Bad Chinese takeaways

But instead of taking on the poachers, government turned on the local fishers by closing the fishery. Abalone (perlemoen) fishermen warned that banning harvesting of the shellfish would not lead to a recovery in stocks but instead would give poachers free rein. The SA Abalone Industry Association even launched a high court bid in 2008 to try to stop the government ban but it lost.

It turns out the local abalone fishermen were right. Poachers are running circles around SA's stocks. And, government, left red faced, now plans to temporarily lift the ban.

"The poachers are very sophisticated. They even use satellite images to find abalone stocks," says Serge Raemaekers, a researcher at the University of Cape Town's Environmental Evaluation Unit. "It's much more organised than diamond and elephant tusk smuggling."

Lift ban but not spirits

The lifting of the ban does not leave the local fishers giddy with happiness. It makes no difference to them because the season effectively ends at the end of June. "I feel a lot of sadness," says the association's spokesman Scott Russell. "The authorities are disorganised and disinterested. They have no ability to detect or prevent it [poaching]."

This is yet another example of how poor government decisions have hurt a thriving industry. While poachers were free to ply their trade, the local law abiding fishermen were forced to sit on the sidelines and live off grants for two years. Russell points out that the fishermen only got about half of the R108000 in grants that was promised.

Victims

The fishermen are victims of a government policy that does not provide a threatening enough stick to scare off poachers, nor does it offer them enough of a carrot to preserve the shellfish. The lack of an effective deterrent is seen in the difference in scale between the legal and illegal abalone sector. Russell says there are about 1000 directly and indirectly employed in the legal sector but 10 times more people active in poaching.

The same goes for the size of the catch. Legally, only 125t/year (in the last legal season this was 75t/year) can be harvested, but Russell says poachers might remove up to 2000t/year.

There are no accurate measures on how extensive poaching is. Markus Burgener, senior programme officer at wildlife trade monitoring network Traffic, says a conservative estimate is about R500m. But research by consultancy group Feike puts it as high as R1bn/year.

Cites delisting

SA's removal of the Haliotis midae abalone species from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna & Flora (Cites) list has not helped either. Cites makes it illegal to trade in certain animals if they did not comply with certain safeguards in the exporting country.

Government argues that having it on the list was ineffective in stopping poaching. But Burgener says certain critical safeguards - in particular the verification of consignments at ports of exit by officials - were never implemented in SA, thereby reducing the potential impact of the Cites listing.

Burgener says this step, along with educating customs officials in key export markets in Hong Kong and China, would have helped limit the trade.

MCM ineffective

The ineffectiveness of Marine & Coastal Management (MCM), which now falls under the agriculture, forestry & fisheries department, has also allowed the poachers free rein in SA's waters and its stocks. Russell says the department can easily implement steps like monitoring harbours and slipways, and have officials work after hours - when most poaching takes place - to protect fishing stocks.

The department is trying its best but it's overwhelmed by the scale of poaching, says Raemaekers. The crisis in the abalone sector can be solved, he says, but it will require department officials building a stronger relationship with fishing communities and devising a governance structure that fosters the long-term development of the industry.

Russell shares a similar view, pointing out that Chile, which has a shellfish similar to abalone and similar industry problems, managed to break the stranglehold of poachers by close collaboration with government officials, academics and fishing communities.

Source: Financial Mail