Innocent Blood

October 13, 2014October 13, 2014 Jen

There is something infinitely healing in the assurance that the pink wash of dawn always breaks free from the long dark night and the fresh breath of spring seduces the coldness out of the winter days. I am sitting watching an autumn breeze blowing through the trees, stealing the foliage and leaving the branches bare. What strikes me though…is nature knows best. There is not the heavy silence of loss. These bare branches will soon sprout and turn green again. However, when an elephant or rhino is poached, the soft weary tread of feet on the road is ………no more.………just the hush of death and the mournful ballad of the coucal.

Extinction is forever.

Africa’s bush, a grand and wondrous spectacle awash in colours and odours is under constant attack. Godless scenes of destruction and cruelty are encountered on a daily basis by the brave Rangers doing their utmost to keep the wildlife safe. Wheeling vultures circle and a foul miasmic presence leads the rangers in this case to a scene so horrific…it defies description. Consumers of rhino horn..LOOK at what your demand is doing to these magnificent and prehistoric animals.

As you grind your rhino horn mixture..take a deep breath and feel the intense and burning pain of this animal left in a sticky pool of blood. Not only has this poor animal’s horn been brutally chopped and torn from it’s face, her eyes have been hacked out leaving her blind. WHY ? This black rhino was found staggering around, her large head blistering like a sweltering inferno as it hangs heavy and low to the ground. Brushstrokes of blood pool deep in the shadows and deeper currents of greed blow on the breeze. This is a barbaric act that needs to be seen and told to the deluded consumers of rhino horn.

A week ago animal lovers (myself included), the world over marched for elephants and rhinos across 136 cities and across six continents. The howling of a frustrated wind as we all stood together as one voice refusing to allow these animals to fall through the ever widening cracks into chaos. As time disappears in dusky sunlight and smoke, rhinos and elephants lives fade like passing shadows and a week on from the marches..the slaughter continues. However, we must not give up hope. During these dark and turbulent times, we need to regroup and weave a future for these animals from the tangled past.

PLEASE DO NOT LOOK THE OTHER WAY : WE ALL NEED TO PLAY A PART…NO MATTER HOW SMALL

Lisa Groenweg had decided that she could not turn a blind eye to the destruction and started Chengeta Wildlife. She shook up fellow Quora members by raising a huge amount of money in 24 hours….showing that where there is a will to participate and make a difference..it happens.

For anti-poaching activist and forestry expert Rory Young, his passion for saving the African elephant from deadly poachers involves a detailed field manual and arming local teams with firearms to combat what he calls, “well-armed, ruthless and experienced gangs of poachers.

I have been asked and have accepted with great honour and delight a position on Chengeta Wildlife’s Board of Directors.

‘Rangers and scouts are brave men who risk their lives to protect wildlife. They may face heavily armed poachers, sometimes ex-guerrilla fighters hired by ivory smuggling syndicates. These rangers need to have the best training and anti-poaching strategy possible and that is what Chengeta Wildlife provide.’

‘The programme is already proving successful as anti-poaching operations undertaken as part of the training uncovered several poaching syndicates operating in the area, some with links to neighboring Mozambique and as far away as China, highlighting the global scale of the poaching problem. Arrests were made and the culprits handed over to the appropriate authorities.‘

I will do what I can to raise awareness and funds for Chengeta Wildlife and ensure that Rory Young can continue to offer first class training to Rangers throughout Africa.

Under an African sky that is as limitless as it is wide, a world of corruption, violence and greed mars the beauty of this sun baked land and when there is a demand..money talks.

CHINA CLOSE DOWN YOUR CARVING FACTORIES (Please sign this petition)

Inside these factories, Chinese carvers with masks covering their noses and mouths sit hunched over their desks. Under bright artificial strip lights, the ivory tusk lies lifeless. Please do not look at the ivory as a commodity. Run your hand down the length of the tusk and imagine the bubbling mass of exuberance that is an elephant.. a breathing and iconic animal that has emotions on a par with man.

The large wrinkled noble head and muscular trunk is lifted, tasting the sweetness on the breeze. She is a dab hand at assisting in birth and she senses that the new calf will soon join her herd. The warm and heavy evening exhales slowly, appearing to hold its breath as the excited cows , temporal glands flowing sing in multi-layered cadences encouraging the pregnant cow as she bears down. As the mornings slow lazy light caresses the hills, a new miracle is taking its first shaky steps as long wrinkled and powerful trunks offer a gentle welcome. The excitement is shattered by the cruel barking of automatic fire as the new miracle of life and all the excited cows slump heavily onto the ground.

These are the tusks that are stolen from elephants and any legal carving or trade is a conduit and and cover for China’s vast illegal market. While Zhao Shucong as China’s State Forrestry Administrator continues to license China’s 37 Carving factories and 140 ivory retail outlets, elephant families like the one above will continue to be callously slaughtered and their mutilated bodies left to swell and rot under the burning African sun.

Run your eyes over that magnificent tusk intricately carved with a herd of elephants..ivory bodies gleaming under the light. This large tusk belonged to a middle aged matriarch, her head full of knowledge yet to be passed on to her daughter.

CHINA..CLOSE DOWN THE CARVING FACTORIES (Please sign this petition)

Rangers vs Poachers

April 7, 2014 Jen

I often think back to the day when I was told that there was absolutely nothing that I as an individual could do to help in this continual fight against the evils of poaching. All to often we close our minds to the blood red streaks that mar our African landscape. While the world watches, the images of butchered animals, bodies slightly bloated and legs suspended up in the air leap out of the computer or television, eyes staring unseeingly: pleading for somebody to take notice.

I cannot sit and do nothing. I feel their pain and anguish and beg all of you, ‘courage does not always need to be a huge roar.’ I started jennysjumbojargon in November 2013 with the thought of putting into words through poetry about the continual attack on these animals. I describe the pain and torment that these creatures must feel: this flanks me, the acrid smell of gunfire and the metallic taste of blood that clogs my throat. This is not a violent storm that has bullied its way into the African bush. This is a dark menacing chaos of greed, corruption and destruction. These ruthless killers are turning the African bush into a wild sweltering inferno, flames devouring any animal with tusks or horns. These animals are being hemmed in by a force of angry heat and unrelenting attacks. At the rate these pachyderms are being poached, mortality shadows them and it does not matter how large or small their personal treasure.

I would love to be in a position to stop the demand. All I can do is to share work done by others, support all the wildlife groups and leave that enormous part of the problem to those that have clout. Yao Ming and Jackie Chan are doing amazing work to raise awareness in the Asian countries on the plight of the African elephants and rhinos.

And then of course we have the good men on the ground. Those bush warriors who put their lives on the line to ensure the safety of the wildlife.

It is a life changing experience for the rangers who are witness to the ‘desolation’ long after the poached animal has unburdened its enormous wrinkled body into a spiritual updraft of lightness. Sadly for these animals death does not always come in a single violent stroke.

Rory Young is not only a wildlife tracker and activist who has been fighting against the dark and hungry shadows of poaching all his life, he is also a prolific and exceptional writer. Born in Zambia and brought up in different parts of Africa, he learnt to treat the earth well, reading the signs and stories left by different animals and humans in the bush. He managed to blend in with the natural surroundings that had become his playground and feasting on the wonders of nature. The songs and calls of the bush speak to him. The passion for the bush never left him and he decided to make it his life’s work to combat the poaching problem.

“I found that the very people who had knocked back the poaching in the 90’s were now old, or were replaced with younger, less experienced people who had grown up after the liberation wars and counter insurgency operations of my generation and who had had no training or experience in the very skills needed to win. Very few could track properly and almost none knew how to follow-up poacher spoor as an effective team. Furthermore, the will to win was gone and there was no money because there was also no publicity about what was happening.”

Africa needs many more teams on the ground, doing the actual anti-poaching work. Without them there is really no hope.

Rory has already volunteered much of his time in providing much needed training to wildlife protection teams, but violent groups in the region have now started to look to the ivory trade to fund terrorist activities. Rory is now seeking to implement a full time, comprehensive training program and provide the rangers with the resources they need to carry out their important work.

Chengeta Wildlife.org was started by Lisa Groenweg of Rock Valley, Iowa.

Chengeta Wildlife is a group of people from around the world who formed a nonprofit organization to support Rory Young and the work he does. He has skills and knowledge that the teams protecting wildlife badly need to protect themselves and wildlife. If enough funding is generated we would like to purchase tactical equipment needed by the teams. Things like night vision goggles, thermal sensing equipment and motion sensing cameras. Chengeta Wildlife is run by volunteers. So far 100% of funds raised have gone directly to the field where it is desperately needed. WE HAVE ZERO OVERHEAD COSTS!

Like Lisa, we too can do our bit to help combat the horrors of poaching. Collectively, we can ensure the continuation of Chengeta Wildlife’s ability to adequately train and equip the necessary new generation of rangers required to assist the continuation of the circle of life in elephants within their natural habitats in Africa.

Some people may think it is too late, but where there are elephants and other wildlife….there is hope. Let’s all give a growl of thunder. (My poem)

WILDLIFE RANGERS

March 31, 2014 Jen

As I sit in the comfort of my lounge..in the UK, my mind is constantly wandering to the far reaches of the sun kissed land that feeds my soul, and a land that I love so passionately. The horrors of poaching and animal trafficking leaves an ugly taste in my mouth and an even uglier scar on the land. These horrors of poaching invade my life through the social media network that even governments are unable to control and each and every time another elephant and other wildlife is poached, I feel like I have been kicked in the stomach. What can I do to help has been a constant chirp in my ear? What started as a slow wave of destruction has now reached tsunami proportions as wave after wave of attack leaves desolation in it’s wake.

The African bush, the womb of the continent has taken a perilous descent into the underworld leaving brushstrokes of blood and tortured scenes of desolation deep in the shadows. Death however, does not only stalk the wildlife. It also shadows those brave rangers who face unprecedented onslaughts from ruthless and well armed criminal gangs, who are determined to leave with their booty. In the deep stillness of the African bush, unquenchable greed has turned this beautiful bronzed land into a raw and violent battlefield.

The haunting cry of the ‘coucal’ is often overpowered by the the unwelcome ‘ k-k-k-k-k’, an irate bark from a machine gun. These are not random thugs after a piece of bush meat. These are highly organised gangs who poach for profit which in turn funds terrorist activities. The Rangers in Africa are often underpaid and ill-equipped as they fight to protect our precious wildlife.

Going on patrol is like doing a duty on the front line and just as, if not more dangerous. They are braced for the continual onslaught but need our help. Without donation support, they are unable to run a well oiled business. These Wildlife Warriors (My poem) need comprehensive training and the resources to carry out their important work. These brave men and woman are up against towering storm clouds that threaten our wildlife’s existence.

The earth will provide plenty: but never enough to fulfill man’s greed and these courageous men are fighting to stop our bush from becoming a no-mans land of external waste.

Let us all salute these men and women and celebrate the power and resilience of the human spirit.

CHENGETA WILDLIFE is completely volunteer run and this investment will allow the rangers the much needed skills and resources to defend themselves and protect the magnificent elephants.