Blog: An eye witness to ecocide – on the frontline of elephant conservation

Richard Bonham, Executive Chairman & Co-Founder of Big Life Foundation reports on the extraordinary fight against poachers in East Africa and  the work being done to protect elephants before its too late..

There is nothing benign about nature, it’s savage and raw.  Weakness in whatever form normally leads to death, often slow and lingering, with compassion largely nonexistent. But it has its own order. Death feeds a self-sustaining cycle of life, making it acceptable.

What is NOT acceptable is this statistic: In 2016, experts estimated that Africa’s elephant population plummeted by 111,000 in the span of one decade.  Even worse, it is thought that as recently as 1930 there were approximately 2 million elephants roaming in Africa. Today, the most optimistic estimate is 415,000. Nature did not take into account man’s wanton greed.

I have been an eye witness to this ecocide.  In just one day in the Selous Game Reserve in Tanzania, I saw the rotting remains of two elephant family units, one of 7 individuals and the other of 11. They had been killed by automatic gunfire and all had their faces cut away and ivory taken. Here in the Amboseli ecosystem, where I live and work, I have since also seen a fair share of tragedy. But fortunately, not to that scale and that is where the good news begins.

From late 2018 through now in 2021, we have not lost a single elephant to poachers in Big Life’s area of operation, which spans over 1.6 million acres and is home to about 2,000 elephants.

I believe there are three main factors behind this success:

Firstly, we work in close collaboration with the local community amongst whom these elephants live. Garth Owen-Smith, one of the fathers of the community conservation approach, summed it up as follows: ‘’The long-term conservation of wildlife will not be achieved by military tactics, on computer screens or workshops, but by field conservationists who build relationships with the people living with wildlife or around our national parks.”

The second is law enforcement. Big Life currently employs just 450+ people from the local community of which more than 300 are in uniform as rangers, trained and well-equipped to respond to poaching and general law enforcement. This together with collaboration of the local community has led to over a 90% arrest rate, then followed by prosecution. Essentially, this has created a scenario where the risk outweighs the gain. Wildlife crime here simply does not pay.

The third is reduction in demand.  In the recent poaching heyday in East Africa from 2008 to 2019, ivory was selling in Asia for as much as US $2,000 per kilo, with the poachers receiving up to $170 per kilo. This could generate about $5,000 for a poacher on a small ivory-bearing elephant, but a big bull could generate as much as $15,000, which was a lottery win for someone living in poverty worth risking their life for.  Today, as a result of international efforts to curb the market, the price has been driven as low as $70 or less per kilo. While it still may be tempting for those truly desperate, poaching elephants no longer means hitting a monetary jackpot.

Whatever we do on the ground will never win the war.  All we can do is prevent the supply from ever entering the market by keeping Amboseli’s famed elephants protected. As long as ivory is a commodity, the killing will continue. But for now, it’s looking good, and hopefully other areas in Africa will follow in the footsteps of Amboseli, and together we can watch elephant populations crawl back from the brink of local extinction.

By Richard Bonham, Executive Chairman & Co-Founder of Big Life Foundation

All blogs reflect the views of their author and are not a reflection of BIAZA's positions.