Baraza

105.5 XFM INTERVIEW
On Monday 6th May 7.30 am – 8.30 am at Lion Place

Fareed Khimani: as promised we have Paula Kahumbu back in studio with us this morning, well it?s kind of a follow up.

Paula Kahumbu: it is, yeah

Fareed Khimani: well come again by the way, you are now officially the most visited, the….. how do you put that…

Paula Kahumbu: Am your most frequent visitor. Oh My God!

Fareed Khimani: of 2013, yes! And also my only one, no am joking, you are not my only one but you are my most frequent one in 2013 coz you have been invited back again. And we will keep bringing you back as long as we are making progress in this battle that you have been doing for years, that you have exposed me to over the course of last couple of months and I have taken a keen interest in your work and the great work you are doing. For those are not aware of what Dr. Paula Kahumbu does, she saves lives of elephants and other wildlife but elephants

Paula Kahumbu: well….

Fareed Khimani: I know it’s much more, much more detailed than that but I know that the ultimate goal is to make sure that this senseless killing of animals stops, but you can tell us a little bit about yourself for those who didn’t manage to catch us together few weeks back.

Paula Kahumbu: well first, thank you so much Fareed for inviting me back again, it?s another spectacular morning, I was thinking as I was coming in, you should invite me in more coz I bring on the sunshine

Fareed Khimani: You bring the sunshine! Imagine going back to school on the first day and it?s raining how awful that would feel?

Paula Kahumbu: today is just spectacular.
Fareed Khimani: it is beautiful

Paula Kahumbu: and it’s a great day to also share with you that, since the last time we met which was just two weeks ago, so much has happened and I just want to tell you all about it but, the main thing was something which I actually put out on twitter because it was so phenomenon: the Director of Public prosecutions Keriako Tobiko, responded to what we’ve been saying and even in the letters we have been sending, not just me, I mean am here alone but if I was to bring in all the people who support me in this, this building would fall down.
We’ve been challenging the judiciary, to take these things more seriously and the DPP announced last week that his office is taking over the prosecutions of wildlife crimes. He actually talks about specifically about creating units in various parts of the country, to take on these crimes and the very first one is an incident in Nanyuki. Couple of weeks ago, a rhino was killed. He was poached, speared by local people. The local community elders put out a curse, they threatened to get these guys through a curse if they didn’t come and confess. They did, they came in and they confessed. They said we did it.

Fareed Khimani: they were scared about the curse

Paula Kahumbu: More scared of the curse than to go to jail. And actually if they go to jail, frankly in this country, the penalty will be forty thousand shillings they will probably pay that;
somebody will send the money via Mpesa. So they’ve killed the rhino which is worth about a million dollar.

Fareed Khimani: a million dollars

Paula Kahumbu: That?s the value of the rhino horns alone,

Fareed Khimani: Wow! And you are fined forty thousand!

Paula Kahumbu: and you are fined forty thousand, that?s what the law says. That?s how the magistrates have been handling it. We asked the DPP, Mr Tobiko to address this as a much high crime and he’s taken this on. So these men have now been arrested, they are now in the cells, were prosecuted not just by the Kenya Wildlife service, but by the DPP’s own representative from Nyeri, he was driven up to Nanyuki. They took on this case; these guys each of them were bailed at a million shillings, which is a record for this country, plus two sureties of a million shillings each, that means each of them had to raise three million shillings, if they were to get out of the cells. Of course they can’t raise that.

Fareed Khimani: so they are there

Paula Kahumbu: so they are there and this is really is a test case. This is what we’ve been asking for so we are just so thrilled that finally its happening and it?s about time too because today is a special day, I don?t know if you know that the United Nation has just announced that as a body they recognize wildlife crime as a serious crime.

Fareed Khimani: Ok. That was today or that was…

Paula Kahumbu: that is happening today, there is a massive press conference happening at the UNEP.

Fareed Khimani: Super!

Paula Kahumbu: this afternoon, they have a famous Chinese movie star who is here especially for this. Her name is Li Bingbing, anybody who don?t know her please Google Li Bingbing. She is the most phenomenally beautiful actress in the planet and she?s going to be here. She has taken on the cause of elephants and she has come to Kenya we are extremely privileged. She is
working with UNEP with Save The Elephants and many other elephant conservation groups to save elephants. The United Nations are saying, for the first time in history, wildlife crime is not just killing of animals, we are putting human life at risk it’s a security risk across the globe. It’s attracting criminal cartels into Kenya and other countries which become hubs for illegal trafficking of wildlife products and timber. So this is a huge opportunity for us to really, you know. We started with a very small thing last week, a couple of weeks ago, actually it?s just, you know; moving like a rocket, it’s just amazing.

Fareed Khimani: that’s awesome. And now you talk about this Chinese actress and she is very beautiful Li Bingbing. Who, will be in UNEP today.

Paula Kahumbu: Stop Drooling!

Fareed Khimani: sorry. Let me close the page then and go back to twitter. But also obviously last time we spoke we said that a lot of these wildlife crimes is coming from the east, from far east and we spoke about a guy, I think he was Vietnamese if am not mistaken.
Paula Kahumbu: absolutely!
Fareed Khimani: so this particular figure head from China coming in to be sort of a face for the anti-poaching movement is a huge step forward for the Chinese government as well, I would assume or at least Chinese cinemas whatever the case maybe to actually say Hey Ho! This is our problem and we must deal with it and this is, now this is gonna be the face of sort of anti poaching movement from the East.
Paula Kahumbu: Absolutely, Li Bingbing is the second person to come to Kenya with the same mission, the other one was Yao Ming. Remember that famous Chinese basket ball player?

Fareed Khimani: sure! Absolutely the 7 foot 3inches. huge guy.

Paula Kahumbu: No! No! 7 foot 6 inches as

Fareed Khimani: 7?6, frankly he is the rocket. Brilliant!

Paula Kahumbu: he is amazing. Yes. It is extremely significant that we have Chinese super stars, celebrities, people who can influence the Chinese people. And people worldwide because
these are worldwide super stars, who are saying,; when the buying stops the killing stops too. So basically they are saying stop buying ivory. They are trying to appeal to the people of the world to stop buying ivory which is just simply used as trinkets and fashion statements. They are saying, “don?t do it, it?s killing elephants”.

Fareed Khimani: just buy diamonds. What?s the problem? I mean, Jesus! I don?t understand. Anyway, so we are moving somewhere which is great. Now, obviously you have a lot more to tell us, a lot more stories coming our way. I did wanna ask you this, last week you… and I will tell you this, you tweeted a thing this morning. Was it… did you tweet this morning? You did, right? Saying you gonna be on the show from 7.30

Paula Kahumbu: yes

Fareed Khimani: response to you being here, I think my listenership goes to the roof when you are on the show.

Paula Kahumbu: oh! That’s great

Fareed Khimani: so you can come back whenever you want actually. It could be you and of course the Samsung galaxy S4, which we are giving away on Friday, but regardless you are here which is great. So we have so much to get through today and of course we will still push the ways our listeners can help, what they can do and also a little bit of stuff you didn’t know that this particular… can we call it a pandemic?
Paula Kahumbu: it?s a crisis. It’s not just Kenya is a global crisis affecting elephants across the continent. Sudan has just announced their elephants have declined from 130 000 twenty years ago to fewer than 5,000 today.
Fareed Khimani: there you go
Paula Kahumbu: this is just a massive, just phenomenon decline of elephants.
Fareed Khimani: And we here in Kenya are the sort of the transport hub for the rest of the continent or partly one side of the continent anyway

Paula Kahumbu: we are the transiting hub which is what is so scary. You know; am just going to tell you something else Fareed which am not sure if you have thought about this. Those letters that a child from the US wrote to president Obama, to president Xijin Ping president of China and President Uhuru Kenyatta, it?s the most adorable letter. He says “Dear Mr. President for all the children and elephants in the world, we ask you from our hearts, please stop the elephant poaching in Africa and the illegal trade of Ivory in China. Poachers in Africa killing elephants because many people in China as well as other Asian Countries are buying Ivory which comes from the tusks of the elephant. It poachers keep killing elephants at this rate, they will extinct before we are even out of high school”

Fareed Khimani: My Goodness!

Paula Kahumbu: can you imagine this is a little child, who?s written to say, you know; can you imagine the world without elephants.

Fareed Khimani: that’s ridiculous

Paula Kahumbu: think about your son, is four months old. What would it be like if he grew up and the only thing you could tell him about elephants is, have a look at this picture; when I was a kid they were around but they are gone.

Fareed Khimani: it will be almost like telling your kids about dinosaurs I suppose and in that respect.

Paula Kahumbu: Exactly

Fareed Khimani: that’s really sad and that really puts it in the perspective as well and yes it’s actually a fact if it doesn’t stop before this kid or my son is out of high school we won’t have elephants grazing in the bush.

Paula Kahumbu: it’s really puts an imperative to our generation to make a difference.

Fareed Khimani: ok, but progress is being made and there is still more we can do. We will get more into it, more into details more into the nitty gritty

The destruction being caused both sides I supposes and how we help to improve the situation that is of course is our wonderful tourist attraction, which is our wildlife if you look at it in plain and simple terms the country will suffer, in terms of its economy if we continue killing this animals. However its not about our country?s economy its bout the lives of this wonderful creatures.

Paula Kahumbu: Of course and you know Fareed, as kids we grew up with these incredible documentaries on television and we fell in love with our nature and wildlife. At some point I will tell you a bit of why I do this but just want to tell you that you know, it?s not… I don?t think it?s fair to convince all Kenyans that the only reason why should save this animals is so the tourist can enjoy them,

Fareed Khimani: Right

Paula Kahumbu: Because, yes that a big economic imperative and that what we were told as kids, but think about it we would lose key species, this is part of our national heritage. Kenya really is the birth place of humanity, we evolved with these animals and I think that?s why we have this natural instinct to protect wildlife. I was just told yesterday that in Wajir, a community caught a cheetah that had just killed 10 sheep. Now in most part of this country you would expect the first thing to do is kill the thing and then call the KWS. These guys didn’t do that, they held this cheetah for 2 days, fed it tied it then they matched it down on to the police station and they said to the police “you take care of this animal this is our national heritage”.

Fareed Khimani: Really? What a lovely story

Paula Kahumbu: Exactly I think it’s so extra ordinary that what we have is so special in this country compared to nowhere else in the world. Nowhere else is there the dawn of mankind really,

Fareed Khimani: It?s almost like a mothering sort of parenting type of outlook the story from Wajir.

Paula Kahumbu: And these are not people who are wealthy and care about cheetahs in way maybe a rich American might. So I think it?s really does…. It’s something need to value, our
human connection to our natural environment, to the wilderness, to the wildlife species we evolved with and that why I think we are so attached to it.
But think about all the other elements of what happens when we have this poaching that escalates so Kenya as an international hub for trafficking of ivory means we are attracting criminal cartels to this country because it’s easy to operate it here. It’s easy because of corruption and because the penalties are so low, that means our cost for securing this wildlife is just rocketing, that means we are taking money from other areas of development or wildlife protection because we are so busy chasing down poachers, our economic growth is affected partly because of tourism as well but also just think of the economic potential of those communities who live in places with lots of wildlife. They can’t promote wildlife because there are these gangsters roaming around with guns. Which tourist would go in place like that?

Fareed Khimani: They are afraid. Absolutely

Paula Kahumbu: So that clearly affects their economic potential but also affects them directly. Communities are being attacked by gangsters. If they can’t find elephants they will actually attack people because they are hungry. They will even rape people

Fareed Khimani: Yeah, what’s the deterrent now we talked about it last week; we have touched already on it this morning. Is it different penalties, different fines, but again you can double triple, quadruple a fine, some will bail this guys out. What is it really…what is in your opinion how we stop this from happening? Is it in education or is it a combination of many things.

Paula Kahumbu: It’s absolutely a combination of everything so the reason why we are seeing these escalation is because partly impunity. The fact that the penalties are so low actually gives these guys license to keep doing this because they know they can get off. They can get off very easily, so we really need do to change this culture in the country – citizens have to take responsibility and help to restore order. But of course the legal side of it is very critical, The Wildlife Act is out of date; the penalties are too low; that needs to be reformed immediately. The Wildlife Act is huge, it covers all kinds of things but the most important thing that needs to be done right now as a crisis is to address the penalties. We can raise those penalties to the same level of economic crimes or organized crimes which is a minimum of 13 years in jail. That’s what I want. In addition if you get charged with organized crimes, you can actually have all your
assets seized. Now, you know, if you are a dealer just being under investigation means your assets are seized your bank accounts are frozen. That?s a massive disincentive
But as you said big part is education and awareness especially in the countries where there?s demand. We can keep increasing the boots on the ground and everything but so long as the demand is where it’s at in countries like China, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, Laos, we going to keep adding more and more costs in order to protect our elephants here. It will be a losing race.

Fareed Khimani: Is it …. Sorry I know you have more to say. Is it the more we develop the more we engage in foreign investments, the more we are at risk of losing what is our heritage. I mean that really,….and I know that its sad if it is but is that really … or is it not managing the investment properly not managing the influence properly from the west and the east and all this?

Paula Kahumbu: I think there are two things here, first as I said the demand is huge and the demand has nothing to do with Kenya engagement with any country, the demand is purely because people in Asia have got enough money to buy ivory and their governments in many cases even encouraging it. They have open legal ivory markets in China. The government in a way is agreeing, supporting enabling this trade, 90% of that ivory is illegal ivory. So what we are asking Asian governments to do is to crack down and actually close the ivory trade altogether in recognition of nature of this crisis

Fareed Khimani: But last time you were here you were also saying that a number of people that are wearing and buying the ivory think that when the elephants of rhinos die, the ivory, the tusk or the horn just fall off, that?s where it comes from.

Paula Kahumbu: So a big part of the problem is that they are very misinformed sometimes even by official figures will inform them. For examples in Vietnam, a minister told his people that he was cured of cancer because the rhino horn, this is why the price of the rhino has gone through the roof, because he has persuaded them that this thing which is equivalent to implying that chewing your fingernails can cure you of cancer. It is so ridiculous and yet so powerful because they believe in the power of the animal and size of the animal and the strength of the animal. So Yes, education is massive and it basically means we have to engage at many different levels, we want our president Uhuru Kenyatta to Engage the Chinese Premiere, the Thai Premiere, the
Vietnamese Premiere and actually show a new kind of leadership which we have never seen before.
A lot of people say we have our heads in the clouds, what are you doing? There is no way Kenya could do this. I don?t believe that. We were surprised when we saw the structure of our cabinet, I mean; I don?t think anybody expected that caliber of cabinet secretaries to be selected. We are also used to lowering our standards. I am saying, let?s break that roof.

Fareed Khimani: And it?s a possibility

Paula Kahumbu: Why can’t Uhuru Kenyatta convene a meeting of all these leaders and actually discuss with them what could be done to reduce the demand or eliminate it all together, so that we save the species, it?s not just for Kenya, it?s for the world, it?s for the worlds? future children

Fareed Khimani: Come and see our elephants, absolutely.
I know we focus quite a bit on elephants and obviously that is a passion of yours and probably one of the biggest problems we have at this point is the ivory trade but it is not about just elephants we will get to that just a little, while I got a lot of questions since the last time you were here they are saying how is that you are this person that has become so compassionate towards the wildlife in this country and where did it all come from, so I think let’s start with that because we are never really given, we know what you do but we don’t know why you do it.

Paula Kahumbu: Well thank you for that Fareed it’s such a unique opportunity to be able to tell this story I think that growing up in Kenya is the really the answer to why this country has probably highest concentration of conservations and experts in this field
I grew up in a part of Nairobi that was very wild, it was forested we had buffaloes, leopards and hyenas all over the place. I don?t if you know that am one of nine kids. My family was good Catholics, and we were sent out doors to play and that was our play ground and was literally in the forest the streams the swamps and our neighbor was Richard Leakey. I grew up I am the 6th born so I was very little and my elder sister we had this thing going that we had to catch everything that walks, crawls, or flies or swims or whatever, you catch it and take it to Richard Leakey and see if he knows what it is, because he was so smart and we were sure we will catch
him at some point. So we would catch snake, frogs and birds and take them over to him and he would tell us incredible stuff about them their scientific names , life histories and take them back where we found them and release them again. We were really good about that. I grew up surrounded by this incredible knowledge and this person who was amazingly accessible and so as I grow up, he was always there for me. As I finished high school I applied to university and it was way outside of the price range that my family could afford, my mother thought the best thing for this girl, at least, was that she can be a secretary. So I was sent off the secretarial college to learn how to type and do short hand and all this stuff that was mind numbing . And after the third month that was it I couldn’t take it anymore of it. I ran away with a friend of mine and we got on a bus went to the national museums of Kenya it was the wildest thing I have ever done in my life. I was 17 old we went to national museums and we listened to a seminar about Kora National Reserve which is where George Adamson was and it was all about the research he had been doing. I knew then this is it this is what I wanted do and so I went to Richard Leakey’s office and I knocked on the door and I said, ‘I want to be a ranger’ that was my world and all I wanted to do was be a ranger and work for George Adamson. Richard Leakey was phenomenon, he remembered me from when I was a kid, he talked to me about my grades and what I wanted to do and he said well you know, maybe you don?t want to be a ranger maybe there?s something else. I was sent around the country to these amazing places. I went down to Amboseli and I spent 2 weeks with Cynthia Moss and her Maasai women who know the elephants down there and I got to learn about the elephants.

 

 

 

 

I spent 2 weeks with Jean Altmann and Philip Muruthi studying baboons also in Amboselli then I was sent to Kiwaiyu the island of the north coast which is famous now for tourism but at the time was so interesting about Kiwaiyu is not just the beaches but there were monkeys on the island. They are separated from the main land and probably has been separated for than thousands of years.

Fareed Khimani: Are you serious? I don?t know that.”

Paula Kahumbu: There are baboons and vervets on that island that are somehow surviving in a marine kind of environment,

Fareed Khimani: “bizarre!”

Paula Kahumbu: where there no fresh water, they were interested in physiology of this and you know it?s interesting and it?s not what I really wanted to do. I was sent to the Tana river which is you know quite a dangerous place but the time for me it was just a phenomenal play ground, full of wildlife and I got to work with scientist such as Margret Kinnaid who now runs Mpala research center, she was studying one of the most endangered primates in the world the crested mangaby, and so I had this amazing experiences I ended up at the Institute of Primate Research also working with primates and it was just this incredible emersion as a 17 years old with these top scientist.
And then I was invited by Iain Douglas-Hamilton who I know is listening into the show and Iain invited me to help him to conduct a stock take of Kenya?s ivory so we took all the ivory out of the vaults which that time at the national museums of Kenya. We measured each and every tusk, it’s a really depressing experience because this ivory represent elephants that have been shot, murdered. There were huge tusk and the y were down to tiny tusks and what we were able to show, working with a whole team of volunteers ,was that over the last 15 years is that the size of elephants being poached had decline and declined until we were actually shooting baby elephants. It put me off doing research to elephants and I said to Iain these animals are going extinct, am not going to invest my degree research on a species which is going anyway.

Fareed Khimani: So your emotion and passion and love is wow! I mean it?s something that going to be gone soon I suppose

Paula Kahumbu: Exactly, so I really have Richard Leakey, Ian Douglas Hamilton and all these other people I have just mentioned to thank for having the confidence in me and really giving me the space to learn, participate and contribute at a search a young age, it really made a huge difference for me.

Fareed Khimani: So you once run away from home and left home without your parents knowing and all of a sudden we go on a few years and here we are now and this incredible woman sitting opposite me with so much passion and love for the wildlife of our country. Do you mentor now as you were mentored by those wonderful people. Do you mentor and are you trying to raise the next generations of doctor Paula Kahumbus?

Paula Kahumbu: Absolutely, I think that Kenya is blessed with having these phenomenal resources of incredible capable people. I work with a lot of schools and I do talks in schools and I participate in all kinds of school event to tell kids what I do and really inspire them to get involved in wildlife conservation and its not a particular sexy of fashionable thing to do so we try and convert it into other areas of interest and last year, I met this amazing boy as part of research we were doing on lions this term. we are looking at the human-lion conflict in Kitengela just south of national park and there was one particular homestead that was not getting attacked and it didn’t make sense because they were right next to the national park. All the homes around them were being attacked by lions but this home wasn’t and there was this little light around this homestead on the outside shed of cow stockade, the boma. They told us this was the little boy invention, he was 10years old and he had come up with this amazing system of keeping lions away from his fathers homestead by tricking them into thinking he was awake at night walking around because the lights blink in such a way it looks like somebody is awake walking around all night long.

Fareed Khimani: I have actually read about this kid, so this is an incredible story. So basically this lights makes it look like someone is a watch walking around with a touch basically. That is incredible.

Paula Kahumbu: It is really amazing, his name is Richard Turere, so he is now my mentee, I am his guardian.

Fareed Khimani: Super!

Paula Kahumbu: The first thing I did before we even went public with this thing is we got him a scholarship to Brookhouse school so you know huge kudos to Brookhouse school for recognizing, he?s a kid from rural area going to a local school, they took him immediately, he spent a year there and you would not recognize him this boy from where he was a year ago and where he is today I went with him to the US, first time he ever went on an airplane, you know his dream is to be a pilot and an engineer, so the first time he ever went on an airplane was to fly to the long beach California and tell the world about his invention, he got a standing ovation.

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YouTube DirektTurere at ted 2013 [youtube Richard Turere at ted 2013 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAoo--SeUIk]

Fareed Khimani: Are you serious?

Paula Kahumbu: He got more attention for his talk that most of the other TED speakers.

Fareed Khimani: That?s brilliant.

Paula Kahumbu: I can?t wait to see it on local television as now they are airing TED talks

Fareed Khimani: That’s super, that’s wonderful. So, there are thousands of kids like this who have this ideas and who can make a difference so if it’s your kid, this is to my listeners or anyone you know please encourage them that it doesn’t have to be my parents considered a profession growing up, it can be about saving our environment like what you are doing and proof is here opposite me that it is a proper position in life and what a position to be in, you are in a great position Dr. Paula. if you have questions we have tones more of time am not letting this lady leave until we are done so please get to me, you could tweet us, it?s very easy you can tweet myself @fareedkhimani or you can tweet @paulakahumbu.

Transcribed by Loise Njagi_ (Intern at WildlifeDirect)
For more information contact Paula@wildlifedirect.org or pkahumbu@gmail.com

According to IFAW Tanzania has reportedly withdrawn her proposal to sell her ivory – though this has not yet been confirmed by CITES, the news has been met with elation by conservationists in Kenya.

Joyce Poole of Elephant Voices an organization that monitors elephants in the Masai Mara ecosystem stated

 

“Elephants are under extreme threat from an ivory trade spiraling out of control. Inserting more ivory into the mix would send the wrong message to consumers, and further stimulate the illegal trade. I congratulate the Tanzanian authorities for the wise decision to withdraw their proposal”.

Tanzania had proposed to downlist her elephant population from Appendix I to Appendix II and sell 137 tons of ivory at the next years 16th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of wild Flora and Fauna, CITES, which takes place in March 2013 in Bangkok. This is the third time that has failed to win support for a similar proposals to sell ivory at CITES. Apart from a few southern African countries and China, Tanzania’s proposal received virtually no support locally and had been termed “ludicrous” by some conservation organizations like the Environemental Investigation Agency, EIA – the government had admitted that 30 elephants were being killed each day to poachers, and together with Kenya, Tanzania is a major player in the illicit ivory trade an issue that has been linked to corruption in the government.

The decision to withdraw the proposal comes after other positive statements including a commitment to step up anti-poaching, and after the Chinese embassy in Dar es Salaam stated commitment to working with Tanzanian authorities to combat poaching, and ivory trafficking. The Kenya government will be welcoming this news wholeheartedly.

Through expert submissions from the Kenya Wildlife Service, Kenya’s position has been fiercely against Tanzania’s proposal. Despite huge investment in anti poaching and enforcement poaching is rampant in Kenya as a result of the demand for ivory which has been whetted by the limited renewal of legal trade.

And, this decision does not alter Kenya commitment to extend a 9 year moratorium on ivory trade to all elephant range states. This would prevent any country from proposing to trade in ivory until after 2017. Most conservation organizations back Kenya’s proposal including Save the Elephants, WildlifeDirect, Elephant Voices, the Amboseli Elephant Project, Born Free Foundation, IFAW, and others many of whom will travel to Thailand to lobby for Kenya.

For the first time in this dark period of elephant poaching, there is cause for hope. The Kenyan Minister for Forestry and Wildlife and the Director of the Kenya Wildlife Service have raised the alarm and renewed commitment to anti-poaching efforts. The US Secretary for State Hilary Clinton has raised the issue in congress, and the Tanzanian government has requested support from the USA improve park management.  While China is the main market for ivory, major markets also exist in other Asian countries like Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia. What we hope for now is for all of these countries to make a commitment by jointly denouncing illegal domestic ivory trade, and contributing to a fund that will enhance African elephant range states enforcement, investigations, and management of elephants.

Today the Amboseli Trust for Elephants celebrated 40 years of elephant research that has revealed the secret world of elephants to us. The event symbolically held at the Ivory burn site in Nairobi National Park where Richard Leakey, then Director of the Kenya Wildlife Service, and Daniel Arap Moi , the president Kenya, set alight 12 tons of ivory worth USD 3 million in 1989 to eliminate the national stockpile and send a message to the world that Kenya was taking a principled stand against the ivory trade. I find it sad that as we celebrate we cannot ignore the fact that thousands of elephants across Africa are once again being massacred for the ivory trade.

In her statement Cynthia Moss, the head of the Amboseli Trust for Elephants, noted that this is the longest running study of elephants anywhere in the world and apart from extending our scientific knowledge about elephant intelligence, society, communication and  a host of other discoveries, the project had brought elephants to the world as female led families with values  that humans can only envy. The project, which started in 1972, witnessed the terrible 15 years of all out poaching that included government sponsored or facilitated elephant poaching that decimated 85% of Kenya’s elephants . The period ended with  the dismantling of the Wildlife Conservation Management Department and the creation of the Kenya Wildlife Service. Today with 1,500 elephants in the study, the Amboseli elephant population has more than doubled from where they started.

The event was attended by a number of elephant scientists including Iain Douglas-Hamilton who runs Save the Elephants under whom Cynthia Moss first trained, Esmond Martin who studies ivory trade, and Joyce Poole who conducted her PhD research on elephants in Amboseli. Representatives of government included the Former Director of KWS Julius Kipngetich and a number of high ranking KWS officials.  During his speech, the Chairman of the Kenya Wildlife Service, the government authority responsible for wildlife management, David Mwiraria, congratulated the project for contributing so much to Kenya and the world. He noted the introduction of the community consolation scheme started in 1997 which serves to respond to livestock losses to elephants.

What he didn’t mention, and what nobody spoke about openly, was that Amboseli is once again the playground of poachers. In their own blog post, the ATE reports the loss of the QB family after Qumquat and her daughters were violently gunned down on the edge of Amboseli National Park.This video illustrates the deadly methods used by poachers, well armed and extremely quick elephant herds are gunned down within meters of each other. (Warning this video shows dead elephants and the capture of a distressed elephant baby. Some viewers may find it disturbing).

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This suggests military precision and the possibility that poachers have some sort of military training. One person noted that “Back in the 2000 the KWS was only just getting established, we had staff few, basic training and limited technology”. Today with far better equipment, more staff and highly trained ones at that, the authority cannot contain the poaching. Why?” he asked. I can only conclude that the scale of poaching is much worse than ever before and we just can’t keep up with it.

I have been seeking views on what people perceive is the greatest challenges facing elephants is today. Here are some of the responses ranked in order of importance

1. Demand or ivory  in China. Everyone agrees that demand for ivory, especially the Chinese is the driving force behind the rapid rise in elephant poaching. The argument goes that ivory has always been part of the Chinese culture as a status symbol. The rising wealth of the middle class Chinese has exploded the demand creating a crisis for elephants as demand far outstrips availability.
2. The presence of bad elements throughout Kenya known to be involved in this business– he meant the presence of Chinese and Somali’s who place orders on ivory. Cartels that deal in drugs, arms, illegal goods and contraband, and even human trafficking have networks on the ground in remote corners of the country and can obtain ivory easily using cell phone ordering.
3.  Corruption in Kenya and possible involvement of high ranking officials makes it easy for dealers to move ivory through Kenya and other African countries.
4. Poor legislation and lack of enforcement has allowed dealers, poachers and now traffickers to get off easily
5. Ineffective anti-poaching country wide -  Despite the gains, anti-poaching and intelligence gathering is always one step behind poachers.

I would make a personal addition, one of the greatest threats to elephants is the total lack of will from African governments to deal with the Chinese who are now important donors and trade partners. Embarrassingly, the USA which is not an elephant range state, when Hillary Clinton have come out with the strongest language and commitment to date on the scale and risk of the escalating poaching problem.

Do you agree with these five ? What else do you think contributes to the problem?

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YouTube DirektWildlifeDirect ivory burn

Dear friends

Yesterday, together with most of Africa’s top elephant conservationists, I witnessed the burning of 5 tons of ivory at the Kenya Wildlife Service training center in Manyani, which is located in one of Kenya’s greatest National Parks, Tsavo West Kenya.

(I recorded video, photographs and podcasts of the event which WildlifeDirect is willing to sell to raise funds  for conservation. Please leave a comment on this post if you are interested in supporting us by buying your own copy of the event to support WildlifeDirect and elephant conservation)

This is the strongest conservation statement that has come out of Africa in a very long time – the destruction of ivory worth about 15 million dollars.

This is the second time that Kenya has burned ivory to send a powerful message about how the ivory trade is killing Africa’s elephants. Although the Kenyan President, Mwai Kibaki lit this funeral pyre of over 200 elephants, this time it wasn’t Kenya’s ivory. The elephants that had been slaughted for this ivory came from Malawi and Zambia, thousands of kilometers south of Kenya.

The ivory burned was part of a shipment seized in Singapore in 2002 following an investigation spearheaded by the Lusaka Agreement Task Force and the Environmental Investigation Agency. Susan Rice of the EIA told me that it was the 19^th shipment of ivory from Zambia that was seized in an operation that revealed a complex web of players including poachers, government agents, and traders.

This massive illegal trade in ivory, was linked to China and Japan that had been authorized by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered species, CITES.

Ambassadors of both countries were visibly absent at the ceremonial ivory burn.

Conservationists have been warning that the massive demand for ivory in China cannot be satisfied by Africa’s  elephants and as a result, ivory prices have been increasing, triggering a surge in poaching across Africa.

Wildlife enforcement authorities in Africa are struggling to defend elephants against this renewed threat. And the unwillingness of African Governments to prosecute Chinese nationals involved in illegal ivory trade makes it near impossible to stop them.

The effect is devastating for elephant and it is particularly evident than in Samburu in northern Kenya where so many elephants have been killed in recent months that adult males are noticeably abswent, and some elephant families no longer have matriarchs – the oldest female leaders who maintain order in elephant society.

Saving Africa’s elephants requires not only bold statements and commitments by African leaders.  We need action and we need it now. Everyone can agree that African elephants will continue to be at risk of extinction unless the trade in ivory is stopped. This can be achieved if the demand for ivory is destroyed.

Only 5 tons of ivory were burned today – it represents a tiny fraction of Africa’s stockpiled ivory. Kenya alone has 60 tons of ivory held in vaults in Nairobi and in the field. Valued at between 500 and 2000 dollars per kilogram, the cost of protecting this ivory is immense. But it’s mere presence creates a threat that it will be raided by outsiders or even insiders. The maintenance of the Kenyan stockpile sends a confusing message to the world that while Kenya is ready to burn Malawian and Zambian ivory, she is holding onto her own stockpile – could this be for future sales perhaps?

While congratulating the countries of the Lusaka Agreement Task Force for burning this ivory, conservationists identified  three additional actions that would secure the future of elephants in Africa

1. To appeal to the CITES convention to remove China and Japan’s status as a approved ivory trading partners
2. To destroy all of Africa’s ivory stockpiles
3. To strengthen enforcement by enacting and enforce laws with significant penalties  against poachers, traders and buyers of ivory  regardless of their nationality

One of the things that keeps me awake at night is the fact that wildlife declines are being documented right across Africa. Two recent scientific articles have made the headlines across the world – both were written by Joseph Ogutu a Kenyan scientist now based in Germany. Ogutu has shown through analysis of long term game counts, that the migratory wildlife of the Masai Mara ecosystem is in decline. That fact should wake a few decision making Kenyans up for several reasons.

Tourism brings in 12% of Kenya’s GDP and multiple sectors benefit from visitors pouring into the country from small scale farmers, who produces the food, to hotels, tour companies, transport companies, and curio shops. Hundreds of thousands of Kenyans depend on the tourism industry, and it’s collapse would be deadly for Kenyans as we witnessed in the aftermath of the post election violence. Yet Kenyans are silent about wildlife declines at home even though it threatens to strip the capital city of one of our most loved icons, the Nairobi National Park.

Nairobi as a major African city that is characterized by it’s spectacular wildlife show case right in a major urban center. Although there are thousands of resident wildlife in Nairobi Park, the wildebeest, zebra, gazelles and hartebeest have for millennia used the park as a dry season refuge and move out of the park during the rains into surrounding grasslands that are occupied by Maasai pastoralists. They move to avoid diseases and predators, mainly lions, that hide in the long grass to ambush their prey. There is no other capital city in the world that can boast such wildlife spectacles, and indeed the Nairobi Park is the city’s Eiffel Tower.

This park which is entirely contained within in the city boundaries, is unique in that it is still home to all the big 5 (although elephants are contained at the David Sheldrick Trust on the park boundary, and is home to a wildebeest and zebra migration that is dependent on seasonal access to grazing and calving zones south of the park. This dispersal area is not contained within the city boundaries – at least not yet.

It is only a matter of time before the city boundaries stretch and swallow the environs south of the park. That’s because the city is going through major urban expansion, it is in growth mode as it consolidates its position as the regional hub for Eastern Africa. As most Nairobians would witness, development over the last 40 years has been largely as unplanned leading to disastrous outcomes like slums, pollution, uncollected garbage, water lines contaminated with sewage, power rationing, insecurity, traffic jams.. the list goes on and on. Continued unplanned development will threaten to swallow up the park and further fragment and change the land on which the wildlife depend. In addition, in trying to ease traffic across the city, the Kenya government has proposed to construct the Greater Southern Bypass, a mega highway that is proposed to cut right across the wildlife dispersal area. If it comes into being as proposed, it will disconnect the wildlife from it’s dispersal area effectively strangling the ecosystems lifeline. If that happens, Nairobi will lose one of it’s most valuable assets.

So the challenge is to have a city and to safeguard this globally important wildlife asset through planned development that takes the needs of the wildlife and the people into consideration. We need to develop an economic environmental analysis to establish the value of the proposition from a conservation point of view and a business proposition to land owners. It will include a cost-benefit analysis particularly with a view to the Greater Southern Bypass.

But how do we know that the dispersal area is still critical for the survival of wildlife in the Nairobi Park? How many animals still use the vast dispersal area in Kitengela south of the park? Where is the data? This is the first step that we must undertake. We are finding out how important the dispersal area is for the parks wildlife by conducting game counts in the park and it’s ecosystem. The counts started on 4th of June have been organized by the Friends of Nairobi Park and ILRI, with help from the Kenya Land Conservation Trust, KWS, Africa Conservation Center, the local communities, the Wildlife Foundation and some individuals.
These counts will reveal the wet season extent of wildlife movements from the park. The major donors are WildlifeDirect, the African Wildlife Foundation, FoNNaP and friends. The counts include aerial counts conducted by the Directorate of Resource Survey and Remote Sensing over the entire ecosystem. These WildlifeDirect and partners are mounting a campaign to save the wildlife of Nairobi National Park. counts which started in 1977 used to be conducted annually but were halted in 2007 due to financial constraints. We have conducted the 18th count of the ecosystem which will reveal long term ecosystem wide changes in key ungulate species. They are fully funded by WildlifeDirect and the African Wildlife Foundation.
The Nairobi National Park game counts are organized by KWS every 2 weeks since 1960, and are conducted by volunteers of Friends of Nairobi National Park. Until now, the data have never been analysed and published but we are rectifying that in a joint scientific publication with Joseph Ogutu. These data spanning 42 years will reveal changes only in the parks total wildlife numbers.

The Nairobi Park wildlife dispersal area comprises 2,200 km2 just south of the park – an area we call Kitengela. The community have previously conducted two counts here in 2005 and 2007 to document the distribution and numbers of wildlife in the landscape. This will be the third count and will give us wet season data that we can compare to a dry season count later in the year. This 20 day count will involve 40 members of the local community walking in 5 km transects over a distance of nearly 800 km in total. They will count all wildlife species, livestock, cars and dogs. The data collected will be mapped to illustrate the distribution of wildlife. The Maasai want to participate in the data interpretation and to have all the reports prepared in their own language and disseminated through out the Kajioado district.

Finally, the vast private ranches of Machakos comprising 400km2 is a different district but part of the same ecosystem will be counted by car as it has been done fore more than 10 years. Results from this count will reveal what is happening to wildlife numbers in a part of the ecosystem that is largely cut off from the rest of the dispersal area by the presence of .

All of these data will be analysed and the results compiled into scientific publications as well as reports for public consumption.

The outcome of these historic counts will provide some of the scientific basis for keeping the dispersal area open and promoting developments that take into consideration the needs of wildlife and people. Perhaps then Nairobi can thoughtfully plan the expansion of the great city and become an exemplar to every other capital city in Africa.

Dear Friends,

The ivory trade is once again threatening Kenya’s elephant herds. This video has some shocking images, but a happy ending.

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After seeing the ivory seized in Nairobi Airport, several people have been asking where the ivory is coming from. Afterall, there is no poaching epidemic is there?

Well, on Friday night during a visit to the newly established Galana Conservancy, we heard that six gunshots had been heard a few days earlier, and that there was an injured elephant somewhere in the area. On Saturday we went out to look for him, and found him at 8 am. A large 35 – 40 year old bull elephant with impressive ivory, but a shortened trunk. He clearly  had suffered from an old snare injury that had cut the end of his trunk off. He was standing hunched over, in extreme pain. We could see a weeping wound on his side that seemed  entirely consistent with gun shot wound.  We could see the entry and exit wound of the bullet.

As we watched him he leaned on bushes and sat on an ant hill, he seemed to be suffering so much that he hardly noticed our presence.  He wasn’t eating but moved from bush to bush and rubbed his distended belly against the ant hill.

We immediately called the KWS but unfortunately the local veterinarian had returned to Nairobi. Then the injured elephant collapsed. Convinced he would die if he remained lying down, we revved the car engines and he stood up again and continued staggering about.

However, upon hearing about the condition of the animal, KWS took a strong decision and flew the vet back to the area about 2 hours east of Nairobi in the dry plains of Galana.

Unfortunately due to poor weather, the vet did not arrive until early afternoon, it was so hot that the elephant had moved down to the water and was not in a position to be darted. We decided to wait for him to come back out of the water. We left one person to watch him while we went off to investigate a “bad smell”.

Sure enough, the bad smell that emanated from within a dense salt bush area, was a dead elephant.  It’s face was reduced to a mass of bones and maggots, the rest of the body revealed a massive old bull – much bigger than the injured one. Initially the KWS rangers believed the cause of death to be a poisoned arrow. This area is notorious for the  use of native plants to procure poison for killing elephants. Howver, the hacked face was inconsistent with a traditional method of killing an elephant. The poiosoning of elephants leads to a slow paralyzing death and the elephant will be followed for days by the hunter who would leave the carcass to rot for a few weeks before removing the ivory. In this case the elephant ivory had been removed immediately using axes and the entire body of the elephant covered with green bushes. The condition of the cut bushes revealed that the elephant had been dead for no more than 2 or 3 days – about the time that the six gunshots were heard. We found the trunk some meters away from the body of this elephant, and to our dismay, his trunk was also shortened. That was when Garry recognized the pair of bulls that usually hung out together. Both had shortened trunks, and one had much larger ivory than the other. This one named Kulalu had the larger ivory. The KWS vet Jeremiah examined the carcass and concluded that it was consistent with a gunshot wound.

So we had two elephants shot in the last 3 days. And then another pair of ivory tusks were recovered from another elephant carcass that appeared to be a natural death – however, judging from the size of the ivory, it is likely that this was not a natural death but another victim of poaching who died in a place and the poachers failed to find him.

These three deaths suggest to me that there is a level of poaching in Kenya that we are not aware of. Were it not for the smell of the dead elephant so close to the houses, this dead elephant may not have been detected.

Finding carcasses in this part of Kenya is difficult, the terrain is vast and bushy and It is easy to hide the carcasses.

After darting him the KWS vet treated the entry and exit wounds of the elephant which involved turning him over – a task that required much manpower and a landrover.

After he was cleaned up the vet gave him 70% chance of survival and injected the antidote but the elephant would not get up. After about 15 minutes of trying unsuccessfully to get up, the KWS tied a rope to one of his tusks and pulled it with the landrover. This got the elephant up very fast – whereupon we discovered that he was wide awake and extremely angry. He charged his rescuers, nearly toppled one vehicle and then ran down to the river. I covered this story on twitter as it was happening and we videoed and tape recorded the entire sequence which will come out soon.

Now, 24 hours after the incident, the elephant now named Atiki, is fine and is feeding comfortably a few kilometers from where we darted him.

Dear Friends

Elephants are once again in grave danger,  they are increasingly being poached for their teeth.

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Ivory seizure Nairobi Airport

We documented the recent seizure of ivory at Nairobi International Airport.  With ivory prices rising in China, Thailand and Vietnam we anticipate much more of this. The combination of massive rewards as an incentive, the presence of large numbers of Chinese workers in Africa, and weak enforcement+high levels of corruption we have a deadly combination for elephants. We thank the Amboseli Elephant Project for use of photographs in this video.

Let us know what you think of this video and support our work by making a donation.

Thank you

Paula

In one of the alarming and dramatic investigations recently,  13 great ape heads, 32 ape hands, plus 12 leopard skins, 5 elephant tails and one lion skin were siezed by the Gabonese authorities working with AALF, PALF, RALF and LAGA .

In this operation 5 dealers were arrested and are now behind bars.

While the scale of the illegal trade in ape products in West Africa is alarming, we congratulate the Gabonese authorities for this success in wildlife law enforcement. We encourage you our readers to also write to congratulate them. Write to:

Ministre des Eaux et Forêts : Fax : 00241 77 86 45 ; E-mail du secrétariat : jkangue@yahoo.frThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Directeur Général des Eaux et Forêts, Monsieur Kouma Zaou (mail: zaoupaul@yahoo.frThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ; Tél : 00241 07 94 30 27 et 00241 06 71 09 70).

Thank you

Paula Kahumbu

In this interview with Esmond Martin, I ask him whether the trade in mammoth ivory will affect their living relatives, African and Asian elephants.

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