Elephants in Kenya's Tsavo East National Park. Photograph by Michael Nichols/National Geographic Creative
Things have improved since the dark days of 2011 and 2012 when
ivory poaching across Africa appeared to be spiralling out of control
and conservations began to contemplate the unthinkable: the extinction
of the African elephant. On World Elephant Day 2016 there are grounds
for cautious optimism.
#WorldElephantDay
In 2016, the mean estimate of the Proportion of Illegally Killed
Elephants (PIKE) dropped below 5 percent for first time since 2009,
according to a report prepared for the 17th Conference of the Parties (CoP17) of CITES
to be held in Johannesburg in September. PIKE is a key measure of
poaching pressure and the 5 percent level is significant as this is
considered to be the normal growth rate of elephant populations. So PIKE
levels above 5 percent mean that elephant populations are likely to be
declining; levels below 5 percent imply the possibility of recovery.
Prices of raw ivory in China dropped by more than 50 percent between 2014 and 2015, according to the latest survey
by Save The Elephants (STE) researchers Esmond Martin and Lucy
Vigne. This provides welcome evidence of a fall in the consumer demand
that has been fuelling the poaching crisis since the start of the
decade.
These figures should be treated with caution. Data on elephant
populations, poaching and the ivory trade is notoriously hard to verify,
and causal relations between trends almost impossible to prove.
Nevertheless the balance of evidence suggests hard work by governments,
wildlife protection agencies, NGOs and campaigners in civil society
organisations is making a difference. Maybe, just maybe, we have turned a
corner at last.
Key initiatives over the last year have included the historic joint
statement by the presidents of China and the USA that their two
governments intend to halt all commercial trade in ivory, and bonfires
of ivory stocks in a number of countries–notably Kenya’s massive burn
of its entire 105 tonne ivory stockpile at the end of April. Statements
and actions like these are evidence of a growing global consensus
around a total ban in ivory trade across the planet.
Equally encouraging, African countries are asserting their right, and
acknowledging their duty, to lead the fight to save Africa’s elephants.
Both the Giants Club,
led by the Presidents of Botswana, Gabon, Kenya and Uganda, and the
29-nation African Elephant Coalition (AECs) have played an increasingly
prominent role over the past year. Paula
Kahumbu delivers posters and presents a petition demanding the arrest
of suspected ivory trafficker Feisal Mohamed Ali letter to the Inspector
General of Police, David Kimaiyo, at his Nairobi office, 12 August 2014
Photograph: WildlifeDirect
The conviction and imprisonment
of the ivory trafficker Feisal Ali Mohamed in Mombasa last month serves
as a warning to high-level traffickers that they can no longer assume
they are untouchable, and an inspiration to other African countries to
emulate Kenya’s get-tough approach to wildlife crime. In Tanzania,
ongoing proceedings against alleged “Ivory Queen” Yang Fenglan shows the
determination of the authorities to cut off supply routes to China from
a country that has lost more than 60 percent of its elephants since
2009.
Nevertheless, it is too soon to assert that Africa’s elephants are
safe. The sudden and dramatic rise in poaching between 2009 and 2011
shows how quickly things can get out of control. Overall positive trends
on poaching mask continuing crises in countries such as Tanzania and
Democratic Republic of Congo where poaching continues on an industrial
scale. Equally worrying is the sharp rise in poaching in South Africa’s
Kruger National Park, until recently one of the most secure sites for
elephants on the continent.
As consumer demand slows in China, traffickers have lost no time in
moving in to expand other markets. According to recent reports by STE
and the Environmental Investigation Agency, the ivory trade is booming
in Vietnam and Japan, two countries where the illegal trade is
tolerated and whose governments have stood aside from global
anti-poaching efforts.
In Japan, the legal domestic trade serves as the cover for massive inflows of illegal imports. The authors of the EIA report
conclude that “no meaningful control exists even at the most basic
level”. This highlights the fact that, in the market place, illegal and
legal ivory are impossible to tell apart. In this context the recent
decision of the EU not to support the AEC’s call for a global trade ban
at CoP 17 is disappointing, to say the least.
Potentially even more dangerous, but thankfully unlikely to succeed,
are the requests to CoP 17 by Zimbabwe and Namibia to remove their
elephants from CITES protection, allowing them to sell their stockpiles.
The arguments made by governments of these countries betray a view of
elephants as simply one more commodity to be exploited. They are setting
themselves apart from the growing consensus that elephants are worth
more alive, and recognition that elephants have intrinsic, spiritual and
cultural values that are just as important as any economic benefits
they give rise to.
There must also be concern that the immediate threat from poaching is
distracting attention away from other developing threats that are
potentially as deadly as the poachers’ guns. Human population growth
leads to loss and degradation of natural habitats, including in designated protected areas.
Large-scale infrastructure project further fragment natural landscapes,
cutting across vital migration routes on which elephants depend.
The effect of all this is to reduce the space for elephants and
brings humans and elephants into ever-closer, often dangerous proximity.
Human-elephant conflict turns people against elephants and erodes the
public support that is essential for any successful conservation
strategy. In 2016 alone, seven people have been killed in the Kajiado
County (home of the famous Amboseli elephants), and at least eight
elephants have be killed in retaliation by angered Maasai warriors who
attack the elephants using spears.
The challenge for conservationists is to turn around the debate, so
that it is no longer just about “saving”elephants, but focuses on
building new, positive and mutually beneficial relations between humans
and elephants.
In Kenya we can see the outlines of strategy to convert this vision
into a reality. Our aim is to link anti-poaching campaigns to poverty
alleviation initiatives and wider efforts to tackle corruption and
strengthen democracy. This makes sense, since studies have consistently shown
that elephant sites where high levels of poverty prevail (as measured
by subnational infant mortality rates), and countries with poor
governance scores (as measured by Transparency International’s
Corruption Perceptions Index), tend to experience higher poaching
levels. NTV Wild on Facebook
A key first step is to bring Africans back into contact with
wildlife. Most Africans today are increasingly moving to cities and have
never even seen their continent’s iconic wildlife, not even on TV. ‘NTV
Wild’ and a companion talk show called NTV Wild Talk
is a ground-breaking series that screens award-winning documentaries
and informed debates about wildlife on prime-time Kenyan TV. This hugely
successful series is transforming public attitudes and helping to
mainstream wildlife conservation in policy debates. Design sample for a conservation poster
NTV Wild is a collaboration between a national TV station called NTV,
WildlifeDirect and the Kenya Wildlife Service. Our goal is to educate
our people about wildlife and to inspire everyone to become a
conservationist. We shine a light on heroes at the front line,
communities, scientists, rangers, companies, children, and tour guides.
The show links in to other initiatives to bring Kenyans into closer
contact with wildlife, such as wildlife clubs in schools, citizen science projects, and the promotion of domestic wildlife tourism—opening up access by Kenyans to our country’s national parks.
The logic of this approach is simple. Informed citizens who
appreciate the value of wildlife are more likely to support efforts to
protect it—and be outraged by the ease with which all too often those
accused of ivory trafficking are able to walk free from the courts.
The recent conviction of ivory trafficker Feisal Ali Mohamed,
following a prolonged campaign by civil society organisations to expose
and prevent irregularities in the judicial process, sent a positive
message to Kenyans worried about corruption that justice can be
achieved. In this way anti-poaching campaigns resonate with more
general concerns about corruption and the need to strengthen democracy.
The private sector has emerged as a key supporter of NTV Wild.
Private businesses like Safarilink, Fairmont Group and Serena Hotels
provide travel and accommodation to NTV film crews. They sponsor
campaigns and offer prizes, such as overnight stays in national parks,
for on-air and online competitions. Their involvement reflects a
conviction that wildlife conservation is good for business. Women Ambassadors for Elephants
At a local level, this vision is embodied by the Oltome-Nadupo Women’s Company
(the name means “successful elephant” in the Maasai language), a
business venture set up by women in Amboseli. The women members of the
company have given up commercial horticulture—one of the principal
‘conflict zones’ with elephants—in favor of more wildlife-friendly, and
profitable, income-generating activities, including the production of
beaded denim jackets for sale in fashion outlets in Nairobi and
London. Today the women have stated that they are ambassadors for
elephants and have started a door-to-door education campaign in their
area.
It’s hard not to be hugely enthusiastic — from where we sit in Kenya,
a new paradigm is emerging for socioeconomic development in Amboseli
and other similar areas across Africa. Poor communities that currently
view wildlife as a threat are transformed into dynamic local economies,
where the local cultural and wildlife heritage is seen as both a source
of pride and a profitable business opportunity.
And we are not the only ones making a difference on the ground; Kenya
is home to many exciting elephant projects by organizations like the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, Tsavo Trust, Big Life Foundation, Mara Elephant Project, Elephant Voices, Save the Elephants, Amboseli Trust for Elephants, Space for Giants, Freeland Foundation, Born Free Foundation, African Wildlife Foundation, International Fund for Animal Welfare, and
so many others. There’s a reason that they are all in Kenya. It’s
because Kenyans are ready to accept this diverse support.
But to save elephants, we have to replicate and expand our dreams and
actions to a much a wider level. This is no less than to inspire a new
vision for the future of Africa, in which the well-being of humans and
wildlife, including elephants, are inextricably linked.
People in cities: Watch elephants playing at the waterhole on a live cam at MpalaLive.org any time. Turn up the volume and listen to the birds.
Dr. Paula Kahumbu is the CEO of Kenyan Conservation NGO WildlifeDirect and is leading the hard-hitting Hands Off Our Elephants Campaign
with Kenya’s First Lady Margaret Kenyatta. Hands Off Our Elephants is a
campaign to restore Kenyan leadership in elephant conservation through
behaviour change at all levels of society, from rural communities, to
business leaders and political decision makers. She is a Kenyan conservationist with a PhD from Princeton
University where she studied Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and
conducted her field research on elephants in Kenya In addition to running WildlifeDirect Paula lectures undergraduate community conservation at Princeton during an annual field course in Kenya. Paula is the winner of the Whitley Award 2014, Brand Kenya Ambassador (2013), Presidential award Order of the Grand Warrior (2013), winner of the National Geographic/Howard Buffet Conservation Leader for Africa (2011) and is a National Geographic Emerging Explorer (2011). She formerly worked for the Kenya Wildlife Service
and ran the CITES office and headed the Kenyan delegation. In 2005 she
joined Bamburi Cement and ran Lafarge Eco Systems, a company that
specializes in forest restoration of limestone quarries. She is a board
member of Lewa and the Soysambu Conservancies, a well as Jane Goodall Institute Kenya. Paula is also an accomplished writer and she has co-authored a
global best selling children’s book on a true story about a hippopotamus
and a tortoise called Owen and Mzee: the true story of a remarkable friendship, it’s sequel Owen and Mzee: the language of Friendships, and Looking for Miza a story about an orphaned mountain gorilla in Democratic Republic of Congo in the same series.
Follow Paula on FacebookTwitterLinkedInYouTube
Posted by Paula Kahumbu of Wildlife Direct and Hands off our Elephants Campaign in A Voice for Elephants on August 12, 2016 
Dr. Paula Kahumbu is the CEO of Kenyan Conservation NGO WildlifeDirect and is leading the hard-hitting Hands Off Our Elephants Campaign
with Kenya’s First Lady Margaret Kenyatta. Hands Off Our Elephants is a
campaign to restore Kenyan leadership in elephant conservation through
behaviour change at all levels of society, from rural communities, to
business leaders and political decision makers. 