Kenya steps up war on elephant poachers with satellite collars

As dusk was falling rapidly in Samburu, Bonsai, an elephant, was shot as she grazed in the bushes with her herd called the Hardwoods family.

Bleeding, she managed to flee from the poachers, but only for a short distance. At 2am, she died. The Hardwoods lost yet another matriach. That was on June 8, 2013.

Bonsai had taken over as the matriarch of the Hardwoods after her mother, Ebony, died two years before. She too was butchered by poachers.

Ebony had survived the hunt time again, taking over a dozen bullets, but the poachers finally prevailed, taking her tusks and leaving her carcass to rot in the hot savannah.

“She was shot in the head and the poachers burnt and buried her GPS tracking collar,” said David Daballen, the head of field operations at Save The Elephants (STE) as he held up one of Ebony’s bones that had over 10 visible bullet marks.

“There are many elephants with bullets in them and in extreme pain,” he said.

Ebony and Bonsai are not isolated incidents, but rather an increasingly common script in the story of the conservation of the African elephant. It is a script that has forced conservationists to seek ways to protect the remaining elephants that are under threat of extinction.

Hadija, the matriarch of the Swahilis, another elephant family, came to Samburu National Park with her calves in tow, suffering from multiple gunshot wounds.

She was treated by the STE team and fitted with a global positioning system (GPS) collar to track her movements.

But the collar did not deter the poachers. She was eventually killed and the poachers shot at her collar and buried it to hide the evidence. Her calves, afraid and alone, were attached to Cinnamon, the matriach of the Spices family.

“Though Hadija’s story ended sadly, had we not been tracking her, we might not have known her fate for some time,” said Mr Daballen.
The GPS tracker on her neck transmitted her last location which enabled the team to track and trace the matriarch’s carcass.

Satao, one of the largest elephants to have walked the earth, was shot with a poisoned arrow by poachers in May last year. They took his tusks and chopped off part of his face, leaving the mutilated carcass in the bush.

Apart from poisoned arrows, poachers are turning to even more crude methods and are now using snares to trap elephants before butchering them.

Data collected in 2010 showed that 2,000 snares were used in botched poaching attempts in Bura. The use of the snares was also prevalent in Meru and Yatta where 800 snares were recovered in 2014.

As poachers cut out the pricey tusks off Satao, Hadija and Ebony for sale in international black markets, a part of them was left in a museum in Samburu.

At the STE site, the bones of these majestic creatures sit in a museum corner.

The lower jaws are collected and tagged to aid in identification as well as to determine animal’s estimated age and sex.

In their lifetime, elephants grow six sets of teeth. The length and width of a complete set is used to estimate the age. The bones are not only significant to the researchers but also the bereaved herds.

“In mourning, elephants collect the bones of their dead and gather around, observing what looks like a moment of silence for their departed,” said Jerenimo Lepirei, a research and outreach officer at STE.

And as elephants face extinction, museum visits might become part of the school curriculum.

Poaching in the country’s parks peaked between 2009 and 2013, as demand and prices for ivory shot up. In the four- year period, over 100,000 elephants were killed.

In Africa, the number of elephants stands at 450,000, according to the African Wildlife Foundation, a drastic reduction from about five to 10 million elephants in 1930s. About eight per cent of the population is being lost to poaching annually.

READ: KWS bets big on digital radios to tame poaching

Kenya is now betting on conservation and tracking to tame the menace. As part of conservation efforts, elephants are now fitted with GPS and satellite collars. One collar can help track about 30 elephants in a herd.

STE is currently tracking 42 elephants in Samburu, 14 in Maasai Mara, 15 in the Democratic Republic of Congo and 16 in the Kruger National Park in South Africa. This month, STE collared an additional two elephants.

Flaubert, a collared elephant from the Artists family grazes on the banks of Uwaso Nyiro River in Samburu National Reserve.

Together with her family, she has been part of a long-term tracking programme to collect data on daily basis. Each elephant has a name and is usually recorded by use of a marked field code number accompanied by a sketch and a photo.

But collaring is not cheap. “Each collar costs $6,000 (Sh630,000) and the total cost including the entire operation is $8,000 (Sh840,000),” said Mr Daballen.

In partnership with technology firm Google, STE has a mapping platform to allow it view the real-time movement of collared elephants.

“The data is password protected to ensure no unauthorised persons can access it,” said Douglas-Hamilton, founder and chief executive officer of STE.

Through a programme dubbed Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants (Mike), the collar has been used since 2001 to relay poaching data from 42 sample sites across Africa. Data from the Samburu-Laikipia Mike site in northern Kenya shows illegal killing peaked in 2012 and subsequently declined.

The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust (DSWT) is also a key player in the anti-poaching efforts in the Tsavo, host to the largest number of elephants in the country at approximately 11,076 in 2014.

DSWT deploys eight full-time anti-poaching units in Tsavo East and West National Parks, the Chyulu Hills National Park, the Kibwezi Forest Reserve and bordering private and community ranches on the lookout for any illegal activities.

The efforts have borne fruits. In Chyulu and Duma nearly 250 arrests were made in 2012 compared to 150 last year.

The ivory trade is murky especially when it is entangled with politics, but some countries are now destroying their ivory stockpiles to keep it off the market.

In 1989, former President Daniel Moi set ablaze 12 tonnes of elephant tusks, the first statement in the country in the fight against illegal ivory trade.

In March, President Uhuru Kenyatta burnt 15 tonnes of tusks estimated to be worth Sh3 billion ($30 million).

Fourteen other countries have also opted to destroy their stockpiles of illegal ivory.

In the past three years alone, 11 countries have destroyed 80 tonnes, according to data from World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

In Mozambique, officials burnt over 2.4 tonnes of ivory and 440 pounds of rhino horns earlier this year.

In June, the US crushed more than one tonne of ivory and China destroyed nearly 1,500 pounds of ivory in May.

Expensive than gold

But critics say the illegal ivory may find its way back to the market.

“Destruction of illegal ivory should be backed by rigorous documentation, including an independent audit of the ivory slated for destruction which reduces the risk of the product finding its way back into the black market,” said the WWF.

In August, Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) began taking stock of the rhino horns and elephant tusks in its possession. The process involved weighing and photographing the tusks and feeding the data collected into online systems.

KWS partnered with STE and Stop Ivory for the exercise aimed at migrating existing records about the stockpiles from manual files to a digital platform that will be centrally managed at the KWS head office.

KWS is expected to conduct yearly audits of government-held trophy stockpiles —such as ivory or rhino horns —and publish the results in the Kenya Gazette.

Wildlife species that have significantly declined and are critically threatened in Kenya include elephants, rhinos, Grevy Zebra, bongos, lions and cheetahs, among others. Some are hunted in conflict, for game meat and trophies.

There are only 30 Sable antelopes in Kenya currently, 3,765 Grevy zebras and less than 2,000 lions, according to KWS data submitted to Parliament. The numbers are set to keep dropping if these animals are not protected.

The black rhino population has been on the decline since the 1960s with data from the Africa Wildlife Foundation (AWF) showing that numbers have declined by 97.6 per cent.

The International Rhino Foundation puts the number of rhino species at five currently, down from the dozens that were in existence before, three of which are classified as critically endangered while the rest are threatened.

Traditional medicine

“The staggering decimation of the rhino population is due to poaching, to satisfy the demand for the horn for use in Eastern traditional medicines and as dagger handles,” said the Rhino Foundation.

The foundation further states that prices up to $60,000 (Sh6.3 million) a kilo have been recorded for the much prized rhino horn—more than five times the price of gold.

But the rising demand and prices of ivory and rhino horns continue to drive poaching.

“The situation was aggravated by the approval by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) of the one-off sale of elephant ivory by southern African countries in 2007,” notes a parliamentary report by the departmental committee on Environment and Natural Resources.

An estimated 90 per cent of ivory for sale in China and Hong Kong is reportedly illegal, with the legal trade helping to disguise the illicit industry.

“The numbers of elephants continue to decline at an alarming rate in Africa, and so Hong Kong urgently needs a firm plan and timeline to phase out the sale of ivory,” said Cheryl Lo, senior wildlife crime officer of WWF-Hong Kong.

The retail price of raw ivory in China stands at an estimated $2,100 (Sh220,500) per kilogramme. However, over a week ago, US and China announced a commitment to take timely steps to halt domestic commercial trade of ivory.

As Kenya strives to tame poaching, its fear is that the vice will cripple the tourism sector. The wildlife resource managed by KWS is the backbone of the tourism industry and accounts for 21 per cent of foreign exchange earnings and 12 per cent of the GDP, notes the Parliament report.

Safaris are major drivers to the tourism industry. In 2014, the number of visitors to national parks and game reserves stood at over two million.