Tanzania: Wildlife activists praise arrest of Chinese woman

Yang was charged Wednesday in Dar es Salaam with two Tanzanian men, Manase Philemon and Silvanus Matembo, who were allegedly connected with global poachers, traders and buyers.

Paschal Shelutete, communications and press unit department head of the Tanzania National Parks, hailed the arrests and said that it was the most successful operation against pouching that he had ever seen.

Reuters was unable to reach the lawyer for Glan who was not allowed to enter a plea until the case resumes.

Tanzanias elephant population is one of Africas biggest but has been hit hard by the illegal ivory trade. A census in June revealed that about 60% of the country’s elephants have been killed by poachers in the past five years.

According to information collected by the Task Force, Yang is said to be from Beijing and is believed to be a wealthy woman, owning at least several houses, a farm, a restaurant, and several cars.

Yong Feng Glan, the 66-year-old Chinese woman suspect, was accused of being behind the trafficking of huge quantities of ivory from Tanzania and other East African countries to global and local black markets. She learned Swahili and moved to Tanzania in 1975 as a translator when China was building a railway.

“She was at the center of that killing”, said Andrea Crosta, the executive director of Elephant Action League, a U.S.-based environmental watchdog group. The population of elephants in the region reduced from 109,051 to 43,330 between year 2009 and 2014.

“Tanzania has had the most serious elephant poaching of any country in recent years with few prosecutions, so this is an important case”, said WildAid CEO Peter Knights. She was arrested together with a number of other Chinese ivory traffickers.

“A slaughter of industrial proportion such as this can not have happened without the involvement of high-profile, corrupt individuals and government officials at the two ports of Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar, and elsewhere in civil society”, it said. We must put an end to the time of the untouchables if we want to save the elephants.

“Everyone she has been dealing with will now become a target for law enforcement”, concludes Crosta.

Investigators allege Yang smuggled and traded 706 elephant tusks weighing almost 1.9 tons worth $2.5 million between 2000 and May 2014.