Not Seeing Eye to Eye

December 15, 2015 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Two recent elephant reports shed new light on the public’s growing awareness that the plight of elephants is serious but not catastrophic.

Scientists in Africa are criticizing scientists in the U.S. for taking Swaziland elephants out of the country and putting them in U.S. zoos.

And in just the last few days, field scientists in the South Sudan have discovered new elephant families, and the rarer kind to boot!

For the last number of decades it’s unusual that U.S. zoos populate any of their larger stock from wild, foreign lands. Three elephants were imported from a circus-like “elephant ride” operations in Botswana to the Pittsburgh zoo, but the brilliance of the world zoos’ “SSP” (Species Survival Program) powered by an increasing sophistication of DNA technology has allowed world zoos to create healthy and sustainable animal populations simply by exchanging them between one another.

In fact, it’s ironic that as lion populations decline by some studies as quickly as elephants, some zoos around the world are laboring with the notion of euthanizing lion, because there are so many in the captive population.

Captive elephants, though, are quite a different story from lions. Breeding takes longer and is nowhere near as successful in captive populations as with the promiscuous cat. The last several decades has seen a decline in captive elephant population as many zoos retool to become more humane and eFriendly to a public increasingly sensitive to animal rights.

It takes a much larger space, many more staff and much more exceptional husbandry to display elephants than lions.

So as the plight of elephants in the public media grows, the zoo world understandably becomes involved.

More than a year ago the Kingdom of Swaziland – not exactly your model for animal conservation – announced that it was going to cull 18 of its remaining three dozen elephants because, well, they were getting in the way.

Although the Kingdom’s official explanation through a family-run parastatal that’s in charge of its wildlife was more serious, claiming that the elephants were encroaching on habitat that would be better served protecting wild rhino, few believe them.

Nonetheless, the threat to cull is real. So three American zoos stepped in and offered to bring those elephant into the captive American population. Whether a marriage made in heaven or constructed behind-the-scenes, refreshing the captive elephant gene pool with the Swazi individuals would certainly make it healthier and longer lasting.

Problem is that virtually every field scientist in Africa I’ve surveyed is against the importation by the Dallas, Wichita and Omaha zoos.

Within weeks of the announced deal the person often cited as the world’s most experienced elephant field researcher, Cynthia Moss, gathered 80 other very respected field scientists working in Africa to agree on a “Statement of Swaziland” that bitingly disapproves of the transfer.

To get two scientists to agree on anything in Africa is a phenomenal feat. The statement is an extremely powerful indictment of the American zoo proposal.

“Certainly, this proposal will not provide any conservation benefit in the U.S. or Swaziland,” the statement concludes.

It’s now been about a year since the deal was announced. An expected hurdle that advocates of the deal had been working on, the restrictions of the CITES treaty, now grows increasingly problematic as public outcry grows.

NatGeo, Born Free, the Conservation Action Trust, and numerous other nonzoo affiliated conservation organizations are either mildly or solidly against the deal.

My good friend and Cleveland Zoo Director Emeritus, Steve Taylor, says he remains firmly behind the deal, because it has a good chance of giving the current captive elephant population “100 years of sustainability.”

If you believe the wild elephant population will not be sustained for a hundred years, then this makes sense. If you believe the wild elephant population is in imminent peril (which I don’t) it also makes sense.

But I think what is happening is that the hyperbole and rhetoric of the last few years of the demise of the elephant is producing an unfortunate counter reaction.

As often happens to exaggerated claims as evidence mounts against them, the public often goes rocketing off too far in the opposite direction.

Moss collection of field scientists “statement” did not address the very important genetic question of the captive population except with a convoluted reference to a position paper by the IUCN SSC Specialist Group for Africa which argued that importation of wild elephants into the captive population won’t help their sustainability.

But that 2003 statement came from an organization with exclusive interest in wild populations and habitats, before enhanced DNA technology, and well before the current brouhaha about elephant extinction.

While the IUCN may be the gold standard in determining species taxonomy and demographics, it is rarely involved in actual promotion of conservation policies.

Meanwhile back on the ranch, positive news about elephants has just been reported in the South Sudan where the much rarer subspecies of forest elephant has just been discovered by scientists from Bucknell University.

The discovery occurred in a part of Africa that New York Times veteran African war correspondent Jeffrey Gettleman called Africa’s perpetual war zone.

So despite poaching and wars and scientist fights, some good news.

Unfortunately, elephants have been removed from the inspection of science and thrust into the circus of the media. Hardly a year ago they were going out like a flickering candle. Today, the rarest of them pops up in a war zone.

Until the western public’s calibration of the dangers faced by African wildlife finds some measure of truth, we’ll never know who to trust: American zoos, Swazi authorities or African field scientists?

Rhino Requiem? Not yet

November 23, 2015January 3, 2016 by Arusha ♥ 2 Comments

Science is not a Fox News forte, and they shouldn’t have tried to report this weekend’s death of Nola, the rhino in San Diego.

“The subspecies has been decimated by poachers… The horns are in high demand in parts of Asia where some people claim they have medicinal properties for treating everything from hangovers to cancer,” Fox reported.

Like much news telling only some of the story leads to massively misunderstanding it. This is a Fox News forte.

First, vigorous debate continues in the scientific community as to whether this rhino and its three remaining cousins still alive in a reserve in Kenya are, in fact, subspecies of the 20,000 white rhino that survive in South Africa.

The Northern White Rhino (NWR), of which Nola claims descent, has been considered a pretty distinct animal from its much more successful southern cousins (SWR) throughout my lifetime. I remember in the early days seeing them frequently in Meru National Park in Kenya.

Their difference is slightly taxonomic, but in 2010 several scientists delved into the DNA and concluded NWR was a sub-species. But many scientists then and now vigorously disagree.

More to the point, a heavily read science blogger in 2010 explained, “The danger in [suggesting a separate sub-species exists] could eventually backfire: it would not look good if zoologists were thought to be tweaking their conclusions in order to suit their favoured conservation projects.”

Many animal species — indeed including ourselves — develop slight genetic differences and even greater taxonomic differences simply by long periods of geographic separation. The scientists who believe the NWR is a separate sub-species believe that divergence was a million years ago.

Fox also simplified to the point of near falsehood regarding the reasons rhino are poached:

Rhino poachers are motivated far more by a Mideast market than an Asian one, albeit both markets exist. But a poacher’s pay is considerably higher from a buyer in Yemen or Djibouti than Hong Kong.

In the Mideast a rhino horn is polished up to become a dagger handle presented to rich young men by even richer fathers at their rite de passage. The Asian market is a close second, but what is noteworthy is that today’s conflicts in the Mideast have actually enhanced this market, as anything anti-western (like conservation) grows in popularity.

Fox also messed up seriously the suggestions that the subspecies might be saved by in vitro fertilization. I wrote extensively about this in 2009.

Reuters as usual got the Nola death more correctly.

What concerns me is the range of unhelpful conclusions that people of widely different predispositions will have with the notion that an animal has “gone extinct.”

African rhino as a whole are in need of our serious attention, and in fact a lot of good is being done. I think many will agree with me, today, that the white rhino will be saved when only 15 or 20 years ago we doubted this would be possible.

Perhaps it’s the desire for scandal, but the notion that the death of the San Diego rhino presages the death of all rhino is right up the ally of Fox News, or more to the point, its readers.

And once again, they’re wrong.

Lesser Lions

October 27, 2015October 27, 2015 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Like tigers, truly wild lions in Africa may becoming a thing of the past.

A prestigious group including Africa’s leading lion researcher, Craig Packer, claimed today in a report published with the National Academy of Sciences that lion populations will decline 50% in the next two decades.

I have already seen the decline in East Africa, most notably in Ngorongoro Crater. The report, by the way, claims that the adjacent Serengeti lion population remains healthy and is less likely to decline.

According to a summary by CBS News of the lengthy report, lions “are threatened by widespread habitat loss, depletions in available prey, preemptive killing to protect humans and their livestock along with poaching and poorly regulated sport hunting.”

The most serious decline will be in west and northern Africa, although as much as a third of the sub-Saharan lion population will decline. Sub-Saharan populations are healthier, according to the report, because of adequate protection in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe.

The very interesting detail in the report as to what exactly explains southern African countries’ better protections has much to do with fenced-in private reserves, a situation which today is about all that is left for Asian tigers.

Although most of these fenced-in, private reserves are not zoos as such since they are large enough with enough variety of prey game that the lions do not need to be fed, disease and/or injuries are often treated.

The lions in virtually all these cases become very habituated to people. Unwittingly, similar situations can occur in completely unfenced and unmanaged reserves like Nairobi National Park when visitor populations grow unusually large.

Fenced-in reserves and too many visitors change the cats’ behaviors. They begin to tolerate one another more than natural, adapting to a confined if imposed territory. Fewer larger prides, of the sort we see today in Ngorongoro Crater, replace more smaller prides with a net overall decline in numbers.

This usually makes them more dangerous, at least in the initial phases of this recalibration of behavior.

I’ve often written of a similar situation occurring in East Africa with elephants.

It was hardly a decade ago that I would tell clients traveling in the dry season that on a typical ten-day safari they could expect to see more than 125 lion. (A wet season prediction was around 80.)

In my most recent safaris those numbers declined by a third.

In addition to the crater I’ve noticed obvious declines throughout central Tanzania, southern Kenya and the Mara.

It’s likely that part of the “health” of the Serengeti is due to Mara lions moving out of the congested Mara. The Mara and its border of private reserves is also then itself bordered by intense agricultural lands and growing numbers of small towns.

Seeing a tiger in a reserve today in Asia, or a lion in a private, fenced-in reserve in South Africa is in my opinion massively different from those observed in truly wild situations.

The fenced-in lion is usually healthier but not as strong, fatter and not as lean, seemingly more disinterested in everything and more likely to allow approach, or even to approach the observer.

“Saving lions” will not be difficult. There are already too many lions in zoos and euthanization is now regularly used for older and infirmed animals when in years past these animals would have been nursed to health or kept alive for their genes and research potential.

And as with captive lions in zoos, fenced-in lions do extremely well, positively responding to a reduction in their territory when offered an adequate food supply.

So lions will be around for a very long time.

But not necessarily as I would like to remember them.

Rihandling Elephants

August 17, 2015August 16, 2015 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Here’s a flash: elephants aren’t capable of human emotions. Neither are whales. Or your dog.

Despite whatever pretenses we might employ for our own happiness, animals don’t share our consciousness. That doesn’t mean they might not have “animal emotions,” but since we aren’t elephants, whales or dogs, we’ll never fully understand what “animal emotions” are.

We’re limited to explaining things with our own language, with our own consciousness. A great hazard develops when we attempt to portray animal behavior in human terms. Anthropomorphizing results in more destruction to the planet and its biodiversity than any other human enterprise.

Katy Payne is one of the most creative and perceptive animal researchers of my life time, and her principal studies have been with elephants and whales.

She discovered that the low rumblings of elephant that we can all hear represent only 10%, in fact, of the vocalizations that are occurring, and that 90% of the vocalization is below our decibel level of hearing.

This, in turn, led to remarkable discoveries about elephant communication.

But in an interview aired on public radio this weekend, Payne’s science was eclipsed by her religious or spiritual beliefs and that, in kind, diminished her science by a huge helping of anthropomorphization.

“Whales, like people, are composers,” Ms. Payne told Krista Tippet on the Sunday NPR show OnBeing.

Fifteen years ago, in a passionate oped in the Washington Post in which Ms. Payne argued for increased protection of elephants, she wrote:

“Elephants’ experiences are, in short, collective, and the collectiveness of their experience colors their responses to everything. The collectiveness escalates and multiplies the trauma associated with losses, and in long-lived animals with long memories, such losses are not soon overcome. Elephants that survive poaching and culling may never fully recover from the repeated loss of what they once identified with and held dear.”

Whales are not human composers. Elephants do not experience human trauma.

I found the Sunday interview extremely enlightening, because it confirmed a long held belief that anthropomorphizing is a very religious or spiritual phenomenon, and that when science is mixed with religion or spiritual contemplation, things get messy.

That messiness is one of our highest challenges. Science is critical to our survival, but so is a spiritual orientation to our existence. Science can go just so far, at least so far. So for the time being anyway a spiritual foundation is critical in bridging the gap between science and what we don’t [yet?] know.

Ms. Payne deals with that challenge in one fell swoop by considering elephants as people. That shortcut is dangerous.

It’s particularly dangerous for elephants, because in the diminishing resources of our planet we have begun the painful exercise of deciding who gets what. If elephants are people, I can assure you that the honorable citizens of Texas, the aggrieved displaced persons of Kenya, and the young geniuses of the Mumbai slums will outrank the pachyderms exponentially.

But it’s also dangerous for people.

If our emotions are in some way limited – if only to the length of our waking lives – and if those emotions are consumed with empathizing with elephants rather than babies with malaria, more human babies will die.

This is no zero sum game. Our universe has categories of value, and they range from sea stones to lonely hearts. In my view they are all inextricably linked, but are not of equal value.

Understanding the linkage provides us with the necessary orientation for best conducting our survival. That begins with the understanding that our consciousness is primary. Humans are tops. Nothing in existence exceeds our human consciousness, including elephants, whales and your dog.

Yet our premiership may indeed be dependent upon sea stones, elephants, whales and the fantasies we have about Rover because, at least for now, we’re still molecular. I believe so.

Everything that exists is sacred. But not everything is human. Only we are human.

I appreciate all the work Ms. Payne has done to increase our understanding of elephants, but I worry that her conclusions which render the animal in human terms undermines her important work and endangers elephant survival.

The Man is Back

May 15, 2015 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Richard Leakey is back. Not as the paleontologist. Not as the politician. As head of Kenya’s Wildlife Service. Window dressing at its finest!

Leakey is a very enigmatic character. I immediately disliked him during our first meeting in the late 80s when he was flying high as the architect and czar of the movement that was successfully stopping elephant poaching.

His accomplishments were many and a few years later he would demonstrate some exceptional personal courage when he was nearly assassinated while trying to develop a progressive political party in a country that at the time was being run by an iron-fisted dictator.

But he has had a lot of missteps in a variegated career that spanned science, wildlife administration and raw politics.

That’s his critical flaw: doing too many things, so doing nothing exceptionally.

Last month Kenya’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta, appointed Leakey “Chairman” of the service that he founded almost 30 years ago, the Kenya Wildlife Service.

The position is similar to the chairman of the board of a corporation, so technically Leakey is not supposed to be involved in the actual running of the now massive organization. Local observers, however, think he might have more proactive inclinations.

Nearly fifteen years ago London’s Guardian newspaper asked if “there is any more fight” left in Richard Leakey? Leakey was certainly in the nadir of his many careers then. He was never charismatic like his father, but his public persona had just taken a whipping when he mysteriously resigned from the head of a “dream team” America helped create in Kenya to battle corruption.

His health is reported even worse than when I last met him at the Field Museum in Chicago on the anniversary of his father’s 100th birthday in 2003. Then, he seemed hardly able to talk.

I think Kenyatta appointed Leakey, so soon after a stream of American celebs including Kerry and Clinton visited Kenya, to reconnect with America and the west. Leakey, and his father Louis, are adored in western circles where they had extraordinary success fund raising.

Kenya is in a bit of a slump right now. The vicissitudes of Americans not understanding the ebola situation, the recession in Europe from which the bulk of Kenyan tourists have always come, and the lingering worries about terrorism following the country’s invasion of Somali four years ago have all combined to really challenge an otherwise dynamic economy.

Kenya Airways, which I think is one of the finest if not the finest airline in Africa, came under government scrutiny today for losing more than $100 million dollars last year at a time when most global airlines were making tons of cash.

Relying more and more on outside foreign aid, particularly because of the Somali invasion, Kenya’s internal engines are sputtering and Kenyatta recognizes that only foreign investment will reverse this.

IBM, for example, has yet to fully fund a major Kenyan investment that it announced in 2012.

In my opinion none of this heralds any real crisis but simply demonstrates how susceptible a young emerging nation is to western fears.

“Poaching” is a topic that still commands American attentions. Africans understand much better than westerners that there really isn’t an elephant poaching crisis right now. But westerner’s insatiable need for crisis has narrated a different story, and Leakey is still known as the pivotal character that stopped the real elephant poaching of the 1980s.

Savvy President Kenyatta understands he has to now stroke American psyches. Appointing Leakey is part of this strategy.

Endangered But Thriving

April 30, 2015April 30, 2015 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Although the numbers of wild animals seen by a typical tourist on safari has grown substantially during my career, the fact is that wild animals in Africa are in a serious decline.

Lion, black rhino, giraffe and elephant are far more numerous in wild reserves than when I began guiding in the 1970s. I believe, for instance, there are too many elephant. Dramatic encounters with all these animals all are more frequent, today, making a safari that much more exciting.

But overall black rhino is near extinction, lion and giraffe have declined by as much as a third, and there is great controversy over whether elephant are threatened.

This may seem like a contradiction, but it isn’t at all.

Parks and reserves in Africa have received more and more efficient protection, especially in the last three to four decades, precisely because tourism brought in large amounts of foreign currency. As tourism grew throughout the 1980s and 1990s, tourist services provided more and more jobs and many tertiary economic benefits to the local communities.

This added protection allowed animals to prosper in ways they couldn’t previously.

Efforts mostly in southern but also in eastern Africa stemmed wild animal disease (bovine sleeping sickness, hoof-and-mouth disease, mange, etc.) often by removing infected wild animals from the population or [in the case of mange] actually treating wild animals.

Intervention in the wild, of the sort which was used to eliminate mange from cheetahs in the Serengeti/Mara ecosystem, is very rare, but significant. A similar effort is ongoing to protect mountain gorillas from measles.

The great veterinary fence constructed in Botswana in the 1980s essentially to reduce hoof-and-mouth disease in the domestic beef industry had obvious effects with the wild animals as well.

While wild animal intervention has been rare, intervention in restoration of threatened habitats has been aggressive. This has included simple routines of burning tall grass to construction of bore holes (wells) to provide constant water.

In populations tending to be inbred, expensive operations to relocate wild animals increased the genetic biodiversity and thus the health of wild animals.

All of the above has led to much healthier and more robust protected areas with strong wild animal populations.

But the story is much different outside these protected areas.

Africa has grown substantially in the last half century, and agricultural needs in particular get the very highest priority. In the past edges of protected wild areas were fluid and poorly determined. Often hunting reserves rounded the perimeter of a national park and the perimeter of the hunting reserve was often unpopulated bush.

That’s no longer the case. As Africa’s populations and industries increase there is a clearer and more exact delineation between the protected parks and reserves and developed areas.

The borders of Arusha National Park are literally farms for maize and beef. There is nothing but a hedge which separates portions of them.

Watermelon and maize farms are cultivated to the very edges of the very wild Tarangire National Park.

Exploding gated housing developments now border important sections of the Mt. Kenya National Park, which is still home to a variety of wild animals.

In the non-reserve and non-park areas wild animals are considered vermin, especially by farmers. So not only is the habitat tensely contained, but leaving the habitat is near certain death.

The overall average of the relatively small amount of protected reserves and parks (under 8%) and the larger wilderness slowly being developed results in the overall decline in wild animal populations.

So yes, “the wild” is contracting considerably even as we successfully make richer and more fulsome the biosphere within that which remains.

OnSafari: Elephant Hysteria

March 23, 2015March 23, 2015 by Arusha ♥ 2 Comments

Elephant hysteria has reached a new high, and I left Botswana amazed at how dangerously unorganized elephant protection is.

The almighty and by this writer much revered CITES seems wobbling. African research organizations nip at each rather than cooperate to gather much needed facts. Positive moves in China get ignored so the country can be bashed still again. Meaningless grandstanding gets the headlines.

And so, we clone a wooly mammoth?

I’m not kidding. Within four years we’re going to have a live wooly mammoth, with DNA from a permafrosted 3300 year-old baby slipped into the DNA of a healthy modern elephant by Harvard researchers.

Zimbabwe is among the best places to traffic ivory, and now even live elephants. In blatant disregard of CITES, Zimbabwe is sending 34 baby elephants to Asia and Arabia.

The outcry was formidable, but not a single country in CITES asked that the treaty enforcement provisions be applied to Zimbabwe.

It’s a circus, folks. At least for three more years. That’s when Ringling Brothers has announced they will discontinue using elephants. Jump to hashtag #3YrsTooLong.

What you have is a mess. Nobody really knows how much poaching is going on. The reported figures are so disparate as to be laughable.

The once respectable Save The Elephant Fund issued a critical news release claiming that 50,000 elephant were poached annually, while the also once respectable National Geographic said 25,000.

Think one of them’s wrong? Or both?

We have no idea how many elephant are being poached, for the same reason that we have no idea how many elephant there are. African government wildlife agencies don’t undertake counts or can’t be trusted, and not-for-profit wildlife NGOs refuse to cooperate because it might jeopardize their fund raising.

One of the most respected government wildlife agencies, the Kenyan Wildlife Service, sacked five top officials last year for involvement in the ivory trade. Hardly a day after one of Kenya’s most notorious wildlife traffickers was arrested on an Interpol warrant, the man jumped bail.

Meanwhile, the Ethiopian Government – probably among the top conduits for illegal ivory – won headlines worldwide for burning ivory and proclaiming a “Zero Tolerance” for wildlife poaching. But no journalist noticed that the entire top of the pyre was actual carved ivory sculptures and trinkets. Ivory isn’t carved until it gets to Asia. Where did that come from?

You confused? Join the pack.

His Excellency the honorable Minister of Environment, Wildlife and Tourism, Tshekedi Khama, told a conference in Botswana last week that any elephant problem that exists doesn’t come from Botswana elephants, but “ensues from elephants that migrate from neighboring countries,” which – he then deduced for us – means that those countries have serious problems.

We just finished a successful safari in Botswana, and we didn’t see all that many elephants, but I’m told more elephants exist in Botswana than anywhere else on earth.

Do I believe that?

Jim filed this from Arusha, Tanzania.

Bad Bloomberg Bit

January 29, 2015January 29, 2015 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Five years ago I suggested the only way to save the northern white rhino was “DNA deep-freeze.” This week scientists agreed and Bloomberg confused the world.

The media was abuzz this week with reports that the remaining five “northern white rhino” in existence might now be saved by invitro fertilization, a report widely circulated by Bloomberg News.

If only the world had disseminated Nairobi’s Daily Nation report
instead:

“Past attempts at artificial insemination of northern white rhinos… have failed… Stores of frozen sperm and eggs could be used to revive the animal [in the future] artificially, but ….the northern white rhino will likely disappear, at least for a while.”

Let’s try to parse the facts. Stick with me.

The first is that many of the repeats of the Bloomberg Bit were so short and so incomplete that people started to think the news was about all rhino:

We aren’t discussing all the critically endangered rhino in general, which definitely includes at least five gene-separated anatomical cousins:

There are about 5000 black rhino (Diceros bicornis) left in the world. Very few are actually wild. Numbers are hard to come by, but probably less than 500. The others are mostly in private protected sanctuaries and reserves in sub-Saharan Africa and in zoos.

There are over 20,000 white rhino (Ceratotherium simum) mostly in heavily protected wilderness in southern Africa like the completely fenced-in Umfolozi-Hluhluwe national parks in South Africa, or in private reserves and sanctuaries and zoos. Like the black rhino very few actually live in the wild or unfenced national parks.

More critically endangered are the remaining three species, all of which live in near fortress protected sanctuaries: 44 Javan Rhino (Rhinoceros sondaicus) found only in Indonesia’s Ujung Kulon National Park; less than 100 Sumatran Rhino (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis) in disconnected wildernesses in Indonesia; and the 3300 Greater One-horned Rhino (Rhinoceros unicornis) found in eastern India and Nepal.

My first trek with this week’s media blitz was that many publications didn’t make the differentiation above and the suggestion hung out there that only a half dozen rhinos were left in the world.

This story is not about all rhino but about a possible subspecies of one of the five species of rhino: the “northern” white rhino (ceratotherium simum cottoni).

By the way some scientists do want to call this animal a separate sixth species, rather than a subspecies, for the astoundingly absurd reason that this animal might soon go extinct.

So whether this animal is actually the 6th species of what we commonly refer to as “rhino” or whether it is a subspecies (ceratotherium simum cottoni) of the white rhino (Ceratotherium simum), it is anatomically different enough that its loss would be another extinction catastrophe.

In 2009 four of the remaining 8 still alive in the world were shipped to Kenya from a Czech zoo, and I was critical of that. At the time, two remained in that Czech zoo and two in San Diego’s Wild Animal Park. One animal has died since in both those places, leaving the four sent to Kenya, one in the Czech Republic and one in California.

I was critical at the time because I felt there was so much poaching in Kenya that it was a death sentence. Wildlife managers obviated that by cutting off their horns, a very controversial strategy that had not been announced prior to the relocation.

I understand why dehorning wasn’t announced at the time, since it’s extremely controversial. Particularly in Zimbabwe dehorned rhinos contracted massive infections that often killed them, and when they survived, the horn often grew back. There hasn’t really been sufficient time in the last five years for a large enough horn to grow back on the ones dehorned in Kenya.

So for the moment we can recognize the strategy as being successful.

The reason for the risky move to Kenya was the hope the rhinos would breed once they were in a more natural habitat. Many of us knew they wouldn’t. Rhinos held in captivity for long periods of time don’t breed no matter where they’re moved. (Wild rhinos relocated into large wild reserves like Lewa Downs in Kenya are another matter, and often then breed well at least at first.)

These relocated rhino had been in a less than stellar zoo for decades.

They haven’t bred in Kenya.

In vitro fertilization was tried and hasn’t worked, either. Bloomberg News got it wrong:
“A Kenyan wildlife conservancy said it’s considering using in-vitro fertilization to try and save the northern white rhino from extinction, after an attempt to get them to breed naturally failed.”

BBC – as usual – got it right:
“The eggs will be stored with a view to being used for IVF in the future.”

Bloomberg and thousands of outlets re-reporting them suggested a simple dairy cow procedure. It’s been tried and it’s failed. So the only hope now, as I suggested 5 years ago, is the “DNA-deep freeze” where eggs, sperm, and embryos from combined eggs and sperm, are all frozen until scientists can figure out how to take these to the next level, a fetus.

In vitro fertilization doesn’t work with these animals possibly because there’s a physiology that’s reflected in their lack of interest to mate, a chemical if you will prevention not of fertilization but of subsequent pregnancy.

The bad Bloomberg bit disseminated round the world generates very long and often boring explanations like this. Does that move learning forward? Which really helps the rhino? Which helps Bloomberg?

Caring or Counting?

August 25, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 3 Comments

The ongoing battle to “list lions” as an endangered species is heating up: notably NatGeo in an embarrassing flip-flop and FWS cowering in the shadows.

A year ago the conservation world was rattled when America’s Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) agreed to consider whether the African lion should be placed on America’s Endangered Species List.

It would be a revolutionary approach to dealing with the decline in lions documented in Africa over the last decade.

Revolutionary, because whatever African animal goes on America’s Endangered Species List means that CITES will definitely consider interdicting it globally as well. And among all the other ramifications, hunters would no longer be able to bring their lion trophy home, and in some cases, not even hunt them.

What is a Big Game Hunter without a Lion?
In my opinion, a Bully without a Victim.

So you can imagine what a storm that decision last year caused. Hunter organizations around the world descended on the FWS like the NRA descended on Congresspeople trying to do something about the Sandy Hook massacre.

So guess what? The normal 90-day review period that FWS imposes on itself once a decision to consider listing is made, has come and gone, come and gone, come and gone… Kudus to FWS for not yet caving, but here’s all they’re saying at the moment: click here …. not 90 days after announcing their decision to consider, but 406 days after.

I guess it doesn’t look good for lions.

Meanwhile, more and more studies are coming out trying to explain the continuing decline. I’ve written about the human/lion conflicts in increasingly urbanized Africa, about increased poisoning by farmers, and even a brilliant scientist’s study that found a virus in buffalo that lions kill to eat was migrating into lions and killing them.

One of the newest and most intriguing studies is that global warming in particular is hitting the population hard.

I imagine it’s a combination of all the above. And when a species decline is attributed to so many separate factors, it doesn’t look good. You can work on one of the problems, then another, and find in the process that the solution to one is exacerbating the other.

Whether or not hunters should be allowed to shoot lion and hang their trophy above their fireplace is, in fact, rather incidental to the problem of saving them. Relatively speaking there are so few lions shot each year compared to those dying of all the other dreaded reasons, it’s fair to recognize this as a distraction.

On the other hand, it is a moral debate that won’t go away.

When a species is in decline, do you allow a recreation that hastens it, however incrementally?

I was appalled last year when National Geographic said YES.

NatGeo has truly morphed from what it originally was. Anyone who flips to their cable television shows about Arizona cops or reality TV understands they’ve moved from caring to counting.

And that backlash that editorial referenced above caused was enormous. So today, guess what? They’ve flipped:

“Why Are We Still Hunting Lions?” a NatGeo editorial of July 31 asks, advocating an end to hunting lion and a listing by FWS.

Well, they could answer themselves with their editorial last year, but I doubt they will.

Here’s a more credible answer: The International Fund for Animal Welfare has just completed an exhaustive study that concludes that the big game hunting of lions contributes meaninglessly if at all to any form of conservation.

The report also shows that the big game hunting industry is actually supported more by hunting species like buffalo than lion, and that any obstacle for hunting lions that would result from FWS or CITES listing lion would be insignificant.

So you have your answer. It’s morally wrong to hunt an animal in decline and economically insignificant to stop hunting them.

So NatGeo, what do you say about this … now … this time?

Born Free

August 19, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

“Born Free” is an African expression that resonates with Americans as none other, and today is the 15th anniversary of the death of the man who coined it, George Adamson.

“Born Free” was the name of the first book written by George and Joy Adamson about their orphaned lions in a part of Kenya that is now Meru and Koru National Parks, east of Mt. Kenya.

Their central story of Elsa, the lioness, has been told, retold, mistold and told differently a thousand times since. It’s headlined movies, wall murals, safari company names and trip titles and even Broadway theater.

The couple Adamson was one of the most gentle conservation teams I’ve ever known. Unlike so many others, they actually shied away from the public. They divorced about ten years before Joy’s murder in 1980, although continued seeing one another often. Time and again you’ll hear the story of a successful conservation couple in Africa whose complicated business growth through the years tangles up and finally ends their marriage.

Yet there is no question that their successes and their fame was entirely mutual. It’s hard to imagine either would have had any notice without the other.

George was British and came to Kenya during the height of the colonial days, starting as a hunter but quickly becoming deeply interested in the wilderness. He was a game warden for many years for both the colonial then independent Kenyan government.

Joy was Czech and as a young and fairly privileged young lady came to Kenya to hunt. She fell in love not only with George but with his new style of conservation.

Joy was the principal author of the book Born Free but is perhaps now better known for her amazing portraits of early Kenyan tribes people.

EWT’s involvement with the Adamsons came through Marlin Perkins’ wife, Carol. The Perkins were deeply involved with the Adamsons charities after featuring their work in the wilderness in several of Marlin’s Wild Kingdom television episodes.

Carol was specially close to Joy and would almost always begin her safaris by taking her small group of friends by charter aircraft directly into the Adamson’s camp. Few other people were welcomed there.

Their tragedies came at the end, separately but the same. Both were murdered by bandits – nine y ears apart – as they stubbornly refused to leave their little homestead in an increasingly lawless part of Kenya’s great Northern frontier.

Massive Rhino Relocation

August 12, 2014August 12, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

“Hundreds” of rhino will be relocated from South Africa’s landmark Kruger national park in the continuing struggle against poaching.

The announcement was made this morning by South Africa’s minister of tourism and wildlife. It will be one of the largest relocation of wild animals ever attempted.

The park, which is the size of New Jersey, has just under 8500 white rhino and poaching has escalated throughout South Africa but mostly in Kruger and surrounding private reserves.

Rhino poaching in 2007 stood at 13 in South Africa; last year it was 1,004. So far this year despite massive new efforts to curb the poaching including deployment of South African military, more than 500 have been poached in Kruger.

The “white” rhino is a very separate animal from the “black” rhino and the distinction has nothing to do with color: they are both grey. Both are endangered, but the black rhino is much closer to extinction in the wild than the white rhino which thrives in many reserves throughout southern Africa.

Although much bigger than its rarer cousin, the white rhino is remarkably docile and even in its wildest state is approachable and can often be touched. This makes it an amazingly easy animal to poach.

The horns of both rhinos are used identically in Asia for a variety of medical treatments and superstitiously as powder totems.

Although China has moved fast to curb the demand for wild animal parts by its rapidly increasing middle class, the prices for rhino and elephant parts have continued to escalate.

Kruger is particularly vulnerable because its entire eastern border is adjacent a fairly lawless and unpatrolled part of Mozambique. Mozambique is an easy exit for contraband from southern Africa to Asia.

South Africa’s largest rhino reserves, Hluhluhwe and Umfolozi near Durban, have suffered relatively little poaching in the last few years. The presumption is that by removing heathy animals from this vulnerable wilderness and placing them in areas like these, the continued growth in the rhino population in South Africa will be preserved.

As I’ve often written, our current era’s struggle with poaching is considerably different than 40 years ago, when there was massive corporate poaching centered in the Mideast. Today’s poaching tends to be by ad hoc gangs or single individuals attracted by the relatively large sum they can get on the black market for a single horn or tusk.

Last month, for instance, a gang in southern Texas was convicted of illegal gathering of U.S. antique ivory and rhino parts and sending them to China.

Both species of rhino and the elephant are considered endangered species, but elephants survival in the wild as currently exists is much more certain than rhino.

On Safari: Prohibitive Costs

July 29, 2014July 29, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 4 Comments

Is it moral or fair that only a tiny percentage of people can experience the Serengeti or Glacier Bay?

The question applies to all great protected areas, where taxpayer resources are used for management.

Devil’s advocates point to the huge tracts of earth still unregulated, open to anyone who dares to enter. Just flying today from Juneau to Seattle, or earlier from Chicago to Fairbanks, reveals uncountable square miles of Mother Earth plastered with nothing but trees, interrupted by giant snow-covered peaks, separated by raging rivers and massive lakes.

A lot of Africa is still open land. Anybody can explore these areas, right?

No, it takes more resources to cross Kenya’s northern frontier or transect the Yukon than to visit Samburu or Glacier Bay parks for a day. The great remote and untouched parts of earth aren’t really any more accessible than our protected areas.

Protected areas are generally close to civilization. Glacier Bay is only 50 air miles from Juneau, littered with old mining camps and fishing villages. The Serengeti is only 150 air miles from the crowded half million people of Arusha. Its northern tip, Kenya’s Mara, is only 130 air miles from the 4 million person metropolis of Nairobi.

Preserving original wilderness is a no brainer. The human is no more a creation than a tree. The mysteries that created both are hardly annotated in full. Tampering much less eliminating wildernesses jeopardizes our own survival.

We know that biodiversity is critical to our health. We know that the air we breathe, the food we eat, many of the medicines we use are natural products of the wilderness.

Protecting these so scientists can better understand their ecology should be an unchallenged responsibility.

But what about wilderness as recreation? Or as an educational or spiritual experience for the rest of us common folk? Apparently we’re hard-wired to love wilderness; it’s where many people reboot and become inspired by what we feel is its beauty.

My little camera photo above of the yacht we used last week in Glacier Bay National Park, floating five miles in front of a giant 4000-passenger cruise ship represents the angst but also the success of American national parks.

Our beautiful 12-passenger, six-cabin adventure yacht carried a zodiac, kayaks and a wonderful cook and professional naturalist. The 91-foot, 12-foot draft vessel let us move into the tiny fjords of the park, sit close to calving glaciers and get remarkably close to wildlife.

Our experience thrust us much deeper into the wilderness than the cruise ship passengers that bring more than 97% of the people into the park.

We were immersed in this wonderland. But we represent less than 1½% of the visitors to this 3½ million acres of protected wilderness.

Similarly I think of my own guided safaris into remote wildernesses in Africa.

Over the last decade between 150 – 200,000 people annually visit the Serengeti. But less than a few hundred travel into the remote places I take people, like the Lemuta Plains or southern Manyara.

My guiding obviously provides considerably more depth and insight than for the 97+% of other visitors. Just like our experience now in Glacier Bay.

Does than make me, and my clients, decadent and arrogant? Simply because we can afford to pay so much more?

Yes. You just can’t get around this. You can provide pro-bono services, raise funds for not-for-profits that bring the under-privileged into the wilderness, but in the end the percentages change insignificantly.

One of the most cited critics of national parks, Canadian Lisa Campbell explains:

“White people are much more likely to engage in public parks than people of colour.

“Being able to retreat from the city is a luxury that few working class people of colour have the privilege to afford. On top of this history of exclusion and colonial discourse, National Parks cater to the status quo by providing history from the winner’s perspective, and excluding intercultural dialog.”

But at least in America I think we’re trying to mitigate this exclusivity of the wilderness to the elite. At the turn of the last century, American national parks commissioned a lengthy study to create a fairer mission for the 21st century.

“Rethinking the National Parks” concluded a more generous posture to the native Americans who first lived there, and to the rest of Americans who want to visit.

Together with aggressive independent research about First Nation peoples currently residing near but not in Glacier Bay, American National Parks sided with successful court actions that gave some Tlingit peoples new (mostly hunting and harvesting) rights within Glacier Bay National Park.

(Contrast that with recent new forced resettling of Maasai from Serengeti areas, quite against their desires.)

And that 21st Century mission of the National Parks increases access for those who can’t afford the more in-depth experiences or resource rich outfitting by building more roads, reducing some fees and providing more free literature, and – specifically in the case of Glacier Bay where we just visited – increasing large cruise ship availability.

Seven-day cruises are available into the park for just under $800 per person. Princess Cruise’s ships that enter Glacier Bay carry between 2 and 4,000 people. Along with other slightly more expensive lines, these ships represent more than 97% of the visitors annually into Glacier Bay.

Now it’s not quite what we paid for. These larger ships cannot be in the park for longer than 24 hours; we were there for six days. Only two of these larger ships may be in the park at any one time. While in the park, they are controlled by park rangers, not cruise line captains or employees.

Cruise passengers can’t leave their ship; we were often off the yacht as much as on it. Cruise passengers can’t hike or kayak.

There are many critics of this approach. More use jeopardizes wilderness, however regulated that use is. Cruise ships are notorious for running into and killing whales. Just no way you can get around that, either.

But comparing the negatives with the positives, frankly I think our national parks are doing a great job. There are plenty of us out there to scream if that changes. And right now I’m a lot more proud of the situation for all peoples in Glacier Bay than in the Serengeti.

On Safari: Mastodon to Muskox

July 15, 2014July 15, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

The ecology of Planet Earth’s Far North is mysterious and often perplexing, sometimes hilarious but more often terrifying. Our first full day in Fairbanks introduced us to the remarkable biology of this Far North.

I love to start in Fairbanks, and most of my clients spend a full two nights here, and quite a few, three nights. There’s plenty to do, and it’s an important introduction to the Far North ecology of this remarkable part of the world.

It’s also an active scientific point where climate change is more readily observed and terribly respected. We’re going to Kantishna tomorrow, the west side of Denali national park, where one of the three lodges was washed out by record floods and rain only a few weeks ago.

Chief Curator Angela Linn, Pam Lopes, Becky Krantz & Sara Taylor.

Here’s where the ice cap and glaciers are disappearing, where the coastline is eroding fast, where oyster farms are dying because the water’s getting too hot.

Here’s where today I got lost inside the University of Alaska campus because of another sink hole detour (they’ve had three this year), as a result of the permafrost melting.

In addition to the flashy but fun tourist attractions like the Riverboat Discovery, today we went a bit deeper and more academic.

Curator of Collections, Angela Linn, gave us a special behind-the-scenes tour of the University of Alaska’s remarkable collections: more than 1½ million items! We were able to feel mastodon fossils and gaze through security alleys filled with ancient Inuit sleds and snowshoes.

The Museum is a centerpiece of the university, a real research station for anyone doing Far North science. The part which is open to the public, the Museum of the North, is one of the finest and most digestible science museums I’ve ever visited.

Afterwards Dr. John Blake, the university’s veterinarian and director of its Large Animal Research Station (and 9 other life animal research stations) walked us through the station’s extensive grounds describing the work being done on reindeer, caribou and muskox.

Dr. John Blake describes the muskox habitat.

Reindeer are originally Russian caribou that have been domesticated for a long time. But it was interesting learning about their differing biologies: the reindeer are much more biologically precarious, growing antlers sometimes at the rate of 2″ per day! The mystery is why, and how relatively rapid domestication produces such variance with the wild animal.

Dr. Blake then told us the remarkable story of what may be the most interesting of the Far North animals, the muskox.

Now farmed for its exquisite qiviut wool, the muskox was probably extinct in most of the Arctic by the 1900s, probably a mixture of over hunting and disease. Today there are nearly a half million and many are farmed for their extraordinary wool, a dozen times warmer (more insulating) than sheep’s wool and softer than cashmere.

There are few animals that thrive at -40F and get sick at 50F. That’s the muskox, and needless to say may be as threatened as the polar bear by global warming.

Tomorrow we head into Denali. Stay tuned!

On Safari: Too Close for Comfort

June 18, 2014June 18, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Three leopards, hundreds of elephant, five lion, dozens of giraffe and an unexpectedly large number of zebra featured the Kisiel Family’s first two days on safari.

Tarangire is usually the first game park I take my families to. It’s relatively close to Arusha, never fails to produce the best elephant viewing on the continent regardless of the time of year, and is simply a great introduction to game viewing.

That proved true, again, and it also lets me explain the complex situation that exists with elephant, today.

In my view there are too many elephant. That doesn’t mean there are more elephant than ever, or that there isn’t a serious problem of poaching, but it means that the habitat left to ele today is simply not large enough for them.

This seemed self-evident to me about a decade ago when normal elephant behaviors began to break down, and it was most demonstrable in Tarangire.

In the past elephant families rarely mixed. If there was a water hole or wallow of interest by multiple families, they each too their turn, giving wide berth to the other families.

Every day in Tarangire multiple families are seen together. And there is obvious agitation but ultimate acceptance that multiple families must at least temporarily merge. Although it’s hard to use anecdotal evidence and my observations are no means rigorous science, I definitely believe what I and my clients see every single time I come here is an indication there are too many ele.

And, of course, all you have to do is pull up some of the local chatter and blogs of farmers, clergymen and school teachers who live near ele reserves like Tarangire.

So this is a time throughout East Africa to be particularly cautious about ele.

So you can imagine how I felt when the manager and staff of Tarangire Sopa Lodge where we’re staying seemed incapable of keeping three ele from nearly entering reception, playing around with the lawn hose, and walking up and down the balconies of the rooms as if they were checking the serial numbers on the patio windows.

This is courting disaster. And it’s hard to explain this to my clients. The kids, especially, thought it was “cool” and they’re right, it was thrilling and clearly not something you’d expect.

But it’s also dangerous. One security man threw a few rocks at the ele, but no one turned off the water, no one seemed to have a elephant horn (a loud screaming high pressure device that sometimes works) and no one offered or perhaps was trained to shot a blank above their heads.

So they lingered throughout most of the afternoon, making it difficult for me to keep the kids out of their sight.

We had a great time in Tarangire, and I’m glad to say a safe one as well. We had wonderful ele encounters out on the game drives, getting remarkable close to those we judged safe.

But if lodges and camps can’t figure out a way to keep familiarity at bay, disaster is around the next corner.

As she walked past my verandah and over to the verandah where Ryan, Hadley, Sophie and Cam were watching her, I remembered a number of horrible stories about what elephants can do and have done to me and my clients.

Zoo Excess

June 9, 2014June 9, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 6 Comments

Last week’s settlement between the Pittsburgh Zoo and a family whose 2-year old boy was killed by the zoo’s wild dogs has restarted the conversation about the roll zoos play, today.

In November, 2011, a Mom lifted her 2-year old onto a railing above an exhibit of wild dogs. The boy lunged forward out of the mother’s grip and fell into the exhibit where he was fatally attacked by the dogs.

The zoo had complied with industry and national safety regulations but did increase the barriers following the incident. That was one of the key points used by the parents in suing the zoo for negligence.

The details of the suit remain confidential, but the debate has widened beyond whether African predator exhibits are safe, to whether they’re humane or even necessary.

Zoos have been transforming themselves over my lifetime from institutions that display wildlife to institutions that study and conserve the wilderness.

If there’s a trend, it’s actually for fewer zoos and fewer displayed animals, although the zoos that exist are becoming larger and their displays are becoming much more elaborate.

Wild dog, relevant to this story, have likely been saved from extinction by U.S. zoos. They were in a dramatic decline several decades ago when conservation organizations led by zoos worked up a dramatic master plan to save them.

Numerous initiatives began, including habitat preservation, but unique to the wild dogs’ situation emerged a remedy that was specially effective.

Pet dogs living at the edges of wild dog habitat were transmitting common diseases that were wiping out the wild dog population in exactly the same way early American colonists wiped out native Americans with smallpox.

Inoculating pet dogs may have saved the wild dogs from extinction but it also contributed to a somewhat unexpected increase in the health of the people living nearby as well. The Lincoln Park Zoo discovered that its dog inoculation program prevented 250 human deaths annually from rabies.

The two decades long initiative to save wild dogs from extinction worked, and it is understandable that these organizations want to celebrate their success.

One of the ways is by displaying wild dogs to the public. In a healthy state, the dogs are prolific breeders and like almost all predators, their numbers are approaching saturation in the captive animal population.

So many zoos are newly trading them around, and many more zoos are beginning to display them.

It’s very difficult for me to appreciate the displaying aspect of a zoo, and I struggle to do so by recognizing that very few people in the world have the opportunities that I do to experience the wild.

But that mantra which has maintained my esteem for zoos over my life time is increasingly challenged by the massive advancements in technology. Whether it’s YouTube or online learning, holographic or 3-D projection, the modern world has increasingly better ways to “display” a wild creature.

The “display” of a real life creature always falls short of the awesome reality. But how short is short is becoming the increasingly important question.

In Zoo Miami, only a pane of glass separates little boys from angry beasts (see blog photo above), and frankly I think that’s an unprofessional leap to reduce the difference between “display” and “real life.”

But if adequate protection of observers from the instincts of predators ends up creating such a barrier, then it might just be better to get the kid an xBox.

Or, more to the point, perhaps the zoo should replace its display with a giant xBox.

Africa Answerman

Sharing the beauty of African life today. Adventurer. Conservationist. Owner of Explorers World Travel.

Category: Wildlife Management