The Congolese Supreme Court has ordered Ghislain Ngondjo (known as Pepito) to five years in prison for slaughtering dozens of elephants for their ivory tusks. The five year sentence is the maximum in the Republic of Congo for poaching. Ngondjo was considered the “kingpin” of an elephant poaching group; in addition to killing pachyderms, Ngondjo recruited new poachers and made death threats to park rangers and staff in Odzala National Park.

“Congo is ground zero for the fight to save Africa’s forest elephants from extinction, and the arrest and successful prosecution of Pepito shows that we can win this war when governments and the NGO community work together in partnership,” says James Deutsch, Director of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s (WCS) Africa Program.

Conservationists have long called on governments to hand down stiffer penalties to poachers and other wildlife criminal, many of whom are released with little more than a slap on the wrist.

“The Republic of Congo’s Minister of Justice and Congolese Supreme Court of the Republic of Congo and have sent a clear message that the theft and pillaging of Congo’s wildlife heritage by criminal poachers and traffickers will not be tolerated,” Deutsch added.

It took several years to catch and prosecute Ngondjo, according to WCS, which worked closely with the government and African Parks Network. A partnership between WCS and the Aspinall Foundation, PALF (Project for the Application of Law for Fauna Republic of Congo), proved instrumental to the outcome.

Ngondjo had run amok in the Cuvette-Ouest Department for a decade and had reportedly cultivated connections on high to avoid arrest and prosecution, but eventually his luck ran out.

Two other poachers were tried with Ngondjo: one received a five year sentence, the other two years.

Elephant poaching has hit record levels in recent years with elephant populations in Central Africa especially hard hit. Forest elephants, which are largely found in the Congo Basin, have been decimated: a recent study found that the population had been cut down by 60 percent in the last decade due to poaching. Experts estimate that 35,000 elephants were killed in 2012 for their tusks.

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