KENYA: Wildlife Group Wants More Protection for Elephants

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Mar 25 1996 (IPS) - The slaughter of one of the two oldest males in a herd of elephants that researchers have been studying for 24 years has led environmentalists to demand tighter security on the Kenya-Tanzania border to prevent poaching.

According to the Nairobi-based Africa Wildlife Fund (AWF), the 50-year-old bull, identified as M10, was one of the first elephants to be photographed and named 24 years ago when the AWF’s Ambroseli Elephant Research Project was started in northern Tanzania. It has not been confirmed whether he was shot by illegal game hunters or ivory poachers.

“Local Maasai elders report that the elephant was killed around February 15, 1996 when they heard gunshots,” said Cynthia Moss, director of the research project. “There are reports of other carcasses in Longido, northern Tanzania, which if confirmed, make seven out of 29 large breeding bulls dead or missing.”

The AWF contacted the director of Tanzania’s Wildlife Division, Bakari Mbano, after M-10 was found shot dead one kilometre from the border, with his tusks sawed off. Mbano “is outraged at the killing,” said Moss.

It has since been decided that “Tanzanian authorities, with assistance from AWF, will deploy men to guard the border area,” she added.

According to Moss, the killing of M10 violated a hunting moratorium imposed by Tanzania’s authorities after the December 1994 shooting of three of Amboseli’s virtually tame, breeding elephants. Since the moratorium, no elephant hunting permits have been issued in that area.

Amboseli’s herd, which numbers 920, survived the intensive poaching for ivory during the 1980s, when Africa’s elephant population was reduced from an estimated 1.3 million to approximately 500,000 today. It is one of the few herds in Africa that are relatively intact, spanning the whole age range from newborn calves to females in their 60s.

The group’s social and reproductive patterns are being used as a model for assessing other populations in Africa.

“The elephants in the Amboseli region represent a 24-year effort to unlock the complex social and dynamics of these extraordinary animals,” said AWF president R. Michael Wright. “This knowledge has been obliterated in an instant by unscrupulous people. We are, however, extremely encouraged by the commitment of the Tanzanian authorities to prevent a recurrence of this outrage.”

There is only one 50-year-old bull elephant left in the border area, M51, also called Alfred, and it is feared that he will be the next target.

“It’s vital that we know how long the big bulls go on breeding because this is one of the unanswered questions in elephant biology that will help us manage populations across Africa,” said Moss. “If all the bulls over 50 are killed we’re never going to answer that question.”

Even though the elephant hunters have now reappeared in Ambroseli, the overall situation in Tanzania has improved since poaching has fallen substantially in the south of the country after reducing the elephant population there from just under 112,000 in 1976 to 30,889 in 1989.

Recent data shows that more than 52,000 elephants are now estimated to live in and around reserves in southern Tanzania, mostly in the Selous park. Experts estimate that about 70 per cent of Tanzania’s roughly 73,000 elephants are in Selous, the largest protected game area in Africa.

Preliminary reports released by the German-funded Selous Conservation Programme (SCP) credit the increase in the elephant population to “increased anti-poaching efforts combined with increased donor assistance and the ivory trade ban”.

SCP director Dr. Ludwig Siege said the illegal hunting of elephants had declined as a result of Operation Uhai (Operation Life) – a countrywide military anti-poaching operation conducted by the Tanzanian government. He also said the 1989 Convention on International Trade on Endangered Species (Cites), which banned the global trade in ivory, was also a contributory factor.

The ban has also given elephants elsewhere in Africa a chance to recover. In Kenya, their number had decreased by about 80 percent to 20,000 at the start of the decade, but has since risen by 5,000. In Botswana and South Africa and Zimbabwe they have increased considerably and now number 150,000.

Africa is one of two continents where the elephant is found. The other is Asia, whose elephant population has been reduced drastically over the past 25 years and is estimated by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) at between 70,000 and 100,000.

The report says unchecked logging, clearing of forests for agriculture and ill-planned development have driven the Asian elephants away from much of their traditional habitat, which is now a tiny fraction of what it was half a century ago, WWF says.