industrial espionage), among other things. One of his subordinates had been Prince Bernhard zur Lippe-Biesterfeld, who worked as an assistant manager at the Paris branch. [18]

In 1937 the Prince left the company to marry the Dutch crown princess Juliane. Prince Bernhard hadn't just been an IG Farben spy, but a member of the elite Nazi cavalry regiment, the Reiter-SS, as well -- a biographical detail that he prudently withheld from the Dutch.

When the Lockheed scandal broke in 1976 Prince Bernhard became untenable as President of the WWF and, at the request of the Executive Committee, resigned the office. His friend John H. Loudon, Chairmen of the Board of Dutch Royal Shell, followed the Prince into the post. Contrary to the fears of WWF headquarters, the Lockheed scandal in the Netherlands led to only a minor dip in donations to the WWF. It takes more than a bit of corporate corruption to shake the faith of a true Panda believer.

Prince Bernhard left a political legacy that in some ways still influences the style and internal culture of the WWF today. The Prince, for example, had a soft spot for secret societies: he founded not only the elite, and for a long time top secret, Bilderberg Group, but also the sub-rosa WWF "order" known as The 1001 Club.
The Prince also introduced the exclusive honors system that continues to contribute to the elite self-image of the contemporary organization.

The highest WWF honor is The Order of the Golden Ark, awarded "in recognition of special service to the conservation of the world's flora and fauna." If someone who hasn't actually performed the special service is nevertheless dying to wear the medal to the next Panda Ball, a donation of at least 100,000 dollars will do. Several rich aesthetes, such as Laurance Spelman Rockefeller, have elected for this option to get the hardware.

The second category in the WWF honors ranking, the Gold Medal for Outstanding Contemporary Conservationists, is less expensive. The WWF didn't even have to pay for the gold the medal is made of -- the South African Chamber of Commerce donated it. Honorees in this category also get a gold Rolex watch for their troubles.

One of the first recipients of the gold medal plus Rolex was Prof. Dr. Bernhard Grzimek, also a member of The 1001 Club. The Director of the Frankfurt Zoo embodied like no other the romantic soul of the WWF. Month for month, his raspy philanthropist's voice invoked the call of the wild from TV sets and in movie theatres. Despite his key role as poster boy for the WWF, Grzimek was an exotic specimen in The 1001 Club; almost all the other members were wealthy businesspeople who responded more to the call of cash than to that of the wilderness. These global players, such as Paris born, Swiss schooled British citizen and resident of Switzerland, the billionaire and hereditary religious leader Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, knew how to harmoniously combine nature conservancy and business. The Aga Khan, too, was a member of the secret WWF club and also served as Vice President of WWF International. His mighty and ancient family clan had invested billions in African countries -- which certainly did no harm to the power base and informal political network of the WWF.

The 250 square kilometre floor of the Ngorongoro crater in Tanzania is home to thousands of elephants, buffalo, rhinoceros, flamingos and lions: the crater is a veritable Garden of Eden and is known as the ''eighth wonder of the world". The Massai were allowed to resettle there after being kicked out of the Serengeti. The crater offered salt and water for the Massai cattle. Then, two years after the mass resettlement, Tanganyika became independent.

In the new state of Tanzania that was formed after unification with Zanzibar, the white WWF functionaries held powerful sway. They controlled the national parks, and thus the flow of money to Africa for the protection of the national parks from the international nature conservancy organizations and Western countries. The conservationist lobby put persistent pressure on the government of the young country to have the Massai expelled from the new settlement area as well: the Ngorongoro nature reserve was overgrazed, and the Massai used too much water. The nature conservationists achieved their aim; in 1974 the Massai were forced to clear off once again.

The government sent military troops into the Ngorongoro who proceeded to drive the people from their huts and burn them down while the inhabitants looked on. [19] The soldiers also opened the kraals -- the traditional livestock enclosures that form the centerpiece of a village -- and drove the herds out of the crater. When the cattle instinctively returned, they were shot dead. Massai who resisted were bludgeoned and thrown into jail.

As soon as the mud huts of the Massai were gone, the tourism business took over, erecting huge tent campsites where thousands of tourists were allowed to stay. Promoters such as The Sierra Club offered "campers" from Europe and the USA luxury tents with real feather beds, hot showers and ice-cold beer. The ice was produced using generators that made an almighty racket in the crater day and night, and there was no longer any mention of water shortages.


In 1992 the government finally managed to enact a prohibition against camping in the crater basin. It was a triumph for the gorongoro Nature Reserve, but it would soon prove to be a Pyrrhic victory: not long afterwards a powerful investor appeared with plans for a luxury hotel smack in the middle of the conservation area, right on the edge of the crater. The park administration vetoed the proposal but the president of the country overruled them, ordering them to issue a special permit for the project. The investor wasn't just anyone, after all, but a special "friend" of the nation: the Ismaili Muslim hereditary Imam and multibillionaire HRH Prince Karim Aga Khan IV, member of the WWF 1001 Club and nephew of WWF Vice President Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan.

The nature reserve authorities were forced to bow to their higher-ups. An ecological disaster was predictable, because after the grand opening celebrations for the Serena Safari Lodge in 1996 safari tourism kicked in big time. For 630 dollars a night in the peak season tourists can now reside in a luxury hotel with all the creature comforts, right in the middle of the wilderness. Since then, 150 jeeps a day have rumbled through the crater -- for a big game photo shoot. After the thrills of the safari there is afternoon tea at the crater's edge with live entertainment: Massai warriors in their traditional red capes perform tribal dances for the upscale ecotourists, and the hotel offers excursions to "traditional Massai villages". The noble herdsmen have become dancing beggars, living from the alms of the tourist industry.

The Aga Khan's hotel and the neighboring hotel Ngorongoro Sopa, which was built later, consume an enormous amount of water. To serve their needs they pump fresh water out of the crater, and as a result more and more salt water from the Ngorongoro salt lake has seeped into the ground water. The forests in the crater are now dying as a consequence of salinization. But the tourists needn't feel troubled because, once again, the blame for the crisis is being placed squarely on the shoulders of the Massai, although they are only allowed to enter the crater once a day to give their cattle salt and water. A third resettlement of the Massai is already under discussion. On the edge of the crater not far from the Aga Khan's hotel a pyramid of unpolished stones rises up, marking a burial site. Here lies the mortal remains of Prof. Bernhard Grzimek and his son Michael.
The Serengeti crusaders are gone, but their spirit lives on.

Skeletons in the Cupboard

Any unauthorized individual who penetrates the inner sanctum of the WWF pays dearly for it, as did British journalist Kevin Dowling. In 1990 Dowling, who had first made his name with nature films, came into the possession of internal WWF documents, including the 1001 Club membership list. And he would pay a heavy price indeed. His film 'The Secret of the Rhinoceros' about the secret African life of the WWF, was never shown; the research results disappeared into the archives of English TV broadcaster Channel 4. Dowling's career was in tatters: "I didn't stand a chance, because the WWF has connections that are just too powerful." Dowling never regained a professional foothold, earning his living with articles for a provincial newspaper until he died, an ailing and bitter man, in 2008. But he had been too good a journalist to just consign his discoveries to obscurity. He had made copies of secret documents and taken precautions to ensure that, one day, they would reemerge.

I picked up Kevin Dowling's trail on the Internet. A report in the Dutch newspaper 'Algemeen Dagblad' from January 17th, 2000 caught my eye: a Dutch lawyer called J. G. G. Wilgers had won a court case against the WWF, enabling him to use the term "criminal organization" to describe the WWF without fear of further legal repercussions. I called the lawyer in Goes, the Netherlands. He was immediately on fire, and very forthcoming: "In the early days, the WWF used the cover of nature conservancy to engage in criminal activities. Did you know that a commando with WWF connections allegedly even murdered people opposing the apartheid regime in South Africa?" For a moment I seriously considered just hanging up -- the honorable attorney from Goes obviously had an overactive imagination. On the other hand: if his accusations were false, why had he been acquitted? I asked if he would be willing to repeat his assertions in a recorded interview and to provide evidence to back them up. Wilgers hesitated before answering: "I would certainly be willing, but there's someone who knows more than I do." That someone was Rene Zwaap, who lives in the center of Amsterdam near the train station. I met him as arranged at a bustling and drafty Chinese restaurant called Yan.

Rene Zwaap was a thin, slightly bent man in his mid-forties with a big bushy head of hair and wire-rimmed glasses. He greeted all the Chinese waiters present by name. Before the Peking duck had landed on our table he had already smoked three cigarettes and run me through his biography: he was currently editor of the online news site Public Affairs; before that he wrote for the hard-hitting Dutch news weekly 'De Groene Amsterdammer'; he was busy at the moment working on two documentary films about the military history of the Netherlands and on a book about Prince Bernhard.

The German prince at the side of the popular Dutch monarch Queen Juliane had really turned Zwaap's head: "Bernhard has had a greater influence on Dutch history than people think. I once researched his time at IG Farben for a Dutch newspaper. Prince Bernhard got wind of it and summoned my publisher in to see him. They had a chat and ended up becoming good pals. Later my boss showed me a postcard he had received from Prince Bernhard. On the back was written: why is that impudent guy still working for you?"
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Re: The Rapeutation of Kevin Dowling, Excerpt From "Panda Le

Postby admin » Thu Jan 28, 2016 10:20 pm

Part 2 of 2

Rene Zwaap had stumbled upon the inglorious interlude in the prince's career by chance: "In 1997 I went to England to visit the journalist Kevin Dowling; someone had told me he had a copy of Prince Bernhard's Reiter-55 ID card. And he did actually have it. He gave it to me, asking nothing in return. But he did have something he wanted to get off his chest. I immediately sensed that it was something very important, so I recorded our conversation on film, with an Hi8 camera."

The faded, pixilated video material shows images of Kevin Dowling as the epitome of the slightly down-at-heel conservative British gentleman: in a grey pinstriped suit with a red and brown striped tie he sits in a wingback chair in the midst of a landscape of bookshelves, porcelain figurines, little rubber trees and other bric-a-brac. He speaks -- five hours long -- of his battle with the WWF, which ended for him in a complete and crushing defeat. The video is the legacy of a failed hero.

Image
Kevin Dowling, 1997

In 1989 he shot his first documentary film charting the fate of the big game animals. It was called 'The Elephant Man: and revealed that poachers in Africa had slaughtered a million elephants. The viewing public was deeply unsettled and donations flooded in to the WWF -- in record amounts. "I had the numbers about the slaughtered elephants from the WWF," said Kevin Dowling. "I had already started to have my doubts while shooting the film, because where would the Africans in Kenya, Zambia, and Tanzania get enough weapons to kill a million elephants? Before the film was finished I knew: the number was incorrect. The WWF must have known better. I believe it is possible that they fed me the false number to sway public opinion towards taking tougher measures against game poachers. I completed the film nevertheless, and the WWF even gave me an award for it. But my doubts weighed heavily."

Kevin Dowling headed out to Africa once more, but this time his aim was to uncover the secrets of the WWF. In 1992, British broadcaster ITV aired the results of Dowling's research in a TV documentary titled: 'Ten Pence in the Panda'. The film was one of the first critical explorations of the colonial antecedents of the WWF. It was aired only once, before disappearing into the station's archives. I tried to get at least a preview copy from ITV -- in vain. Even 20 years after its single airing, the documentary remains under lockdown. I kept looking, but the search seemed jinxed: I tired all the relevant libraries and film archives, but no one had a copy. The political and media allies of the WWF had apparently done a good clean-up job -- after all, Dowling's findings amounted to a powder keg of negative PR for the WWF. Among other things, he believed he had found solid evidence of misappropriation of donation funds. In front of Rene's camera Kevin Dowling takes a ring binder from a bookcase and opens it. He claims it contains secret internal WWF documentation: The Phillipson Report.

In 1987 the WWF commissioned Oxford economist John Phillipson to do a comprehensive company audit. WWF management was probably less-than-thrilled with the prospect, but the investigation was being done at the express wish of South African tobacco tycoon Anton Rupert. He had been able to demand such a thing because, according to Dowling, he was paying the salary of the WWF General Director out of his own pocket. This too, remained a heavily guarded WWF secret for many years. Rupert wanted to know how efficient the international projects of the WWF actually were, and how management could be improved.

The result of the audit was unambiguous: the WWF produced "few" long-term successes, and the organization was accused of "egocentricity and neo-colonialism" in the developing world where WWF practice discriminated against local staff: "They resent not being consulted about or informed of the conservation initiatives in their own countries." The report called the financial conduct of the WWF "appalling". Only the pressure applied by Prince Philip himself, who by that time was already President of WWF International, could persuade inspector Phillipson to soften his assessment to: "leaves much to be desired". But Phillipson's verdict on project accounting, and thus the allocation of donation monies, remained damning: "diligent auditor set among the project account files in Switzerland would surely open a cupboard full of skeletons." The auditor could find no documentation at all for many field projects; for others there was no record of the specific allocation of funds.

Prince Philip wrote an outraged letter to WWF General Director Charles de Haes: "I had no idea that it might land us in such a pickle!! Whatever we do with it, we are bound to get into trouble. If we don't publish it in full, we are bound to be accused of trying to 'cover up' something. If we do let it out, all the mischief-makers will have field day!" [20]

The prince advised against distributing the highly explosive report to the WWF Executive Committee. Of the 208 pages of the audit, a grand total of 9 were distributed in the end. Prince Philip had rightly feared a slump in donations should the findings of the auditor be made public -- some of them were the stuff of a public image meltdown. For example, Phillipson assessed the WWF campaign to save the panda as follows: "The WWF made no serious attempt to successfully implement its panda program ... donors would be dismayed to discover that their capital contribution is basically a complete write-off."

Kevin Dowling's film 'Ten Pence in the Panda' put a few big dents in the WWF image, but the public debate soon ebbed away. But Dowling was not prepared to cease and desist -- he still had ammunition in reserve. The commissioning editors at public service broadcaster Channel 4 were thrilled when Dowling pitched them his new film project.

Operation Lock

During the course of his investigation Dowling had come upon information about Operation Lock, a military commando in which the WWF had had a hand. In 1987 the WWF had contracted British private security company KAS to deploy a mercenary unit to combat the black market trade in ivory and rhinoceros horn.

In 1996 the South African government under Nelson Mandela appointed a commission to investigate criminal activities carried out by the apartheid regime under the cover of nature conservancy. Judge Mark Kumleben, who led the investigation committee, discovered that the former South African government had secretly organized mass slaughter of elephant and rhinoceros stocks in neighboring Black-governed countries, primarily Angola.

The main goal of the secret service operation was to politically and economically destabilize neighboring countries with Black governments, in an effort to undermine their public credibility. "You see," the message would be, "the Blacks just can't manage on their own." South Africa's Kruger National Park looked all the better in contrast: the WWF praised it to the rafters worldwide, and funneled donation money into it. Eyewitnesses testified before judge Kumleben that warehouses belonging to the South African military secret service had been used for the illegal transit of 3,000 pairs of poached elephant tusks a month.


Judge Kumleben also looked into the existence of the secret WWF commando unit, though apparently not very deeply. The judge heard witness Mike Richards, an agent of the South African secret police. He had been an undercover plant in the WWF mercenary group, meant to keep it under control -- and to gather information. He testified that Operation Lock had been "advantageous" because "the network needed for the collection and collation of information concerning endangered species and wild-life products takes on the same format as an infrastructure which is needed for the collection and collation of intelligence directly related to the activities of anti-South African countries, forces and people." [21]

Dowling's research started where Kumleben's investigations had left off. He was certain that: "Only portions of the Kumleben Report had been published. Mandela didn't want it made public that the WWF was aware of the dirty dealings of the apartheid regime. He didn't want to make waves with Great Britain; he also liked the Dutch Prince Bernhard and saw him as a friend." [22]

Several newspapers confirmed Kevin Dowling's claim: that the WWF special unit was aware of the animal slaughter orchestrated by the South African secret service.
Colonel Ian Crooke, commander of the KAS, even signed a contract swearing himself and all his men to secrecy regarding South Africa's involvement in game poaching and ivory smuggling. In return for their silence the office of the president issued the mercenaries false documents and passports, which gave them freedom of movement. Craig Williamson, a top South African secret service agent, testified before Dowling's camera that he had personally handed the false papers over to Colonel Crooke, commander of the secret unit that had been active since November 1987 in South Africa and its neighboring countries. The KAS team had been headquartered at a safe house, first in Pretoria, later in Johannesburg.

Kevin Dowling's assertions were by no means plucked from thin air; other sources back them up. I went to meet Prof. Stephen Ellis at the African Studies Centre in Leiden, the Netherlands. At the time of the events in question he had edited the London-based military, political and social analysis newsletter "Africa Confidential." Back in 1990, an insider had passed internal WWF documents to him: "I don't want to name the source, but at no time did the WWF ever contest the authenticity of the documents. Their contents make clear that Prince Bernhard had hatched the idea, together with South African WWF functionary John Hanks. At the time, Hanks was the WWF chief in charge of Africa. The two of them hired a private security company made up of former soldiers from the elite British SAS unit. They appeared in South Africa, contracted to track down and eliminate black-marketeers of rhinoceros. The WWF tried to play down its complicity in the activities by emphasizing that Prince Bernhard was no longer president of WWF International at the time, but of the Dutch WWF organization only. The WWF secretariat in Gland, Switzerland had known nothing about any of it. Bernhard and John Hanks did, in fact, end up taking full responsibility, in order to exonerate WWF International. But the truth is, the leadership of WWF International was involved in the planning as well."

There is a solid piece of evidence to support Stephen Ellis' allegation: a letter from then-General Secretary of WWF South Africa Frans Stroebel to Prince Philip, still president of WWF International at the time. Stroebel had personally introduced the commanders of Operation Lock to the officers of the South African secret service, and had participated from day one in planning the paramilitary activities. In his January 1990 letter to Prince Philip, Stroebel reveals that he had briefed WWF International General secretary Charles de Haes on Operation Lock from the very beginning -- in other words, from the fall of 1987 at the latest: "I have given Mr. de Haes a number of comprehensive briefings on the project since I first became involved. In May 1989, I gave him full details. He then went to HRH Prince Bernhard to confirm that Prince Bernhard was indeed the sponsor. Mr. de Haes satisfied himself with the developments, and in subsequent discussions with me he never expressed any concern about my involvement, or, for that matter, the covert programme itself." [23] According to Dowling's findings, Prince Bernhard hired the company in 1987 and paid for its services in a rather unusual manner: He took two valuable Old Master paintings from the royal art collection of his wife, Queen Juliane of the Netherlands, and had them auctioned at Sotheby's. The Murillo picture 'The Holy Family' did most to fill the war chest, selling at almost a million dollars. Prince Bernhard donated the profits to WWF International. Then the WWF pulled something out of its bag of tricks to obscure the money trail. Prof. Stephen Ellis explained: "I later found out that the WWF transferred the money back to Prince Bernhard in a secret transaction. He then used it to pay the KAS security company's commando unit." [24] Armed with this knowledge, Kevin Dowling and his team had gone to Africa to find out more about the mercenary unit, which had consisted, for the most part, of former officers of the elite British special forces unit Special Air Service, or SAS. Its legendary founder Sir David Sterling had gone on to found the private security company KAS Enterprises. Like Prince Bernhard he, too, had donated money to finance the undercover operation in South Africa.

Kevin Dowling was still researching for the film when pressure on the TV station began to mount. One day the head of Channel 4 called Dowling into his office: "He said to me 'of course we'll continue working on this project, but lawyers from the WWF have informed us that you're biased on this subject. It would be better if someone else took over as director.''' To save the film, Dowling agreed -- from then on, he was officially just a "consultant" on his own film project. The important thing was to keep going and get the job done, because his investigation was leading him down new and ever deeper rabbit holes.

Former South African secret service operatives testified for Dowling on camera that the mercenaries deployed by the WWF weren't only interested in game poachers. Their commander offered support to the South African secret service in its fight against the African National Congress, or ANC, anti-apartheid movement. The original South African witness statements were locked up in some archive somewhere but, in his filmed testimony for Rene Zwaap, Kevin Dowling was able to draw on the transcriptions he had made of the interviews at the time: "The KAS mercenaries used the Kruger National Park as a training grounds to train paramilitary units such as the Koevoet Squad from Namibia. They were then deployed against the ANC as part of the so-called 'third force'. This officially non-existent execution squad murdered around 6,000 opponents of the apartheid regime in South Africa."

It remains unclear whether WWF top brass knew of the war crimes committed by KAS mercenaries under the pretext of nature conservancy. Dowling could only presume so: "After all, high-ranking WWF functionaries were among the management of Kruger National Park. The special units were trained in the park, and there was also a secret prison for apartheid opponents on park grounds." -- a serious allegation that I wanted to query John Hanks about. He's still one of the leading nature conservationists in South Africa. He answered my request, writing to say that he would be prepared to give an interview about the history of the WWF in South Africa. An appointment for the interview was confirmed, but then he called it off: he had "heard" that I wanted to ask him about Operation Lock. In his written withdrawal Hanks said: ''I'm not prepared to talk about Operation Lock. Please remove the interview from your schedule."

Dowling's research revealed that the elite KAS commando unit troops were not only recruited from British SAS unit veterans. From time to time, active officers from London also appeared in their ranks. For instance, Operation Lock invited a female British army specialist for chemical and biological warfare to come to South Africa for a working visit. It seems Colonel Ian Crooke had come up with a cunning idea: he wanted to saturate the rhino horns with poison. The African smugglers and the consumers of the goods in Asia would die as a result. The aim of this toxic battle tactic was to spread fear and loathing, and to bring the black market trade, and thus the poaching, to an end. There is no evidence that this devious ruse was ever put into practice.

Kevin Dowling continued to investigate and kept turning up new and horrific details of Operation Lock. But it never occurred to him that, slowly but surely, he was becoming a political problem himself. Dowling felt safe, because no one could accuse him of "ever having been a leftist or radical". While he was still putting together the rough cut of the film, it's death knell was rung: "In several phone calls with the station director, Prince Philip's adjutant made it clear that this film could compromise national security. And that was that."

For years the WWF had obscured and glossed over Operation Lock. Finally, in 2011, WWF leadership allowed Swiss historian Alexis Schwarzenbach access to the archives. He authored the official history of the WWF, published on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the organization. In the chapter entitled 'Operation Lock' Schwarzenbach admits that, according to internal letters and documents, not only had South African WWF functionaries and Prince Bernhard been involved in the undercover operation, so too had WWF International. WWF President Prince Philip had also been briefed in early 1989.

Historian Schwarzenbach also deserves praise for breaking with the years-long practice of denial and suppression on a further point: he concedes in the book that Operation Lock was about more than just hunting down poachers. Ian Crooke, commander of the WWF special unit, had cooperated with the South African army in their fight against the liberation movement: "He also offered his services to the South African Defense Force in their struggle against the ANC and other opponents of the apartheid regime." [25]

But the WWF's soul-searching came too late for Kevin Dowling. His explosive interviews disappeared into the Channel 4 toxic materials vault. It's about time the station finally released the documentation, because despite the piecemeal, partial confessions of the WWF, many questions still remain unanswered. Significant among them: how deeply were the WWF and KAS, the mercenary commando unit it contracted, actually involved in the South African apartheid regime's brutal war against the ANC and neighboring countries? Crucially, it is still not known whether people were killed as a result of this particular WWF adventure, and if so, how many. In any event, close collaboration with the South African terror regime remains an onerous legacy for the Africa policy of the WWF. Kevin Dowling's attempts to pitch his material to Fleet Street fell on deaf ears: the newspapers had no appetite for publishing the controversial story. And Kevin Dowling didn't have the strength to abandon it. "He was obsessed with the story," his friend Rene Zwaap remembered -- "in the end it killed him."

The Purge of the Batwa

WWF staff are now more frequently prepared to admit that there "used to be" problems in Africa, but they assert that the WWF has learned from its mistakes. In 2000 the first internal criticism of Operation Lock was voiced: the new General Director Claude Martin described the adventure as an example of an "imperialistic attitude". He saw to it that the WWF established national offices in the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America to help the organization shed the last vestiges of its neocolonial pedigree. In addition, Chris Weaver, the head of WWF Namibia, devised the "conservancies" system, which would see entire village communities integrated into the work of the nature reserves, with a share in the proceeds from ecotourism.

The WWF is proud of such tentative attempts at self-reform, but have they really enabled the organization to overcome its colonial heritage? I came across a report to the United Nations expert group on the Rights of Indigenous People. The subject was the fate of the Batwa Pygmy tribe, which, in 1991, had been expelled from its homeland within a national park in southern Uganda.

The report from July 2011 detailed the situation as follows: "Like in other cases where national parks have been established under the guidance of the WWF and other external forces the indigenous population that had lived there for hundreds or thousands of years in a sustainable way has been evicted from their forest ... Their forests have been given into the hands of foreign investors. Tourism is big business, as the fees for hunting go up to the thousands, or even tens of thousands of dollars for the killing of a single animal, depending on the game species. Under the cloak of conservationism, the investors want 'their' forests for their purposes alone, without any Pygmies." [26]

I travelled to Berlin to meet Dr. Arnold Grah, the man who had written the high-octane report. He heads a research institute at the Technische Universitat (TU) Berlin devoted to the structural analysis of cultural systems. Dr. Groh is a slim, elegantly dressed man with delicate hands and sensitive facial features. His Spartan office was decorated with a huge blow-up of a photo of himself, dressed only in shorts, surrounded by members of the Batwa tribe: "When we go to visit them, we adapt to their ways, in manner of dress, too -- it's a matter of respect. Because everything we introduce there from our industrialized culture changes the norms, and sends a visual message: see, I'm wearing a safari suit, so I'm something better." He described the ecotourism kick-started by the WWF as insensitive: it stormed into the Pygmy villages like an "invasion", destroying the cultural identity of the tribes.

The WWF, said Dr. Groh, had a 'fundamental" problem with indigenous peoples: "Institutions such as the WWF are at least partly responsible for the eradication of indigenous cultures, because very often a forced eviction on the grounds of 'nature conservancy' is the preface to their demise. Without their forest, in which they have lived for millennia, they are exposed to the attacks of other ethnic groups, who hold them in disdain. I observed the fate of the Batwa from close quarters. After they lost their forest, the members of the tribe fell into a deep depression. They started to get drunk in the afternoon, or take drugs -- the desperation was palpable in all the villages that I visited."


To prevent famine in the Batwa tribes the Ugandan government finally granted them permission to hunt again -- on the peripheries of their former forest home. They are now allowed to go two kilometers into the rainforest, but no more: the core zone is reserved for mountain gorillas and tourists. The WWF had conducted studies showing that the Batwa could be retrained as farmers. The idea was divorced from reality: there was no agricultural land left for the Batwa to farm.

Just to survive the Batwa now have to work on farms belonging to Bantu, a majority ethnicity in Uganda. Many Bantu see the Batwa as second-class citizens and pay them starvation wages. Some Batwa women resort to prostitution in exchange for food; in Dr. Groh's experience most of the women are simply raped by Bantu: "I estimated that about 80 percent of Batwa women have been raped. You can see the result in the villages: many of the youth are two heads taller than their mothers; they are half-castes who don't know where they belong. So this ethnicity will soon be genetically extinct as well."

Image
Dr. Arnold Groh with the Baygeli, Uganda

WWF websites paint a more idyllic picture of the Batwa's situation. One text, in finest colonial prose, reads: "In 1991, when Uganda's Bwindi Impenetrable National Park (BINP) was declared, to protect endangered mountain gorillas, the community of Mukona Parish protested by setting fire to around 10 sq km of forest. In 1998 the same villagers walked five hours, without any remuneration or incentive, to put out a fire that had started accidentally, according to a WWF case study." [27]

Thanks to the positive educational influence of the WWF the bad savages had become good savages -- isn't that the message written between the lines? What the reader is not told is that the Pygmies had only set fire to the forest in 1991 because they had been evicted from their huts with military force. The WWF text follows this historical misrepresentation with a passage that heaps praise upon itself: a WWF field study had concluded that the Batwa Pygmies had "profited" from the transformation of their land into a human-free national park as they had "been able to diversify their sources of income"; tourism in particular had offered many new opportunities: "They benefit from park and tourism-related employment and from tourism-related revenue ... Training and other opportunities have advanced the organizing, negotiating and business skills of communities." [28]

UN expert Arnold Groh rates this description of conditions as "hypocrisy, used to justify serious human rights violations after the fact".
After the expulsion of the Batwa and other indigenous peoples, European and American companies had been granted permission to market the Ugandan national park. Tourism is the most profitable business sector there. In Dr. Groh's opinion, the tour operators see the Batwa "not as people but as objects", which promise additional revenues: "The tourists are carted into the Batwa villages in safari suits to ogle the naked savages, who have to perform tribal dances for them in a hall financed by the European Union. It's an ethnological zoo that is deeply degrading for the ethnicities in question."

In their dealings with the Pygmies, said Dr. Groh, WWF functionaries often behaved like members of a "master race", who took the liberty of bringing unsolicited "progress" to the ''primitives'': clothing, running water, houses made of concrete. "In reality, this strategy leads to the extinction of indigenous cultures.
I've often asked myself: why are we making such a desperate effort to extinguish the memory of our natural life as thoroughly as possible? Indigenous peoples don't need the goods of industrialized cultures; nor do they need money or market relationships. All of these products of our dominant culture destroy the cultural self-confidence of the tribes."

Once a year a few individual Batwa, selected by the authorities, are allowed back into the forest -- for one day, under supervision -- to gather medicinal plants. It is the one really happy day of the year for the Batwa. They can expect no help from the WWF -- the organization itself profits directly from their expulsion. WWF USA, for example, organizes a tour through the Ugandan national parks that it bills as: The Great African Primate Expedition. 'The highlight of the 11,000-dollar adventure -- air travel to Uganda not included -- is "Gorilla trekking". The WWF hawks the tour by highlighting the guaranteed Batwa-free jungle route: "No other encounter in the wilderness can surpass the thrill of meeting up with one of these wonderful animals that are so similar to us."

For Dr. Arnold Groh it was an open-and-shut case: "It's not about protecting the animals, it's about using them to do business. If the WWF really wanted to conserve nature, they would have to ensure that the Batwa are able to return to their forests. For thousands of years they have maintained the balance among species."

The Batwa, he explained, had never posed a threat to the gorilla population. Nor had they ever threatened the stocks of elephants or other animals native to Uganda's rainforest: "They only took from the forest and its game stocks what they needed to live. Since the eviction of the Batwa, big game hunters have been wreaking havoc in the national parks in the name of 'regulating' animal stocks. It's a very lucrative business for the hunting industry, but also for the government. It makes a lot of money on elephant-hunting permits."

In the catalogue of a European hunting tour operator I actually found an ad with a detailed offer: A permit to shoot a Ugandan elephant for a fee of 36,000 euros -- for this price the marksman even gets to take the ivory of its "prey" back home.

The Return of the White Hunters

After my meeting with Dr. Arnold Groh in Berlin I was walking past the Tiergarten commuter rail station when I noticed a huge WWF campaign billboard. It pictured a mother elephant with one front leg planted protectively in front of her young. The headline above the picture: "Born to Live. 5 Buras Will Give Him a Habitat in Africa." Reading the small print, donors would have discovered that their money was destined for the new Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA).

KAZA: a project that would see a collection of 36 national parks and reserves in Zimbabwe, Angola, Botswana, Zambia and Namibia joined together in a giant contiguous network. The WWF currently invests 2.7 million dollars a year in this ambitious project that, if the WWF website is to be believed, will save the elephants of Africa: "They're in a tight squeeze ... support the WWF rescue operations -- they're the only chance the elephants have of survival.'' In a promotional video the WWF promotes KAZA as a means of "fighting poverty", because the residents of the area would have a share in the proceeds from the "sustainable use of animals and plants".

The WWF propaganda prudently fails to tell potential donors what "use of animals" might refer to. Studying the KAZA website I found an altogether different version of the heart-rending elephant story. According to their telling, the elephant population wasn't too small, thus in need of protection. On the contrary, apparently it was too big. The main problem faced by the nations involved was how to reduce elephant numbers: there were 250,000 of them living in the "transfrontier" park area -- double the desired number. In their search for food the elephants were threatening the vegetation and destroying farmer's fields.

Nearly all KAZA-project participant nations were planning to introduce elephant hunting as an industry.
The KAZA website speaks of elephants as a "species of superior economic and ecological significance for the region" and an "economic asset". As the KAZA park's most valuable treasure, the elephants could help to attract investors: "The reintroduction of legal trade in the products of sustainable stocks of elephants and other animals could be an important basis for investment in this project." [29]

The WWF prefers not to confront its donors with such profane business straight talk. Instead, it ensnares them in the mawkish yarn of the African elephants that would soon face extinction without the WWF. In truth, WWF partners are currently busy in southern Africa setting up a profitable business with organized big game hunting -- of elephants. That can't have escaped the attention of the WWF. To attract elephant hunting punters, the firm Botswana Safaris has a special offer: ca. 13,000 dollars per elephant instead of the usual 45,000+.

Image
Catalogue offering hunting trips to Africa


I found similar offers for elephant hunting in Zimbabwe's Hwange National Park, which is also part of the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area. I am in no position to pass final professional judgment on whether or not the elephant hunt makes any ecological sense. However, I do find it clearly immoral that the WWF works both sides of the street, taking advantage of it's donors love of animals with a mendacious campaign aimed at parting them from their money.

It's open season in the KAZA park area, co-conceived and co-financed by the WWF. Shooting permits are available for: lions, elephants, leopards, giraffes, buffalo, crocodiles and rhinoceros. Some British companies even take shooting parties out with bloodhounds to hunt leopard. Africa's big game, its great treasure, is once again in the hands of the white hunters and the Western hunting tour operators: it's almost as happy and glorious as the good old days.
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