A South African businessman, apparently active in elephant cyanide poisoning since 2009, is behind the recent killing of at least 64 elephants in Zimbabwe.

Police named him only as Ishmael and reported how he used a local farmer and ivory buyer to distribute stocks of cyanide to local people.

The technique was so effective at killing elephants that when the poachers took police to the contaminated sites there were bodies of elephants with small tusks still intact because it wasn’t worth the effort to take the tusks.
The poachers were being paid as little as $700 for 9 tusks.

Also other animals were found dead including buffalo, lions, vultures and jackals.

The ivory trade is inexorably linked to all sort of crimes, ecological disasters and even human rights abuses.
The only solution is a comprehensive, and indefinite (well enforced) ban on international and domestic ivory trade.

More here: http://wildlifenews.co.uk/2013/south-african-businessman-behind-elephant-poisonings/