Conservation and Management Strategy for the Elephant in Kenya

2 CONSERVATION AND MANAGEMENT STRATEGY FOR THE ELEPHANT IN KENYA
1.1 Status of elephants in Kenya
Two factors have a large effect in determining the numbers and distribution of elephants in Kenya, and elsewhere in
Africa. These factors are poaching or hunting, and competition for or conversion of land by people. As described by
Parker & Graham (1989), there has been a steady decrease in elephant habitat over many decades throughout Africa
wherever human populations have increased. They proposed a linear, negative relationship between human and
elephant density. Hoare & du Toit (1999), working in rural Zimbabwe, refined this model by noting that
coexistence is possible at low human densities, while loss of habitat occurs at a critical threshold level of roughly 15
people per km 2 . The progressive loss of habitat, and loss of links between habitat patches, has gone furthest in West
Africa, where most elephants now live in unconnected habitat ‘islands’, and in South Africa, where most elephant
populations are now isolated behind fences. In East African savannahs, Southern African miombo woodlands and
Central African forests, habitat areas that were not suitable for cultivation have persisted as elephant habitat for
longer periods, although humans are now encroaching on land formerly considered marginal for agriculture.
Hunting can, and has been seen to, eliminate elephants from habitat areas, even when human land use would
otherwise allow coexistence. Elephants were effectively eradicated from large areas of Africa during the intensive
ivory trade of the 18th and particularly late 19th centuries (Spinage, 1973), when ivory exploitation was often
combined with the trade in human slaves. The elephant populations of the mid-20th century were in recovery from
this massive depletion, erupting into woodland habitats that had grown up in the absence of elephants (Skarpe et
al., 2004). At this time in East Africa, a number of perceived ‘elephant problems’ were encountered, with populations
reportedly increasing unprecedentedly in protected areas (PAs) (e.g. Tsavo National Park (NP), as reported by Glover
(1963) among many others). Hunting for the ivory trade began increasing again during the 1970s and this was
another factor that caused the population increase apparent within PAs, as elephants detected the danger from
people, sought the safety of sanctuaries and increased local population densities.
The international trade in ivory, which had been increasing towards the end of the 1960s, accelerated dramatically
due to a large illegal component during the 1970s and 1980s, leading to rapid declines in elephant populations
across West, Central, East and parts of Southern Africa. Between 1973 and 1990, elephant numbers in Kenya
catastrophically dropped from some 167,000 to a minimum of around 20,000 (Douglas-Hamilton, 1989; Joyce Poole,
pers. comm., 2010). From 1990, after the formation of a more effective management authority, the Kenya Wildlife
Service (KWS) and the end of legal international ivory trade (through elevation of African elephants to Appendix I
of CITES), the national elephant population gradually increased to about 35,000 in 2010, according to KWS internal
estimates.
Since the initial drop in ivory sales and markets after the ban in 1989, there have been fluctuations in the trade.
However, in the first decade of the new century, there was a rise in the price of ivory, coinciding with an increase in
ivory demand from those with the desire for it and with the economic means to obtain it (Stiles & Esmond Martin,
2009). Many believe the down-listing of four Southern African elephant populations, along with two legal ‘one-off
sales’ of ivory, have led to a recent dramatic resurgence of poaching and illegal trade. In some areas, the illegal trade
has been increasing since the mid-1990s and this is associated with increases in elephant poaching in range states
with low levels of law enforcement, corruption and political instability (Dublin et al., 1995). This situation has
continued with increasing trade pressures on elephant ivory associated with the emergence of the far eastern
economies.
Kenya’s elephants occur in both savannahs and forests, although all are considered to be the savannah subspecies
Loxodonta africana africana. The largest range areas for the savannah populations are the Tsavo ecosystem and its
environs, and the Laikipia-Samburu ecosystem and contiguous areas to the north. The forest-dwelling populations
occur mainly in the Aberdares and Mount Kenya, with small, isolated populations in coastal forests and Mount Elgon.
Some areas of former range, particularly in the northern parts of Kenya, are being re-occupied as security has
improved. At the same time, however, people have occupied many other areas that were former elephant range,
through expanded settlement and conversion of rangeland to agriculture. Therefore, elephant habitat range in most
parts of the country has been reduced while habitat fragmentation and land-use conflict has increased.