Rangers in the Democratic Republic of Congo believe that rising demand for ivory in China is to blame for an unprecedented wave of elephant poaching in one of the country's war-torn national parks.

Fourteen elephants have been slaughtered in as many days as government soldiers and militias use ivory to raise money for guns. Conservationists believe that the ivory is being smuggled from Virunga National Park through Uganda and Burundi en route to China.

The concerns came as South Africa lifted a 13-year moratorium on elephant culling, aimed at tackling a surge in population numbers, despite the protestations of animal rights activists.

Alexandre Wathaut, provincial director of the ICCN, the Congolese wildlife authority, said that a solution to the region's political instability was crucial to protecting the elephants. “This is the worst month we have seen in a long time in terms of recorded elephant deaths,” he added.

The DRC has been racked by years of civil war. A United Nations peacekeeping force has helped to bring a degree of stability to much of the country but the east remains in the grip of fighting between militias and government forces. They have turned Virunga - home to a population of extremely rare mountain gorillas - into a battleground. Populations of hippos, elephants and antelope in the park have been all but wiped out as gunmen killed them for food. Ten gorillas were killed last year.

Part of the park is under the control of the rebel commander Laurent Nkunda, making it inaccessible to rangers. Now a report by the conservation charity WildlifeDirect says that the militias, which include armed Hutu groups responsible for the Rwandan genocide, have killed 14 elephants for their tusks in a two-week period.

Four were killed by the FDLR militia, comprising members of the former Rwandan Interahamwe, five by the Congolese military, three by the local Mai-Mai militia, and two by villagers. It is a high toll for a population estimated in 2006 to be no more than 350 but is probably far less.

Emmanuel de Merode, director of WildlifeDirect, said that the elephants were the victims of international pressures. “The upsurge in elephant killings in Virunga is part of a widespread slaughter across the Congo Basin and is being driven by developments on the international scene: the liberalisation of the ivory trade, being pushed by South Africa, and the increased presence of Chinese operators on the ground, who feed a massive domestic demand for ivory in their home country,” he said.

A report last year suggested that as many as 23,000 elephants were being skilled across the continent to meet soaring demand from a growing Chinese middle class. Much of it ends up in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, where it is turned into chopsticks bought by Chinese oil workers.

White gold

23 tonnes of ivory seized on its way to the Far East between August 2005 and August 2006

$750 estimated price per kilogram of black-market ivory in China and Japan

7 kilograms of ivory are yielded by an average elephant’s tusks

500,000 estimated population of wild African elephants, down from 1.3 million in 1979

Sources: University of Washington; Times archives

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