 I'm Jasper Humphreyd, the Director of Programs of the Margin, Conflict, Biodiversity and Military Sustainability Group in the Department of War Studies in Kings College London. I will be talking for a half an hour about South Africa's Rhino Wars and afterwards I'll answer any questions that you send to the Q&A box. Many apologies to anyone who tried to join my schedule talk two weeks ago and was unable to do so. I'm afraid that the technical gremlins jinxed the system and we stopped trying after 20 minutes. So welcome back and thank you to those die hearts who have returned and also to anyone joining for the first time. The theme of today's talk and the two talks in one month's time is how conflict connects with the illegal wildlife trade in Africa. To be clear, we will not be talking about how to save wildlife per se, which is conservation and is a specialist science. But of course, there will be plenty of overlap between conservation and the illegal wildlife trade in our talks. Before I start discussing rhino wars, I'd like to say how I was first introduced to war and wildlife. In the late 1990s, I was travelling through Mozambique, which was then trying to recover from its devastating liberation wars against its Portuguese colonial masters. Though the war had stopped a few years before my visit, there were plenty of examples of the fighting from the past. Old tanks were lying beside the brood, bridges and houses were still unrepared. On the second date, I saw a boy selling a small dick-dick antelope, which made me think. This was the first animal or bird that I had seen in Mozambique, and this was Africa, a continent with incredible biodiversity. And this meant that all the wildlife had either been eaten or traded by starving people or destroyed in the fighting process. So on reflection, this also seemed like an apocalyptic warning of a world empty of wildlife and even of life itself. Until relatively recently, anyone studying and writing about war had very little to do with their environmental counterparts, if at all, and it worked the other way around. Back in 1999, leading environmentalist David Dudney wrote, For environmentalists to drive, to dress their programmes in the blood-soaked garments of the war system, betrays their core values and creates confusion about the real tasks at hand. However, reality clearly demonstrated that in certain situations and locations, the two not only overlap, but were closely intertwined. This realisation received a major shove with the publication of a paper in February 2009 called Warfare in Biodiversity Hotspots. Its core discussion used data analysis, which showed that there was a high percentage of conflicts since the Second World War in areas of high biodiversity, which of course included wildlife. The paper caused something of a stir, in part because of the high profile of the authors, which included Dr Russell Mittemire, then president of the giant NGO Conservation International, as well as the bracketing of the words war and biodiversity. When the Marge and Study Group started in 2010, our first major piece of research was into rhino wars because it was a very topical subject, and it seemed an interesting type of conflict involving different types of force, both hard and soft power, all wrapped up in a conservation dynamic. You might even call it Kleischwitz and conservation. Conflict and war are by for biodiversity and especially for wildlife, mainly in two ways. Firstly, there is the direct result of getting killed in warfare and conflict. Even low level human conflict can drive dramatic wildlife declines. A study published in the journal Nature analysed data going back to 1946 to identify the effects of human conflict on large mammal populations in Africa. The results suggested that of all the factors studied, repeated armed conflict had the biggest impact on wildlife. And even low level conflict could cause profound declines in large herbivore populations. The second element about conflict is that it creates the conditions of insecurity that allow the illegal wildlife trade to expand for which South Africa is a very good example. Furthermore, it should be remembered that the overlap of conflict in the illegal wildlife trade occurs throughout many parts of the world. For example, the decades of high level insecurity on Myanmar's northwest border, combined with independence and security issues in India's northeast, have created a huge illegal wildlife trading region, drawing in wildlife both dead and alive from as far as Afghanistan and Pakistan and by ship from Africa. Also, some years ago, there was a belief that Al Shabab was involved in financing itself through ivory and rhino horn poaching. But more research has shown that Al Shabab prefer to tax the commodities as they pass through areas under its control, rather than to organise the killing and transportation of rhinos. One might be tempted to think that given all the many security problems in the world, the illegal wildlife trade would rate low down the list. That would be a wrong assumption, because in fact, depending on which report one reads, the global legal wildlife trade is either the third or fourth highest category of illegal trading, along with human trafficking, drugs and guns. The configuration of these new agents of widespread violence gave rise to a new typology of conflict termed network war, for which the control of extractable resources is a major element, of which, in turn, wildlife, of course, is a large component. Network wars have broad identifying characteristics with the actors plugged into a global supply chain through webs of illicit markets, which thrive in an era or greater communication and weaker regulation. These actors rely on force to impose their will and thereby accumulate power with no interest in assisting the state's ability to function or to help the population or biodiversity. The result is the new kleptocracy, the country's elite who see the state apparatus as an opportunity to enrich themselves with some of these people additionally working for state's department. This is the classic fail or semi-fail state and is often deliberately subverted for kleptocratic purposes. Conflict and the illegal wildlife trade also pose a security threat from a different angle, much in our minds at present, namely pandemics. Six years ago, there was the large Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the suspected agents being fruit bats displaced from forests by logging and used in bushmeat plus the possibility of chimpanzees caught for the live trade as well as bushmeat. This suspected zoonotic transference worked in conjunction with the destruction and insecurity caused throughout the region from civil wars, especially to healthcare systems that were overwhelmed by Ebola. So here you have the triangle of conflict, the trade in wildlife and healthcare vulnerability leading to an epidemic. Before I start my focus on South Africa, I'm using the word conflict at various stages to cover combat, low level conflict and situations of insecurity. Additionally, it is important to understand the difference between poaching and trafficking, even if both are illegal and a part of the same chain of distribution and both basically rely on escaping detection as opposed to direct confrontation unless under attack. Trafficking refers to the illegal transportation and distribution of wildlife, while poaching refers to the killing of wildlife, which is on land that is either being looked after by the state or is privately owned. In simple terms, at one end of the scale, there is bushmeat subsistence poaching for food and skins, indeed for many millions of people, this is their primary source of food and income. At the other end of the scale, there is the killing of wildlife purely to generate a large amount of income, mostly either through illegal trophy hunts or killing for body parts such as lawns, teeth and claws, ivory and rhino horn. In the middle of these two points is the growing trade and exporting bushmeat at a level which might be called an industrial scale. To give you some idea of the value of rhino horn and the scale of the poaching problem in South Africa, between July last year and February this year, 277 kilos of rhino horn were seized by South African police worth around 11 million pounds, and a rhino horn weighs roughly between two and four kilos. The history of killing rhinos in South Africa broadly falls into three sections. Firstly, the situation before the large scale arrival to South Africa of the white colonial powers about 200 years ago. Secondly, what happened during that colonial period and its legacy? And thirdly, the period after the official ending of apartheid in 1994 and the situation today. South Africa is well known for having both the world's greatest population of rhinos, as well as the greatest number of poached rhinos. To be clear, poaching of rhinos for their horn and elephants for ivory has always existed to the indigenous people, both as a source of revenue through trading and using their skins for various items, but the numbers killed were never what we witnessed today. Today, the major demand for rhino horn has been stimulated by the expansion of the middle classes in Vietnam and China, who can now afford to buy rhino horn. A number of reasons for this recent increase of rhino killing have been identified. High levels of both unemployment and lack of income, lack of education and awareness about the importance of wildlife protection, corruption at all level of enforcement and protection, and highly organised crime syndicates that can facilitate the rhino horn market at every stage. The resources allocated to fighting the legal wildlife trade are desperately small in relation to the problem. This also applies to the rhino situation in South Africa, even though it gets more resources allocated to fighting the problem than any other wildlife related problem in the world. In 2007, the number of rhinos has been killed in South Africa started to escalate massively until a few years later the authorities were facing a major, major crisis with not only the poachers easily winning, but the dead rhinos were also sending a wider message to the world that South Africa was an insecure and dangerous place, which was particularly bad news because South Africa relies heavily on tourism and foreign investment. In 2012, the authorities appointed Johann Just to take charge of all operations against the rhino poachers in South Africa's national parks, a post he still holds today. Johann Just is a retired South African general, having as a young man fought in tough bush wars and counterinsurgency combat in Angola and today's Namibia during the apartheid years. When he was appointed to his anti-poaching post, General Just sent a strong message by saying, it is a fact that South Africa, a sovereign country is under armed attack from armed foreign criminals. We're going to take the war to these armed bandits and we aim to win it. Please notice how often Johann Just used the word armed. In fact, his words raised questions about whether the level of rhino poaching and the tactics against the poachers actually represented something more like a civic war, a major internal conflict similar to the drug wars in Mexico. And well, whatever the interpretation, General Just wanted to send a powerful message. We will escalate the tactics against the poachers to a much, much higher level, including greater use of force, sometimes violent, what we would call hard power. And so after 2012, we waited and we watched. The numbers of poach rhinos kept going up from 268 in 2008 to 1,300 in 2014. Meanwhile, money was starting to come in to help South Africa fight the rhino poaches. 25 million dollars from the Howard Buffett Foundation, 14 million euros from the Dutch postal lottery, money at a level never seen before for a specific conservation initiative. In the last two years, the figures have gone down 400 last year, though this is possibly due to the COVID curfews in South Africa. But the new worry is that the combination of the rhino is very slow reproductive rate and the heavy killing of the previous years means that the rhino population overall could still be declining. In many ways, the struggle against rhino poaching, what is sometimes called counter poaching, is similar to what we know as Candran Surgency, basically a strategy of winning a conflict that does not involve full scale warfare. This similarity is underlined by the fact that counter poaching has attracted a fair number of people with a military background. Firstly, there is an enemy of sorts who are difficult to find. Secondly, the tactics do involve tracking, surprise and collecting intelligence. Furthermore, the ranges are moving within a population that might even be sympathetic to the poaches who in turn might even be giving money to the local population. And these former military personnel bring their special brand of knowledge and skills that were developed from combat in Afghanistan and elsewhere to the protection and conservation of wildlife. For instance, Neil Calron, a former Israeli paratrooper who runs the Maisha Consulting Wildlife Security business, talks about his transition from the Israeli Defence Forces to conservation as one of natural continuity. The standards of an ethical code that I was taught in special operations teams and the sense of fighting for just causes were and still are the core values that guide me, he said. And it is from this type of thinking that we get the phrase rhino wars. With Central and Sub-Sahara Africa having the largest proportion of the world's megafawn of elephants, rhinos and lions, we should also remember that with a huge global availability of small arms, wildlife poachers can easily get hold of rifles and AK-47s for hunting and self-protection. Thus, both the poaches and the rangers are an escalating spiral of conflict, which in South Africa involves guns, drones and other high-tech countermeasures, especially in the Kruger National Park located on South Africa's eastern border with Mozambique. South Africa's rhino wars are an interesting example of how national security issues, both external and internal, can be connected to biodiversity. It also highlights debates around development issues such as poverty and land rights, as well as conceptual arguments around how we understand the use of force, both hard and soft power within what has now become known as the militarisation of conservation, sometimes referred to as green militarisation. In relation to the illegal wildlife trade and conservation, the word militarisation has broadly been used by social development academics to criticise counterpoaching tactics, hence the phrase green militarisation or green violence. They believe that rangers carrying rifles and using drones creates an escalation of violence, arguing that the use of force here legitimises what they feel is coercion and violence, and also diverse financial and human resources that could be used by community-based natural resource management, CBRM. Overall, say the social development theorists, force is being applied within a militaristic dynamic of weaponising counterpoaching that works together with social exclusion. Rangers are on the ground, however, counter the green militarisation argument, basically with two arguments. Firstly, the majority of their time is spent just slogging around the bush patrolling. Secondly, carrying weapons is both for self-protection and signalling intent, and indeed in some countries in Africa carrying a weapon symbolises strength and power, and without which you would not have much credibility, but we'll hear more about that in the talks in a month's time. The criminal structures supporting the rhino-poaching crisis in South Africa today can be dated from the era of the so-called apartheid wars of the 1970s and 80s, when elements within the former South African defence force, SADAF, used the fighting and the protection of hard security laws during apartheid to organise a vast smuggling network involving ivory, rhino horn, drugs and diamonds, particularly in conjunction with the UNITA, the former Angolan resistance organisation led by Jonas Sobimbi. Colonel Jan Breitunbach, conservationist and commander of the famous South African 32nd buffalo soldier's battalion in Angola, saw the slaughter of wildlife in that country which he described as the hundreds of thousands of elephants became thousands, the thousands became hundreds and the hundreds only a very few. So an integrated Southern African smuggling trade with Johannesburg as the hub had even wider strategic implications, the most important of which was that the smuggling enabled SAF to use influence over both its friends, like UNITA and Angola, and enemies such as Freelimo in Mozambique, who were also involved in the illicit trade. Over the longer term however, the state's involvement in smuggling had two even more powerful consequences. First, the long period of fighting allowed the smuggling cartels to establish themselves with little fear of disruption, and over time the roots of the smuggling networks grew deeper and wider, spreading corruption, evasion and non-compliance. The second consequence was that no senior military figures were ever indicted for their part in this illegal trade, despite a major investigation carried out after the end of apartheid. Soon afterwards, a rebranding and reorganisation of the Defence Forces from the heavily compromised SADAF to the current South African National Defence Force, SADAF put further closure on the past misdeeds. And through this process, Rhino Horn and ivory smuggling became institutionalised within the fabric of the South African state, initially through the collaboration of the Defence Forces and then the government. Overall, this sent a powerful political message in the post apartheid era that the agents of the state could be compromised and would likely be to be ineffective in the face of powerful interests. So, I'm going to end now with two points. The first point is slightly tangential, in that it highlights what humans can learn about warfare from our nearest relatives, the Great Apes, and the closest being chimpanzees, which share about 98.8% of our DNA. In the 1950s, Professor Raymond Dart of Witt's University of Johannesburg developed his intriguing killer ape theory. Dart had been deeply influenced by witnessing the carnage of the First World War, and over the subsequent years of groundbreaking anthropological studies, Dart came to the conclusion that war and interpersonal aggression were the driving force behind evolution, in that our human ancestors were more aggressive than other primate species, and thus the killer instinct became rooted into our psychology. In Caspitian strategic terms, chimpanzees offer plenty of interest with it being generally accepted that they make murderous group attacks. Do the exact motivation for the attacks remains elusive. It is proven that chimpanzees make regular patrols both within their territories and along the borders with neighbouring groups. These patrols can lead to attacks, some of which end in fatalities. For example, chimpexper John Mitani observed the group of chimpanzees killing or fatally wounding 18 individuals from other groups. Mitani further observed that the chimp patrols were carried out in a distinctly different and purposeful manner from their normal behaviour, with little eating or socialising, and the patrolers being unusually silent and moving in a single file line, all the while carefully watching for signals from other chimps in the group. These attacks in the view of another well-known chimpex, but Richard Rangham, were prompted by the desire for territorial expansion, but whether this sense of territoriality was to acquire new mates or resources has been a long-standing open question. Additionally, territoriality is not a blind strategy that works irrespective of circumstances, just like humans chimpanzees withdraw if they are outnumbered. Modern social behaviourists dismiss the killer ape theory as far too deterministic and short of violence. While this could well be true, the theory does connect with the use of barns linked to territoriality, which is very much a contemporary subject of discussion, not least around ideas of homeland or in German Heimat. My second point is concerned even more directly with wildlife and war, beginning by noting the strange phenomenon that wildlife relies for its protection on the species that causes the most damage to the planet, which of course is us human beings. While we might think of this problem mostly in terms of the modern environmental movement and reflected from a military perspective mainly by the environmental impact of war, this grand dislocation has in fact been a source of human anxiety throughout history. Going back to ancient times, the Cretius, a Roman poet and philosopher, wrote a lengthy poem Dererum Natura translated as On the Nature of Things, and it's basically a text about how to live and die if you want to have a happy ending. In book five of the poem, the Cretius describes how humans must nurture nature if they want to find pleasure and ultimately contentment. However, the Cretius warns that when mankind breaks this understanding through violence to nature, humans enter the greatest war of all, which has been at war with themselves. Thank you very much, and now let's answer any questions in the chapter. Can you hear me? Yes, I can. Hi, thank you very much for all this information, it was really interesting. I was just wondering, I'm looking at wildlife trading and trafficking, and I was wondering if you could consider wildlife trafficking as an expectation of natural resources. Can you draw this comparison between just natural resources like diamonds or minerals or oil or anything like that to wildlife? Yes, of course, I mean they're all natural resources, but there is a difference between commodities, which is with diamonds and cobalt of oil, because they are traded on an international market. And there's a legitimate so-called, I know it is a lot of illegal, but there are mechanisms for trading these things. Whereas the wildlife, there is no real proper market as we know it as a commodity, you don't trade tigers like you trade diamonds. There is, to slightly confuse things, I mean there is no proper market like that, but the IUCN, which is the International Conservation Union, sets quotas for wildlife that can be legally killed for trading by, come to say, for example, a hunter in South Africa might get a permit for allowed to kill legally to rhinos. All right, so they've got a permit and then that is exported through and that is all legally done, because there's a lot of illegality. But there's no commodity market like I said, diamonds or gold or something like that. Does that make sense? Sorry, yes. Sorry about that to my mic was not working properly. Yes, it absolutely makes sense, but I have a couple of follow up questions, because for instance, for drugs, there's no commodity market either, is it? No, I mean it's all illegal. So the legal wildlife trade will be much more similar to drugs in the sense that it's illegal. It's just that, I don't know if you heard me like that, but there is this, there are this international group there, the IUCN, which hands out permits to countries to allow legally to export a certain amount of animals, because they recognize that there is this trading going on. And they could be live, you know, 5000 monkeys can be traded from Brazil legally and taken to America, for example, but that is the only legal mechanism and it's very, very small as well. Yeah, so drugs is probably the nearest good comparison. Yeah. And so, but what is the point exactly of allowing, well, a few thousand monkeys to be killed, I don't really understand, is that because there's so much illegal trafficking anyway, they just trying to monitor it in that way. Well, it started the IUCN, started off, I did it about 30 years ago, and it started with international groups, realized that the trade, the wildlife was being moved, you know, dead or alive all over the world, massive, massive, and there had to be some sort of control to take deciding. They realized that for a lot of people, we do forget in the developed world that for a lot of people in the world, selling animals, either for bushmeat, or alive for the trade, is their only source of income. So there had to be some sort of mechanism to allow the form of trade. So they put basically quotas, that's what it reminds to. But of course, it's a complete nonsense now, and, you know, and everyone says that the system is completely bust, you know, it's, it's, it's not good for purpose. I mean, a lot of people, some people might disagree with me, but a lot of people think it's not fit for purpose. The league of the wildlife trade is going on quite, and the whole thing has become a bit of a joke, a fast, putting on these quotas. And therefore, it's time for a complete change. Lots of people have their own personal views on this. Okay, thank you. And in terms of you said that there is no international market system for wildlife, or for, or that the difference between the other communities would be that they are trading on international market, but then these wildlife, even if it's illegal, there is also some kind of international markets. But what I'm saying is that if I wanted to know what the price of tin or copper, I can go online and find the daily price of tin and copper, but I can't find the daily price of a traded tiger. Okay, thank you very much. And if I could ask a last question. Could you, could we draw a comparison or a connection between wildlife trafficking and human trafficking in the sense that these two are not communities, but they're live objects. Exactly. Yes. Obviously it depends. Some people, you know, to have a higher belief in the value of wildlife, as opposed to human life or this, that and the other, but just putting that is putting only personal preferences aside. Yes, you're talking, you're dealing with a live animal. And then I mentioned about chimpanzees 98.8% of DNA similar to humans. So, you know, that makes you think about it. And of course there are people who feel very, very strongly about the belief of animals that they have feelings and that they are, you know, they're feeling them. Therefore, what the killing of wildlife amounts to what they call ecocide. And there is, you may know about this, this big movement to make ecocide an official sixth international criminal conventional got alongside genocide alongside genocide. Yeah. Okay. And so would you say that then wildlife trafficking is potentially closer to community trafficking like drugs or illegal diamond trade or exploitation of mines, or that it is closer to human trafficking then. I think the honest answer that you can't really put the two together. I mean, I think it's a bit of both really. I mean, you've got the one thing it is, is it's massive. You know, I mean, that's the thing that what people don't tend to fact is that they can tend to put categorised wildlife secondary to the needs of human life, and one can see the rationale behind that. But when the one does that then for that one is immediately sort of done in the instinctively downgrading the problem of the illegal wildlife trade but as I said, it's the third or the fourth highest category of illegal trading in the world. So it's massive and it's huge. Obviously, yes, you can't go online find up the price of rhino on but you can trade so but you can on tin or copper. But so there is that difference, but it's a personal preference, you know, some people feel that it's worse than, you know, the illegal cobalt trade, they might think that the illegal wildlife trade is more money should be put into combating the illegal wildlife trade than there should be put in the combating the illegal cobalt trade. I mean, both trades don't have much money anyway so it's all but it's a fairly circular argument, you know, from that perspective. Okay, and then if because of because this is such a huge trafficking. Um, so is it a bit similar to communities like that. Minerals in the sense that there are so many different minerals are traded illegally legally. Is that the same for wildlife because obviously a horn is really different from ivory to skin or to clothes or that kind of thing. So can you compare these as being different types of communities within the wildlife trafficking. And where the difference comes is where they ending up rhino horn is basically as I said in my talk, a going to the Chinese and Vietnamese middle classes because they've been it's in but it's in the their culture in the belief that it is. It's an aphrodisiac and it's so it's a lifestyle choice. You know, you pay a lot of money for this lifestyle choice. It doesn't, you know, make you richer or anything like that. It's just a lifestyle job. The same you can sort of say for ivory saying that it's a sort of it's a lifestyle choice. You can you might you if you're in a business person you might give it as a gift as a very substantial significant gift if you're trying to do a significant business deal, but it's still a lifestyle choice. Whereas, if you're talking about forestry or diamonds, they have a different end product, you know, forestry could be making exotic furniture or could be for going from biomass or whatever, whatever. So it's the where the end is the house is the where the differences it's how the ending is is the important point. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you. Bye. Hello. Is there anyone else on to ask a question? Okay. Let's have a look. Alexander. Right. Answer life. Let's go. This is one from Leslie. Could not long lethal force be used rather than bullets, e.g. tranquilizer darts, or is practiced to shoot to kill on every creation that ranges come across on poachers? Right. I'm going to. Can you hear me all right on that that question? Right. The answer. Hello. The answer. Yes, I can. Sorry. I didn't realize you wanted. Can you hear that? Is that you G Leslie? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So I repeat you could not long lethal force be used rather than bullets, e.g. tranquilizer darts. Yes. Yes. I mean, again, what is very important about this before we touch upon exactly on your question is it's all about context. I mean, what the poaching situation in England is very different to the poaching situation if you're in the Central African Republic, Congo or South Africa, because if you are a ranger in those African countries, you will be coming up against people who will carry guns. And will they then they will use them against you. And we, as you hear regularly from the Congo, ranges get killed frequently. That is particularly a particularly dangerous spot. But the point is, as I said in my talk, and I've talked with ranges all around Africa and that, as I said, that you need to carry weapons for self protection. And sometimes of course to protect yourself from the wildlife. But when you mentioned about tranquilizer darts, are you talking about tranquilizing people? Yes. Yes, I am. You are. You know, there might be a situation where you could start the person if it's traditionally quick action. You come across them so that they can't go ahead and doing what they're doing. Or maybe they could be shot in if they feel likely to be shot dead, because even if they would shoot you dead, maybe you can shoot their knees so they fall down so they can't proceed to do what they were going to do, rather than actually kill them. I don't know what the codes of practice are. I just need to give you, I mean, I had to say I've never heard of human tranquilizing. I have to say, good idea in theory. I mean, I don't know, you know, I've been out with range of it. All I can say that if you've ever walked around the African bush, it is very difficult, it's very inhospitable. You know, those thorns are about four inches long, is dry, is hot, and you're more likely going to be ambushed. So you don't have a chance to pick whereabouts you're going to shoot the person. So that sort of answers that bit. And the other bit is about shoot to kill. I mean, I know that the shoot to kill policy is, there isn't a policy about engaging with poachers. Broadly there, as far as I know, is that they are basically apprehended, the only shooting human to human that goes on is that if their ranges are engaged being shot at, they return the fire, and also trying to warn the person that is much possible, but they will more than likely come off worse in the fight. But of course, that is in a very theoretical situation. If you are in the middle of the Congo bush or the forest and three or four people shooting at you, you're not going to get a chance to have that sort of dialogue. So Leslie, I think I'm going to have to go on too. But we've got another talks in a couple of months time. I have a sample of this. And my colleagues there, Stefan Crane and Adrian Garcylde, have both been involved very much in Bringson Central and are very well, much better equipped to answer that question. I'm delighted to answer it as well. So tune in in a month's time Leslie. All right. Okay. So coming back to Alexander Lee. Alexander. Alexander. Hi, yeah. Yeah, I've got your question here. How can local, national and international institutions deal with the transfer bonds from other conflicts? War criminals, organising, poaching it. Right. Well, one, one way that has been tried is to integrate former soldiers into the Ranger, Ranger forces. There are problems in that one as always money to do these things. It's very, very difficult. I think that, you know, a lot of these groups come from different militias and this that the other and trying to get them all on the same route and to behave properly. That's very difficult. So the, so I think those are the sort of the main main problems. Can you think about the other one thing situations or anything in your mind you said war criminal organising poaching efforts. Yes, thank you. I think what I was what I was driving at is, I think that from a internationally from a legal standpoint, I think you'd be relatively easy to find loopholes that would allow institutions at various levels to target poaching organisers by addressing other activities that they have done in the past or continue to do in regards to war crimes or other such illegal activities. Indeed, wouldn't that be lovely, but the trouble is that the. To put it bluntly, there's such and so much corruption. And, as I mentioned, kleptocracy in the whole systems in these country that it relies on enormous efforts basically by outside your international organisations to bring these sort of these people warlords or whatever to account but you've seen the. Felly, following the trials of the international criminal courts trying to bring some of these Congolese warlords, I mean to take years and years and years and years to do. And the just aren't the legal resources that that the disposal to this very sad as it is, you know, wish that it was, but afraid the reality is that there aren't it does that sort of answer your question without a proper answer. No, I think that answers my question, thank you. Sorry. Okay. Now I've got Duraid. Right. Hi, Duraid. Hello, Duraid. Hi, just a lady. I've got your question here with the prospect that internal and expeditionary military involvement in anti-poaching activities will increase going forward. I think it's rather the key lessons you think militaries and governments should identify and implement from the South African case studies. You're right. Yes, that's quite a good one. I did the, I, they've got to be very first of all very aware that they're separating what they're doing, whether they are there. Practising counterinsurgency, or whether they're there to to act to organise counter to organise counterpoaching. And whether they're there counterpoaching is just restricted just to teaching the local Rangers, or whether they actually get engaged themselves with a much more confrontational type counterpoaching efforts. And also learning that if they do get involved, a kind of a more hard power side, that there could well be a political repercussion for that. So to be very, very careful about that. The other, the fact is that the South African example from the 70s and 80s showed that there was a lack of accountability, and therefore that all military activity with counterpoaching should be as transparent as possible. Not to compromise strategic objectives and that sort of, but it must be seen to be accountable to some sort of panel or organisation, international organisation that can monitor the activities so there are no ambiguities about the exact roles and the identities of the people and what's going on. Does that help you there, Dura? Thank you, and thank you for a very, for a very timely insight. Okay, great. Thank you. I think, is that, have you got them all? Right. Another one from Leslie, is it? Hello. Yes, oh yes. I got that one of what percentage of Rangers on trustworthy is that what you. In certain parks, it's as if the people are absent when the people are going to cross into the national parks and do their coaching. I remember the various programmes, I can't remember which countries it was actually in. So, then there seems to be need to be perhaps some ski, some way to ensure that those who were employed have their backgrounds checked out so that they're not likely to be right briable and the other. I wanted to have what knowledge you have on the percentage of Rangers who can be bribed and they also there was this out of zero documentary showing that somebody very high up. I think it was in military intelligence. I thought it was in South Africa who was actually involved in doing in most in the deal in the deal making with regard to the smuggling of ivory. So I wonder how predominant, because you mentioned, you know, the involvement of the military in some places and what's your knowledge over this kind of area. Yeah, I have no figures whatsoever but who's on trustworthy. I think it's like how long is the piece of string basically. I mean, it's impossible to quantify. So, and particularly in African countries, I mean, you know, without naming country particularly, but the military and the range of forces are a lot of them are into woven together. And they've also come under the control of ministers and generals who take the major launcher of the illegal trade. So, you know, how long is the pieces ring, but all what one can say is that the military in this country have the ability to do all the things. They have their lorries, the transportation connection, they have the logistics, you know, and they have the power to as well to order things to be done that other people would not be able to do. So I know that doesn't really answer the question that you probably want, but I think it is the reality. And again, you have to be careful about how and applies the word untrustworthy. What would seem to be untrustworthy to us might not be seem to be untrustworthy to within the context of an African situation where their money is very, very difficult, you know, jobs where legality legal is very, very ill defined where the dividing line. But this case of actual head of move from one area to being head of I think military intelligence in South Africa seems incredibly shocking. He directly involved with the Chinese agents to ensure that this consignment of a ivory got through. So was that military guy prosecuted? Who prosecuted? No, no, he's he's he's moved from one position to virtually in charge of and he stopped this inquiry getting on, you know, but I was as gobsmacked. Yeah, well, is that right? But one has to say, I mean, we are, you know, the world is right up in arms like you about what's going on. A, the country that the country itself won't take action against the people, what help hope is, you know, outside it. And B, I mean, it's very easy for either why don't the why doesn't the International Criminal Court or something go after them, because, you know, for vested interest, because we've got, you know, political ties with South Africa, we don't want to rock the boat for over just one small, we're just considered a small issue when there are much bigger geopolitical problems to sort out. That phrase, that's the reality. I'm sorry. Yeah. Yeah, it's not crime against humanity. So it can be taken to the International Court, but it certainly should be actionable. Yeah, the problem. Yes, it's very, again, it's very, very difficult to take a wildlife crime. It has to basically has to be done in the country. And the level of prosecutions for approaching South Africa are very, very small. And even those are very politically motivated. They will go after someone for a particular reason. They don't just happen because a lot of them, they just turned a blind eye, it's turned. So sorry, Lizzy. Yeah, but thank you for your interest. Have you got another question? It's very, very prevalent, is it really in many countries, then you've got the. Yes, it is very prevalent. Yeah. Yeah, sorry to say. Yeah. Going on to another one. Peter Chris. How is the internet perhaps the dark web affected trends in the legal wildlife trade? Well, massively. Are you there, Peter? Hello. Hello, Peter. Can you hear me? Anyway, Peter's question was how has the internet perhaps the dark web affected trends in the legal wildlife trade? Yeah, I said massively because people can just like any other legal drugs, guns, whatever. It's opened up a whole new trading world, which didn't methodology that didn't exist before. And I know various wildlife NGOs are trying to crack down on this by tracking the web and this, that and the other. But it's, you know, it's an uphill struggle, of course. And, you know, if you manage to apprehend one trade out, there's always many other traders doing it. So it's rather depressing for it to say that that is again the truth. Most things about the legal wildlife trade are depressing. There are some good lights, successes, which is always good. But the majority of it is grim news, I'm afraid to say. Right. Elizabeth Hart. How do you think this type of corruption could be tackled? Elizabeth, are you there? Hello. Hello. Elizabeth type corruption to be tackled. Well, all the things I don't know if you've been listening to what I've been saying that first of all, they should institute proper international courts for illegal wildlife trafficking. Trafficking the countries themselves should be doing the taking to be indicting people left, right and centre. The international community should be putting into pole messages. You know, the whole works to be to be an active. But of course it doesn't because wildlife is considered lower down the list of all the other human related problems. So the chances are very slim of getting much action to be done. I'm afraid I'm rather cynical about it, but the experience tells us this is the harsh reality. Okay. Sorry, Elizabeth. Is that thing that's it answered open questions? That's all I've got space for. Right. I think that's it. Right. Okay. I think that's it. Thank you all very much. And hope to see you back in a month's time. The details will be circulated pretty shortly. Thank you. Goodbye.