Category: Big Game

Man vs Beast … Again

Man vs Beast … Again

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Invisible fences for pet dogs are common in the U.S., but they’re used with opposite purpose in Africa: to keep the unwanted out.

Africa’s big game parks are mostly huge tracts of uninhabited wilderness but increasingly sophisticated agriculture and ranching impinges on many of the borders. There is the obvious social/political human/animal paradigm to work out, and it is becoming contentious.

But to the extent the wild game parks are to be preserved, there’s always been an easy, inexpensive way to demarcate Africa’s national reserves and make them nearly impenetrable by outsiders.

These “invisible fences” are not manufactured like an American dog collar, although they’re often easily manipulated, and they have kept nicely divided wild animals from domestic stock and farmers for generations.

The best known of these is the tsetse fly. Tsetse no longer transmit human sleeping sickness but they continue to carry bovine sleeping sickness. Wild animals are immune to it; cows, sheep, goats and horses aren’t.

(Recent genetic research identified the specific gene that makes domestic stock susceptible to tsetse, but Africa is a long way from creating a practical therapy for domestic stock based on this.)

Tsetse must carry a kamikaze gene, because they’re easily fooled into killing themselves. Simple fabric traps of alternating blue and black, and sometimes white added, layered with pesticide is a certain end to tsetse wherever the trap is laid.

Strategically placing these traps produces an invisible fence. Lodges, camps and ranger stations in wild areas mark their perimeter this way, becoming tsetse free.

In fact tsetse could easily be eradicated completely this way, but park authorities don’t want to do this. That would also eradicate the invisible fence.

Hoof-and-mouth disease, as well as anthrax, are incomplete natural fences. Wild animals do succumb to them, but not as readily as domestic stock.

That was why Botswana authorities in the 1980s began erecting elaborate electric fences and moats to separate the wild from domestic lands. The project is considered successful since it safeguards Botswana very important cattle industry. But it does so at the expense of about a third of its wild animal population.

But until now there was one other disease that was a certain invisible fence between many of Africa’s great herbivores like wildebeest and domestic stock: a virus known as the “Malignant Catarrhal Fever Virus” (MCF).

This herpes-type MCF is a world-wide virus of significant concern to ranchers, and it’s been long studied. The developed world learned that sheep carry the disease very much like wildebeest without easily succumbing to it, but that sheep readily transmit the disease to cows, which then fall quickly.

So strategies for dividing sheep from cows employed aggressively in the 1950s led throughout the developed world to a managed situation where MCF wasn’t eradicated but didn’t cause a lot of trouble.

But it’s different, today, in Africa. The wildebeest population is rife with MCF. In fact nearly every female wildebeest tested carries it. There are many ways the disease can spread, including a slight risk through airborne transmission, but the principal way seems to be when the female wildebeest calves.

The birthing fluid lost in calving is saturated with the virus. When the herd moves on, the ground retains the virus for a very long time. There is even a suggestion that new grass which subsequently grows in the area contains the virus.

In the old days, when there was less developed agriculture in Tanzania, ranchers “would migrate with their livestock elsewhere because there was still ample land, but now there is nowhere to go,” Dr. Moses ole Nasselle told the Tanzania Daily News this week.

Ole Nasselle leads a team of professionals in the Serengeti ecosystem that announced Monday they had produced a vaccine against MCF.

The competition for land is intense in Africa. One of those playing fields is the continent’s great national parkland.

This week, advantage ranchers.

On Safari: Animal Paradise

On Safari: Animal Paradise

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Mark Zmijewski & Jennifer Jones in front of a hippo pool where we had our lunch in Ngorongoro Crater.
Our game drives in Ngorongoro Crater were exceptional, but in the course of my career they always seem to be. It’s an absolute wildlife paradise.

We actually visited the park twice, because our game drive to Lake Manyara was prevented by terrible floods. But the crater although beautifully green had wonderful roads and tracks and we had no difficulty on two consecutive days.

I get very upset when I hear people say they shouldn’t come to East Africa during the rains. That’s when they should come! The first half of the year is the wet season in northern Tanzania, and this is when the migration is most easily seen, when all the baby animals are being born, and when the veld is most beautiful.

And we lucked out in spades this time. On our first day we saw 7 free-ranging black rhino, and on the second day we saw two, but on the second day we saw them up close and personal!

We saw dozens of lion. The crater has among the highest density of lion of any wilderness in Africa, probably around 100 for the 102 sq. mile wilderness.

We saw the giant eland, probably thousands of zebra and wildebeest, and likely more than a thousand buffalo.

But I was specially pleased with how close we got to some of the last big tuskers that exist on earth.

During the horrible years of elephant poaching in the 1970s and early 1980s, a group of young males with very large tusks entered the crater for protection. The geology of the crater made the corporate poaching of those years virtually impossible.

The crater isn’t a good habitat for elephant. Elephant are browsers that prefer leaves and branches and bushes, but the crater has little of that – it’s almost all grass.

But they adapted and adjusted to eating grass. And so they were saved while their cousins and siblings were decimated by poachers.

During those poaching years small tusks, or no-tusk elephants were passed over as the professionals sought the elephants with the largest tusks. Soon the global population of elephant was reduced to small tusked animals.

But the guys in the crater survived. They’re dying off, now, since they’re well into the 60s. And unfortunately, even after poaching ended, they didn’t leave the crater to mix with global herds, and the few females that now enter the crater don’t seem to interest them!

So it looks like these magnificent tusks will die when they do.

On Safari: Fatal Blow to Manyara

On Safari: Fatal Blow to Manyara

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Global warming is devastating earth, and it ruined a day on safari and possibly ruined one of Tanzania’s best game parks for a long, long time.

Worldwide weather is become more and more extreme. In East Africa we have more droughts that are drier and more floods that are heavier, and the frequency at which both occur is mind-boggling.

The developed world is of course no less susceptible, but we have more resources to deal with it. When Super Sandy crushed America, we were able ultimately to deal with it by rebuilding.

But the developed world just doesn’t have those resources.

Four days before we were to visit Lake Manyara National Park, unbelievable rain causing flash floods that no one could have anticipated swept off the Great Rift Valley over the park and poured into the entry gate.

A beautiful visitor’s center with its wonderful little museum, gift shop and toilets were submerged in mud and when the water receded, covered and surrounded by boulders that had fallen from the Rift.

Four days before we were trapped by the same heavy rains in Tarangire National Park, as the only bridge to the outside world had been submerged by a raging river.

I quickly chartered airplanes to fly us the short distance from Tarangire to our next destination, Gibb’s Farm, but my four vehicles and drivers had to wait by the river until the waters subsided.

We knew the waters had subsided somewhat when we were ready to visit Manyara, so we decided to head out to the park early in the morning. It was dry enough, although the scene was so sad.

All the public buildings were buried in rocks and mud. But the road into the park was now dry, and so I thought we’d be able to visit this gem. But the ranger said no. They were too concerned that another flash flood was in the brewing.

So instead we went into Ngorongoro, enjoying an unexpected second game drive in this wonderful park (see tomorrow’s blog for information about those game drives).

We couldn’t have chosen a better place to stay for this trauma than Gibb’s Farm. It’s one of my favorite places on all safaris, and I use it as a base for visiting both Manyara and Ngorongoro Crater.

So we were there for three days. And one of the most wonderful moments came not with anyone in my group, but with many of them watching a 7-year old guest, Eli, as he closely encountered bush babies.

Gibb’s puts out fruit every night at 7 p.m. to attract the local bushbabies (greater galago). They’re a wonderfully curious primate with a very loud voice!

But no one but Eli ever tried to pet them. And guess what? They seemed to like it!

On Safari: Tarangire at its Best

On Safari: Tarangire at its Best

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Tarangire proved as exciting as I expected, and we dodged the heavy rain, and as a result we achieved the optimum experience of the year for this wilderness.

You can go on safari virtually at any time of the year to East Africa and with good planning have the most memorable trip of your life. But if you’re willing to gamble a bit – which my clients don’t realize I’m always doing with their trip – then you can bingo out marvelously, and that’s what happened to us in Tarangire.

I like traveling during the rains, and I try to do so just before the heavy and debilitating rains start, and that’s the gamble. And in fact this year heavy rains have started .. early, and so stay tuned to see how the rest of the trip might unfold.

But what it means for Tarangire is that the most beautiful landscapes in Africa have been created. The great sand rivers flow, the white tissue paper flowers explode in the beautiful grasses next to the yellow hibiscus and purple mini-dahlias and the landscapes in the sky are overwhelming: sculpted by a storm forming over there and giant cumulus over there.

And, most importantly, the animals are at their supreme. Everybody’s fat and sassy. So we saw the four grand lion brothers with big bellies and magnificently washed black manes. We watched a male leopard stretch out his own belly in the morning sun. And of course for Tarangire, we watched and watched and watched elephants playing and fighting and vying for position.

We’ve been here hardly a full day and our elephant count is approaching a thousand. At this time of the year when fewer tourists come and the veld is fulsome with food, there are many playful babies and many great bulls fighting to mate.

And Tarangire is anomalous, magnificently wonderful for its sheer numbers of ele but they become so dense particularly now that their normal behaviors begin to break down.

Families mix readily. Teenagers form gangs and often wander far from the family, and I often wonder how they matriculate properly. With normal behaviors young males are kicked out of the family between 10 – 12 years old, and they must immediately associate with an older male that teaches them how to behave.

This was discovered sadly several decades ago when authorities in the Pilanesberg reserve in South Africa imported a score of young male ele who hadn’t been matriculated by older males. They killed quite a few of the other animals before they were corralled in and scientists began to study what had happened.

And that was when it was learned how important the mentoring of a younger male by an older male is. But in Tarangire the groups are so dense and the age groups often segregate together that I just wonder if there’s been any science about mentoring in conditions like these.

The roughly 3700 ele in the “northern sector” of the park are mostly resident. And we saw nearly fifty hardly fifty yards from the park entrance as they were mingling about staff quarters. These are wholly habituated animals that rarely leave the park, much less this small area.

But as we moved south to our camp, we saw the truly wild and magnificent wilderness elephant. On two occasions (since we were using the same tracks) a tailless female stopped us and really threatened us.

My clients behaved wonderfully. Not a whisper was said, and when she asked us to back up, we did slowly. But we persisted within her area of irritation, and eventually each time she let us pass.

But altogether we’ve seen nearly a thousand, playing in relatively deep pools at the side of Silale swamp, wallowing in mud, mounting in courtship, trumpeting playfully and in the expected aggression that is generated by so many animals living so closely together.

As you’ve read in other blogs, I think there are too many elephant in East Africa. And the sad part of the story were all the dead forests growing further and further from the main transit passes in the south. Trees killed by elephants: forests turning into savannah.

And of course the growing human/elephant conflict, perhaps the single greatest issue in the natural history world of East Africa today.

But like any gamble, the gamble nature is presently taking sustaining so many elephants is exciting to behold. We only hope the outcome is not a loss, but a win. And frankly, I don’t know either how to call how it will be, or how it could come to be.

But we experienced it, because we gambled with the weather and so far won.

On Safari: Dead Elephant Walking

On Safari: Dead Elephant Walking

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Chobe’s elephants are legendary, but what I saw this time is disconcerting. They are tame, inbred, their many broken tusks are like toothpicks, their family behaviors have broken down and they are destroying the Chobe forests. Is it time to cull?

There is a growing consensus in the affirmative. Even the conservation organization Elephants Without Borders, which can hardly be blamed for skirting the issues of culling, has come round to accepting it at least when human tragedies are caused.

These ‘problem elephants’ should be culled, according to a September, 2007, white paper written by EWB researcher, Dr. Michael Chase. Chase’s argument at that time was that a culled elephant would discourage other elephants from repeating the offense.

But that has proved untrue. And elephants causing injuring a person or destroying a small farm is hardly the major problem; it’s simply the one that gets the most attention. It’s the easiest to understand.

But there are far more serious consequences of too many elephant. It starts with the elephant itself. And the problem isn’t and wasn’t the elephant; it’s us.

Today we watched spectacular displays of multitudes of elephants in Chobe, playing in the water (actually swimming!), young adolescents sparring harmlessly, and at least three newborns just discovering the world. How can we not but simply sit back and enjoy this?

Chobe's toothpick elephants.
Because when looking a little closer, the scene ain’t so cute. It’s absolutely remarkable how many of Chobe’s elephants have broken tusks, an obvious reflection that if not eating themselves out of house-and-home, they’re at least so far eating themselves out of calcium.

And the tusks which remain are pitiful. We know that smaller tusked elephants throughout the continent are a result of the years of cataclysmic poaching in the 1970s and 1980s, when “small tusks” become a survival mechanism. Only big-tusked elephants were wanted by the poachers.

But large, healthy tusks are essential to a sustainable elephant population, which uses them for all sorts of things, like digging for salt and in dry times, water. So throughout the rest of Africa we’ve seen the slow improvement in the size of tusks.

But not in Chobe. Quite the reverse, and whatever makes for strong, healthy tusks is now jeopardized.

And then there’s the elephant’s important family behavior. Males that reach puberty are kicked out of the family unit. Females remain with the unit forever with their children, and a grand matriarch leads the family. In Chobe, that seems to have disappeared almost altogether, simply because there are so many elephant they can’t separate themselves into any type of grouping.

I hesitate to quote numbers, because elephant population studies are notoriously wrong, skewed by the bias of the organization making them, and official government conservation numbers can be even worse.

Moreover, elephant are difficult to count, because they travel such enormous distances so quickly and do not necessarily repeat travel routes. But suffice it to say there are lots of elephant in northern Botswana and similar habitats in surrounding Zambia, Angola and Namibia.

I have been visiting Chobe since 1978. Hardly is my analysis scientific, but my photos speak volumes. Most of Chobe was a forest in 1978. Today, every excursion from Kasane into the park that was once a dense forest will encounter meadows and eroded cavities with fibrous grasses.

Chobe is a resilient ecosystem, sitting along the rich river systems that eventually form the Zambezi, and in an area with relatively high rainfall. But while it may be true that ecosystem recovery is more possible here than in other places in Africa, it is clear the degradation of the ecosystem in the last 30 years has been severe.

What we can see is only the tip of the iceberg. The loss of biodiversity in grasses, trees and other plants leads to a loss of biodiversity in avifauna and much more.

Why will no organization undertake a definitive biomass study?

Because everyone knows the outcome, and no one wants to author it.

Even the official government site for Chobe National Park concedes, “Damage caused by the high numbers of elephants is rife in some areas of the Chobe National Park. In fact, concentration is so high throughout Chobe that culls have been considered, but are too controversial and have thus far been rejected.”

I think we’ll have to leave it to the younger and less prejudicial scientists yet unencumbered by worries about funding and tenure from a public obsessed with the “little bunny” syndrome. But for better or worse, young scientists taking the issue head on are concluding that culling is now not a viable option.

Benjamin Golas of the 2013 class of graduates of the University of Pennsylvania veterinarian school is one of them. He writes about Chobe:

“Too many elephants…”

“I would hardly be a good conservationist if I did not bring up [the fact that] the region, which can happily and sustainably hold a few thousand pachyderms, is home to upwards of an estimated 140,000… and it shows.

“Trees become scarce… Baobab that remain… look sick and scarred.”

Golas sees the most terrible situation looming. He believes that we have avoided culling for so long that now “the sheer numbers of elephants have made responsible culling impracticable” and there is no viable alternative.

No viable alternative? So then, what?

Perhaps the natural crashing of the population, a Biology 101 phenomenon that every college student learns: Left to nature’s devices, too many of one species will ultimately result in its cataclysmic decline, suddenly and often without warning.

It could be a virus that spreads like wildfire. It could be a syncing of estrus cycles caused by unusual weather. It could be a a new political shift in local human populations that just get fed up with the problem. But something will ultimately cull the elephant, now that we haven’t.

For years I espoused this position: let nature take its own course: Hand’s off. But now I see the danger of so doing, that as the elephant takes itself down, it may take much of the biomass with it.

Is it time to cull?

It’s too late.

#5 : Ivory Towers

#5 : Ivory Towers

by Arusha ♥ 3 Comments

Big game poaching is not new, never abated to the point of becoming incidental, but 2012 was a year in which poaching got dramatically worse. Why? And what to do?

My #5 Top Story of 2012 is the complex and very sad chronicle of Africa’s big game under enormously new onslaught. To see a list of all The Top Ten, click here.

First, a little perspective. Elephant being the biggest and least manageable of Africa’s big wild animals are understandably the barometer of poaching in general, even though virtually all types of African animals are poached. But as goes GM, so goes the economy; the metrics of elephant poaching more or less represent poaching in general.

And lacking good statistics it remains fair to say that the poaching today is nowhere near as massive as it was in the horrible 1970s and 1980s when elephant were almost extirpated. There are still lots more elephant, today, than at the end of the 1980s.

I’m very disturbed, though, by how the media has exaggerated the situation. There’s no need for exaggeration. The truth is bad enough. But it results in the media totally ignoring some fabulous successes with anti-poaching, especially with quelling the market for ivory.

And I have previously brought up the very uncomfortable idea that poaching in East Africa is the same as culling in South Africa. This complex notion can, indeed, be argued that there’s no better possible situation than the status quo. That doesn’t make it right, by the way.

So while the quantitative problem of poaching today pales in comparison to the 1970s and 1980s, and the public has been unnaturally jigged up by sensational media in particular, the qualitative aspect of poaching today is, indeed, much worse than before.

There are two main differences with the decimation of elephant in the 1980s and today: today a lot of poaching is by individuals, or small bands of unorganized friends, in very ad hoc ways as opposed to the large corporate poaching of the past. Secondly, there’s every indication that poaching is being used as a politically global football fully open to bargaining.

The involvement often at the global level of very powerful institutions … like banks is new and horrifying. In America in particular the “lay-off more bank regulation” which has followed the cavity they caused in the global economic order is allowing the important and rich middlemen that transit the animal part from its home country to its market country to flourish.

And on the more patent political level, “national security” is becoming a determinate in establishing a de facto level of poaching rather than the moral argument which prevailed in the past, so that the previous presumption that elephant poaching was immoral is being usurped by the argument that it contributes to terrorism.

It’s unfortunate we don’t have good summary numbers. Asia, especially Thailand and India, and South Africa compile good numbers on elephant populations and poaching. But no one else does.

We can scrape up numbers for individual ecosystems, like the Serengeti, but even simply combining the Serengeti with its Kenyan neighbor, the Mara, grows difficult to impossible.

The main reason for this is that most African countries do not want researchers to know the real numbers.

But there are enough “scraped up” numbers, anecdotal reports, public scandals and especially confiscated attempts at ivory shipments to give us a reasonable view of what’s happening.

In the last few years Tanzania has hired and fired more wildlife officials and Ministers with wildlife portfolios than Liz Taylor did with husbands: Researchers as well as local Tanzanians are growing increasingly fed up with corruption and obfuscation.

Because while most of Africa’s elephant population is happening in Tanzania, so is it the pinnacle of East African safari tourism. There is less empathy locally in non-South Africa Africa for wild animals than from us, outside. But when considered in the context of tourism, there is widespread consensus that poaching is bad.

So why, then, is it getting worse?

My opinion is that the global economic recession is principally to blame, but not for the evident reasons you might think.

Africa did fairly well overall during the recession. As did Asia. But the five years since the market collapse have nonetheless massively impacted African and Asian economies, most notably by increasing the gap between rich and poor.

Huge numbers of Tanzanians, like huge numbers of Chineese, have become extraordinarily rich over the last five years. Even as Dar’s slums have exploded in size and China’s rural populations have suffered a decline in standard of living.

Asia and China in particular is the principal market for poached game, especially ivory. And East Africa and Tanzanian in particular is the principal source. It’s a marriage made in hell.

According to the African Wildlife Trust, “The vast majority of the illegal ivory …is flowing to China… China’s economic boom has … push[ed] the price of ivory to a stratospheric $1,000 per pound on the streets of Beijing.”

We don’t know for sure how this devolves to the individual poacher trying to sell his illegal cut on the streets of Morogoro, but the best estimates is that a typical 20-kilo tusk nets the poacher 2-3 years annual wage. And most elephants have two tusks.

In an economic environment where the untrained, unskilled adult is struggling with farming in climate change and squeezed by increasing dry goods prices, the allure of poaching is real. Combine this with a growing sentiment among urbanized people worldwide that there are too many wild animals, a market in China controled by individuals with no empathy whatever for big game preservation, corrupt local officials on the take, and you have all the ingredients for tacit acceptance of this otherwise illegal trade.

So that’s my take: bad economic times with rich Asians richer wanting to buy ivory, and rich Tanzanians richer wanting to broker it. And a rapidly growing Africa that simply has too many elephant.

What to do?

Groan if you will, but there are no simple answers. We’ve entered an extraordinarily complex era in African development, particularly in East Africa. Increased poaching is a part of this, but understanding that as a complicated, nettled component of contemporary African society much less global capitalism is necessary before anything at all can be done.

Cheetah on Car!

Cheetah on Car!

by Arusha ♥ 2 Comments

Cheetah jumping on cars went YouTube viral this holiday season, and traditional criticisms from wildlife managers was starkly absent. Is this OK?

The newest video had nearly a quarter million hits this morning but it is hardly the only one. I stopped counting at 20 separate YouTubes of cheetah on cars, and there are countless stills on Flickr and even more individual photos on private blogs.

My own experience includes at least a dozen such incidents. Most of them were in Kenya’s Maasai Mara, but some of the most memorable incidents were in Tanzania’s Serengeti. The striking difference as relates tourism of the two areas – the Mara is generally very crowded and the Serengeti generally absent of crowds – has led me to believe that there is something hardwired in the cheetah’s brain that gives it a potential pet syndrome.

Hard-wired may be too strong, and I can understand how generations and generations of cheetah being unmolested by people could nurture up the same behavior, but either way, the cheetah is clearly the closest thing to a pet you’ll encounter on a big game safari.

Not every cheetah displays this friendly behavior. I’ve encountered many which are extremely skittish, although none of these frightened little beasts were in the Mara – they were all in the Serengeti or more distant places like Kenya’s northern frontier. The best I can remember virtually every cheetah in the Mara looked friendly.

Why do some, then, but not all jump on the cars?

It’s a pretty simple answer. A hungry cheetah begins its hunt in an incredibly laid-back fashion. The eyesight of the cat is so powerful that it can scan the plains with almost the same facility as a falcon surveying the turf below.

The best view is the higher one.

And like falcons and other raptors, prey is often discovered but then doesn’t always trigger an attack response. I suspect this is often because it’s just too far away, but there’s probably dozens of other reasons as well.

Perhaps the cat’s level of hunger just hasn’t reached the threshold of action, or perhaps the cat also sees competitors in the area and the cheetah is the smallest of the big cats, easily chased off its prey by a host of other animals like hyaena.

In any case, the cat on your car roof seems incredibly relaxed, hardly hunting. But that’s exactly what it’s doing. Fat cats – non hungry cheetahs – will never be found atop a car.

There is one exception. Youngsters learning to hunt will often play on the car, hungry or not.

Not too many years ago, researchers and rangers were highly critical of these tourist interactions. Pamphlets were placed strategically on lodge reception counters and I even remember a series of “ranger talks” warning guests not to approach cheetah too closely.

The argument was that the cheetah was easily distracted by tourists, and would therefore often have its hunt disrupted. I found that specious.

But there are definitely reasons to avoid too close an interaction. Cheetah is the only cat whose claws don’t retract, so it has no power to decide whether to inflict a wound or just give you a love swipe if you accidentally surprise it.

I learned this when Kumati, an old cheetah that lived by Naabi Hill, jumped on my car as we were headed to the airstrip for a flight. No matter what we did, we couldn’t get him off. Finally I stepped out of the car and swiped him with my hat, which he ripped back in turn!

Of my many memories of cheetah-on-car the funniest one was with two football players from a prominent American college traveling with their much smaller mother. We stopped in the middle of the Serengeti – virtually all alone for miles and miles – to watch a young family strolling along the plains.

Several of the youngsters jumped on the spare tire on the back of the vehicle. The right guard shoved his mother towards the front of the inside of the car, then ripped out one of my seats and pushed it towards the cheetah shouting, “Down Mother!”

A big male cheetah might reach 90 pounds. Most females are around 60 pounds, and this means they are generally about the same size as your lapdog.

Is there any real harm with all this?

I don’t think so. As I learned with Kumati, don’t try to pet them! But conceding a better view and just enjoying the experience strikes me as mutually beneficial!

Maul Special

Maul Special

by Arusha ♥ 1 Comment

Pretty story but not very effective: recruit Maasai morani – the legendary warriors that are expert lion killers – to protect lions. Sort of like hiring the ultimate teenage hacker to protect HSBC.

Lion numbers are dropping alarmingly, and better than any other great African savannah animal lion are a true indicator of the health of the African wild.

Unlike elephant or rhino – which are being poached at alarming rates even as their wild population increases – lion are the top of a complex pyramid of life and while masters of their position are beholding to the foundations.

Many important studies have suggested unusual reasons for the decline over the last several decades, but it now seems clear that the reason is quite simple: the wild is contracting.

Of the big cats, only the solitary leopard seems capable of adapting to a world increasingly dominated by man. The others – and especially the lion – seem unable to establish any relationship with a world increasingly dominated by homo sapiens except to war with him.

And the greatest battles are those legendary pitched posses of Maasai warriors in Old Testament regalia: Maasai don’t kill any animals for fun or food. They kill in retaliation, as if a lesson can be learned.

When a lion threatens their goats or cattle Maasai go on a war path, and some of the most spectacular stories out of Maasailand are of the greatest and most noble of the lion hunts. In the old days headmen were often determined by those who successfully killed a lion.

And remember, this isn’t with a gun. It’s with a spear and a knife.

Maasai and lion have coexisted for centuries because they use the same habitat. The grazing necessary for Maasai stock is the same that all sorts of antelope on the plains need. When there was enough for all, everyone was fat and sassy. There were enough antelope for the lion that much preferred them to a smaller goat or a larger and lanky cow.

Maasai cattle were bred not for meat but for milk. The cost/benefit ratio of a lion bringing down a Maasai cow compared to a wildebeest was no contest. The wildebeest could be killed more quickly (cats kill by strangulation, and this takes enormous time with a cow) and the dinner table had lots more meat for the effort.

But times changed. And note, too, that traditional Maasai are declining just as rapidly if not more so than the wild animals in their homelands. And maybe for the same reasons:

Shopping malls, highways, schools and hospitals, modern farms.

It takes no kopjes scientist to know where this is going.

So arise the Lion Guardians! This high profile NGO in East Africa was formed by dedicated conservationists “to promote and sustain coexistence between people & wildlife through ecological monitoring and local capacity building.”

IE: Pay Maasai morani to protect rather than kill lions.

It’s noble, yes. And anything that can give paid work to young traditional Maasai who are themselves increasingly threatened, is good. Especially in the West Kilimanjaro area adjacent Amboseli National Park.

This area is a microcosm of lion difficulties everywhere. Amboseli is one of the most important and well-known big game parks in the world famous especially for its elephant. Elephant are being threatened today by increased poaching, but their numbers are still increasing in places like Amboseli, because … well, elephant get their way.

But Amboseli is surrounded by an increasingly developed agriculture, particularly just to its south in Tanzania. The highlands of Kilimanjaro are perfect for wheat and other cash crop farming.

The towns of Arusha to the west and Moshi to the east are expanding rapidly. The roads are being paved.

All of this – not just farming – needs water. This is draining the existing aquifers and Amboseli is becoming drier and drier. This is a death sentence for much game like buffalo and wildebeest. The increased elephant population results in deforestation, and combined with the loss of aquifer power the reduction of forests is terrible for impala, duiker and a chorus of tiny things like voles and mice that animals like hyaena and jackal need to survive.

So you see … or don’t, so to speak, as time passes. No traditional food, Mr. Lion heads south to where Maasai live with their goats and cattle.

Lion Guardians believes in conserving the wild and in promoting tourism. It’s a two-pronged argument that often sticks it to itself. Tourism is one thing. Conservation is another.

There’s no doubt that tourism suffers as there are fewer lions to see in the wild. But tourism is already suffering drastically, mainly from the political situation in Kenya linked directly to the violently unsettled situation in Somalia. We hope this is temporary.

Whether temporary or not, conservation is another matter.

I grow quite sad thinking the day may come when there won’t be lions in the wild as I’ve seen all my life. But it’s hard to argue to save the lion with the same powerful scientific arguments for saving the Amazon rain forest. We know almost everything possible about lions and the African savannah. There are of course mysteries yet to be revealed … but not many.

The forest provides my oxygen. The veld powers my imagination – no small thing – but not exactly biological.

And what we know mostly is that Maasai recruited to protect lions are getting mauled, and in the end, not saving any more lions and not convincing their young teen Maasai not to go to the city and become certified public accountants.

That’s life.

Blood All Over the Place

Blood All Over the Place

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

A good scientific paper on lion population declines embarrasses NatGeo and provides evidence that recreational hunting of lion may soon be illegal.

The excellent scientific survey by Duke scientists published Tuesday in the journal of Biodiversity and Conservation shows serious contractions of African wilderness with lion decline as the principal indicator. But NatGeo’s exaggeration of the problem in order to raise money is appalling.

The research was funded by the National Geographic Big Cat Initiative, but what disturbs me is that National Geographic itself has grossly distorted the findings (or ignored them, not sure which).

The study concludes that there are about 32,000 lions remaining in Africa, today. NatGeo’s “Lion Decline Map” shows only 20,000 (less than two-thirds the science) with a projected “???” intended to mean “0″ by 2020. The glitzy web presentation ends with requests for donations.

This pandering to fictional catastrophe fits the current NatGeo model embedded in the current lineup on its cable television channel, which alters between the interesting, scandalous and soap-opry. NatGeo is making bundles, scientists still depend upon it, but it’s gone Ruperty.

Meanwhile, the Duke study is important.

While there is nothing particularly surprising in the study, it confirms that lion populations are in serious decline (32,000 today compared to 100,000 in the 1960s) on the continent as a whole, and where relatively stable for the “long-term” are in diminished areas.

The 27 “strongholds” where lion populations are expected to prevail for the long-term are all in sub-Saharan Africa in the countries we know well:

1. Tanzania
2. Botswana
3. Mozambique
4. South Africa & Zambia
5. Kenya

A sliver of stronghold area slips into Zimbabwe, but the enormous absence of lion in Zim today is a testament to the tragedy of conservation that has occurred there over the last generation under the murderous rule of Robert Mugabe.

The study used satellite imagery but through careful digital analysis and increased technological resolution was able to debunk earlier reports that certain areas were much healthier than they really are. These most critical areas are all in the northern part of the continent.

One of the study’s leading scientists is Stuart Pimm who has produced tomes of studies in his lifetime and who is probably the world’s most valuable African environmental statistician. Through the body of his past studies this one is credibly able to point to diminishing habitat and human competition for protected habitat as the principal cause.

But the study dares to confront another sensitive issue: big game hunting.

Without actually saying so, there is every implication throughout the study that recreational lion hunting should be prohibited.

I don’t know if there is coincidence to be found, or scientists and government officials tiptoeing on the tightrope, but last week the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced it was reviewing the African lion’s status on the endangered species list.

This is the first step to listing lion as endangered. And if that happens, big game hunting of lion would effectively be over.

That seems only reasonable when African governments are now arresting local people for hunting lion, not to put a furry head above their fireplace, but to save their herds of goats.

Good work, Duke! Go to it, Fish & Wildlife! And put your pants back on, NatGeo.

Animals, Plants or People?

Animals, Plants or People?

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East Africa’s hirola antelope may soon become the second antelope in 100 years to go extinct. So what?

There are 91 species of antelope left in the world, 90 of which are native to Africa. There are currently 350-450 hirola left in the wild in East Africa, down from 14,000 in the 1970s.

If hirola become extinct they would join the Bubal Hartebeest as the two antelope which went extinct in the last 100 years. An allied species, the Schomburgk’s deer, would make three.

And the extinction in all three cases is due to habitat loss, aggravated by hunting. All three would likely be survivors if man were not also competing for their territories.

In the last hundred years 12 other larger mammals (in addition to the 3 mentioned above) have gone extinct:

5 predators: 3 tigers, 1 lion and 1 wolf.
Plus 1 rhino, 1 seal, 1 ibex and 2 wallabies.

The rhino, wallabies and seal were hunted to extinction. The ibex suffered the same fate as the antelope above (habitat loss aggravated by global warming and human competition). The predators likely went extinct because the food source they depended upon diminished.

So what? This doesn’t seem like very many.

Wrong. Big mammal extinctions are the itty bitty tip of the iceberg, and you’d have to go back multiple centuries to obtain the next 12 bigger mammal extinctions. And mammals represent only a very tiny fraction of the life forms on earth.

The rate of extinctions of all life forms in the last century is massive, exponential in fact when compared to previous centuries; indeed, when compared to millennia.

So… what?

Species conservation as a social and political goal began about a 100 years ago with Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir. In those early days its justification was mostly to preserve lovely things for future generations when preservation did not require considerable resources to succeed.

A half century ago preserving lovely things for future generations became trumped by the mandate to maintain as great a biodiversity on the planet as possible. The arguments for biodiversity are powerful but often complicated. They’re best summed up by a 2010 Cornell University study that essentially argued that biodiversity is a defense against the greatest threats to humankind like viruses.

Lately, though, the public isn’t buying the science. Most polls show that a very slim margin but more than 50% of Americans no longer believe there is anything wrong with extinction.

But I tend to ignore about half of America, that also disbelieves global warming and evolution. Ignorant Americans are a danger to the future, but they haven’t at least as yet deterred good science. And we can hope that in a relatively short time, good science will prevail, again.

But what about the hirola? Should Nature Conservancy and its partners conduct a fund-raising campaign that will net tens of thousands of dollars for land purchase and management, anti-poaching and veterinarian services to protect a single species of antelope in the wild?

Or, should the tens of thousands of dollars that need to be spent to do so better be used to manage the Dadaab refugee catastrophe that is very nearby?

Or, should the tens of thousands of dollars better be spent to save 100 species of plants in the Amazon?

Or, should the tens of thousands of dollars to create and maintain The Ishaqbini Hirola Community Conservancy better be spent to actually pay for building the rerouted Serengeti Highway?

I could go on and on. Northern Kenya where the hirola exist is one of the most stressed areas on earth. The focus there should be on the Dadaab refugees first, not the hirola. And the loss of the hirola in the wild does not mean an extinction of the species, just of the species in the wild.

And the resources that seem would be required to do this job are enormous relative to hundreds of other projects to maintain the planet’s biodiversity.

Should the hirola be saved. Yes. But not at the cost of so many other possible species rescues.

No matter they might be little green vines that don’t elicit tears from rich people.

Wild Animals Aren’t Nice Anymore

Wild Animals Aren’t Nice Anymore

by Arusha ♥ 1 Comment

Pepper spray, moats, blow horns, flashing lights … nothing seems to work. People around the world are getting fed up with wildlife.

And it’s becoming frighteningly unclear if the benefits of tourism are greater than the disadvantages that local communities now believe they must bear to support that tourism. And which is more important: agriculture or tourism? Resource development or tourism? A relaxing Sunday walk in the park, or tourism?

And as a result the greater question of biological diversity gets subsumed in this more immediate question.

Last week officials from the Kenyan Wildlife Service held town meetings in southern Kenya to admonish citizens not to try to move ton plus buffalos themselves, while in the west of the country exploding populations of wild dogs have begun to attack farmers’ sheep.

With nearly 15% Kenya’s land wilderness reserves that protect wild animals, it’s hard to find any human area short of the megalopolis of Nairobi that isn’t effected.

But it isn’t just Africa, of course. It’s worldwide. From India to Indiana. From elephants to wolves to beavers. And what’s worse is that the conflict is becoming tinier and tinier!

Two years ago Amanda H. Gilleland of the University of South Florida (USF) completed a meticulous study documenting a growing intolerance for wildlife by the citizens of southern Florida. But not just to cougars and alligators, but to armadillos, possums, racoons, squirrels and … even frogs!

More poisoning, more illegal shooting, more often cruel and unnecessary “eradication.”

Man against Beast.

What’s going on?

Two simple things: (1) increasing wildlife populations which have been unexpectedly even more increased by (2) global warming.

Obviously global warming threatens a few species like the polar bear, but for the vast majority of the planet’s mammalian biomass it’s actually a boon to survival. Wild animals adapt to changing weather much better than people do and warm is better than cold.

When elks move north from Isle Royale because it’s getting too hot for their food source, wolves are then left without a meal. So with the first warm breeze, wolves move towards their next easiest dinner: the nearby sheep farms of northern Wisconsin.

When excessive drought and flooding caused by global warming in the equatorial regions threatens the grass dinners of the African buffalo, the massive herds simply move into people’s backyards and irrigated farms.

And all of this is happening after decades of successful work to conserve wolves and buffalos, boosting their populations even without the help from Chinese factories.

It isn’t as if scientist haven’t been trying to do something. But conference after conference from my point of view seems to slam into the brick wall of the simple fact “there is too much.” There are more people. There are more animals. There are too many.

The host for the black bear/human conflict conference held this year in Missoula characterized his responsibility to sum up the gathering’s scientific findings as “the guy with the broom at the end of the parade, sweeping up the horse apples.”

“Bear managers in North America are victims of their own success,” he concluded.

It’s incredibly ironic that successful big game management, which the Kenya Wildlife Service inscribes as Kenya’s “posterity,” is a main source of the problem. Wild dog is the best example.

Nearly extirpated throughout Kenya ten years ago, a large scale project to vaccinate pet dogs that lived on the outskirts of wilderness areas essentially controlled distemper that had been migrating from those pets into the wild population. Now pets and wild dogs are distemper free, but sheep farmers have become quite ill tempered.

Of course a huge part of the problem would be easily solved if we solved global warming. (Oh, and by the way, that solution would create a few other benefits to humankind as well.)

But even if a sudden, miraculous consensus was found in the world to deal with global warming, it would take a lot longer to accomplish than some sheep farmers in Kiambu or Wausau are willing to tolerate.

Besides, it’s only half the problem. The other half of the problem is that animal populations are growing. In some cases like elephants it’s fair to say they’re exploding, and in almost all cases so are the human populations sitting next to them. “There is just so much flour you can put into a loaf of bread,” my grandmother used to say.

But not resolving the issue to at least some extent will create the defacto solution implicit in the USF study:

Wild animals won’t be considered nice, anymore.

Africa may have presented us with the solution, although it’s expensive.

First accomplished in Namibia with Etosha National Park in 1973, the 500-mile 9-foot reenforced double electrified fence with moat, successfully divided big game from ranchers, and over the last 40 years both ranching and tourism have prospered.

And more recently in Kenya, the Aberdare National Park is now fenced in. The 250-mile long fence included 100,000 posts hand driven into the ground. But it cost what amounts to the average annual wage of one million Kenyans.

There’s no alternative, folks. Some places like Tanzania’s Serengeti and Botswana’s Okavango Delta may remain mostly unfenced for another generation or two, but the day is coming. If we don’t stop the war of Man Against Beast, we know who will win.

To Poach Is/Or To Cull

To Poach Is/Or To Cull

by Arusha ♥ 1 Comment

Is the extraordinary almost unbelievable reproductive rate of elephants in Tarangire National Park driving poaching?

Elephant researcher Charles Foley, whose principal research camp is located inside Tarangire National Park, reported this year that elephants that principally use Tarangire as their habitat are reproducing at a 7% rate.

For a large mammal that is nearly inconceivable. Reproductive rates vary in the extreme in the wild. This is principally because the reproductive rate is impacted so seriously by climate which immediately impacts food source. Wild animals tend not to breed when their normal habitat is disrupted.

And for the last several decades in Africa, “normal habitat” hardly exists except in a few well managed large reserves like Kruger in South Africa. But Kruger is famous for sustainable culling of big game, including giraffe, driven not by reproductive rates but the carrying capacity of the environment.

A stable wild animal population in a stable wild animal environment generally means that the animals which die, naturally or otherwise, are equally replaced by new births. In the Tarangire area we can speculate with some evidence that such a “stable” rate would be about 2%, not 7%.

But that population of elephants reproducing at a 7% rate isn’t growing. Why?

The short answer is poaching. There have been numerous articles recently on the increase in elephant poaching in Tanzania. See my last blog Friday for a summary.

There’s no other reasonable explanation. Tanzanian elephant management has been poor at best despite having some of the finest big game field researchers in the world. The failure lies squarely with the Tanzanian government, although it’s hard to argue their failures in wildlife management are any greater than in government across the board.

So despite many efforts to create elephant corridors that would widen dispersal of various populations (which in turn would complicate attempts to use reproductive rates for effective management) few of these corridors have been successfully implemented.

More or less the Tarangire population is contained. During the wet season a large portion of the herds move eastwards of the park. Individuals are reported traveling between Tarangire and Manyara (I’ve seen them myself on numerous occasions) but probably not in any sufficient numbers to validate dispersal theories.

A huge number of elephants are being poached.

But as I stated Friday and before, this is not a crisis that threatens the overall population, as was the case in the 1970s and 80s. In a weird and ironic way, one might postulate that poaching has become a current ecological component of a stable population.

That’s not a comfortable idea. And it doesn’t mean that poaching is good. But it does mean at least for the present that South African notions of management that aggressively embrace culling won’t work if poaching isn’t first contained.

But likewise, it means if poaching is contained, culling becomes immediately necessary.

It’s an extraordinary balancing act, and we all know that once poaching at this presumed level has become a part of a local culture, it’s near impossible to curtail. The likelihood that Tanzania could get it together in any reasonable period of time to actually limit poaching is as about as likely as finding a tiger in the Serengeti.

Poaching is not good for more reasons than breaking the specific laws against it. The sustained breaking of any laws leads to a lawless culture. The chain of sale of the ivory through the local middleman, corrupt politician and bribed cargo authority spreads anarchy through a social system. The pile of meat that’s left isn’t exactly inspected by local health officials before being dispersed through the community.

And the temper of the elephants being hunted down is exacerbated, and a calm elephant isn’t exactly a friendly beast to begin with.

So I’m not advocating allowing the status quo to continue. But I think it’s extremely important that everyone realize there are two very different sides to this management problem, and that dealing with one alone won’t work.

Poaching is no longer a separate issue from culling in Tanzania.

NPR White Elephant

NPR White Elephant

by Arusha ♥ 2 Comments

NPR’s reporting yesterday on elephant poaching in East Africa disappointed those of us who know East Africa and cherish its wildlife.

In addition to simple inaccuracies, my main criticism was that the two stories filed by John Burnett were grossly narrow, cherry picking scandalous components while ignoring an essential bigger picture for cheap and trivial stuff that gets quicker attention.

The increase in elephant poaching in East Africa, most severely but not exclusively in Tanzania, has been on the rise for 4-5 years. It’s not new and it’s not suddenly greater than a few months or years before.

Burnett’s lead story suggested it was something relatively new and newly urgent, and so he neatly avoided the essential and more complex history of what has actually been happening.

This is my sixteenth blog about elephant poaching since March. Simply type “elephant” in the search box to the right for those stories. Journalists from Reuters, the New York Times and AFP have filed just as many over that same period.

This is because as Burnett said poaching is increasing almost as rapidly as in the catastrophic years of the 1970s-80s when 95% of Kenya’s elephants were wiped out and nearly 60% of Tanzania’s. It has not reached that level — nowhere near that level — and many other factors are considerably different.

Let’s start with the numbers, because Burnett has some quite wrong. I tread very cautiously and with some hesitation, because the last thing I want to do is reduce concern for a very serious East African problem.

As I’ve written again and again, the “elephant problem” is central to East Africa’s wilderness and economy. Poaching is absolutely one of the most serious problems facing East African society. But we do our cause harm with untruths.

“Perhaps 70,000 to 80,000 elephants roam” Tanzania Burnett claims.

On January 15, 2011, The 5-year Tanzania Elephant Management Plan spear-headed by such prominent and widely respected researchers as Charles Foley put Tanzania’s elephant population at around 110,000.

How many elephant have actually been poached since then, augmented by a record number of births due to good rains, is hard to estimate accurately, but the overall population is certainly higher than Burnett speculates.

Burnett says that the 70-80,000 number is “perhaps a quarter” of the continent’s population (280-320,000). This is widely inaccurate. Most recent estimates are very much higher. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature puts the continent’s total number at 472-690,000.

Burnett quotes a former conservationist in Tanzania as saying that 30 elephants daily are being poached. Using a conservative estimate that each elephant killed carries at least 100 pounds in total ivory from two tusks, that would mean there was more than 500 tons of ivory poached out of Tanzania each year, and that’s ludicrous.

Shippers of the most creative sort could not conceal even a fraction of that.

These are not minor inaccuracies. The “carrying capacity” of any environment for managed big game depends on precise numbers, not widely speculated ones. Burnett’s high-balling his numbers might enhance the urgency of his report, but it distracts us from possible solutions.

I wonder if as in our politics and grocery shopping, Americans just can’t be mobilized without exaggeration. It’s a sad commentary that NPR has fallen into this trap.

Burnett’s second story was better. He interviewed a poacher.

The story demonstrates that quite unlike the 1970-80s corporate poaching with Sikorsky helicopters using everything from AK47s to bazookas and then chartered ocean liners, some of the poaching today is an individual criminal phenomenon. And like so much crime everywhere in the world, its principal motivation is poverty.

That makes it much less effective and much harder to remedy.

Burnett rightly puts the onus for poaching on Asian market demand that we all agree has been sparked by economic growth in China. The evidence for this is overwhelming. But I’m very disappointed he didn’t describe the exciting new efforts by Chinese and Chinese surrogates to change this behavior.

It means that even the villain knows he’s a villain, and that’s a real start.

Finally, Burnett totally ignored one of the essential if perhaps not the central cause of poaching, today: There are too many elephants.

There are too many elephants not just in Tanzania, but throughout Africa and even in Asia.

This fact is hard to digest. It doesn’t mean there are more elephants than there once were. But for the existing diminished habitat, and in terms of human/elephant conflict, there are simply too many.

And that’s the real problem. It means poachers often get a pass because local officials actually appreciate what they’re doing, because farms are saved and school buildings don’t have to be rebuilt so often.

You won’t hear this from an elephant researcher standing over a carcass recently poached. And you won’t get a Tanzanian official to say as much to a westerner writing an article about poaching. It takes a more cautious and deliberate reporter than Burnett.

The story of elephants, their majesty, their near decimation in the 1970-80s, and now their perplexingly big problem in rapidly developing African societies is one of the most important stories in East Africa, today. It represents almost all of East Africa’s problems and probably contains some of their solutions. It’s as much historical as contemporary.

But jigging up the story with exaggeration while neglecting central facts won’t help. It needs as much attention from Rachel Maddow as the Tea Party.

The Science of Ivory

The Science of Ivory

by Arusha ♥ 2 Comments

Science rarely trumps politics, but for elephants and other big game it may, soon. And surprisingly, that’s not necessarily good.

Rapid advancements in forensic genetics now empower even Third World countries to determine the origin of virtually any big game animal from a whisker of its hair. The Kenya Wildlife Service recently announced the opening of its modern genetics and forensics laboratory which will be able to do just that.

KWS was answering the clarion call to “bring those poachers to justice!” By swabbing a poached animal site, evidence is acquired that can be matched from suspect’s clothing and tools, at airport check posts and cargo containers.

And the science stretches beyond enforcing poaching laws. Tracking species survival will now be much easier, and recognizing sudden weaknesses as well as strengths in species will allow for better wildlife management.

That’s fascinating, right? Yes, but is it all good news?

Well, ultimately, of course. But the rapidly improving science is a powerful new tool against strengthening the worldwide CITES treaty. (Did I say against?)

The southern Africans for years have been arguing that CITES – which is a worldwide treaty that bans international trade of certain animals (dead or alive) – is too punitive against those countries (like themselves) that have internal mechanisms to prevent illegal poaching. The treaty was born in the mid 1980s as a device to halt the apocalyptic decline of elephants, and it worked beautifully.

Since then it has become a massive powerhouse for global species preservation. Everything from polar bears to certain butterflies and whales have been preserved by the world coming together and agreeing not to allow those animals to be traded in any way.

But for years in southern Africa, elephant ivory was a cash cow (or bull, depending). Extremely well run and patrolled parks in southern Africa collected heaps of tusks from elephant that died normally or were intentionally culled. This cache of animal goods, in fact, was for many years the principal source of revenue for the Zimbabwe National Parks.

CITES stopped that. Adjacent to many southern African parks can now be found warehouses of stored elephant tusks and rhino horn. They store it, because some day, they want to sell it. Right now, CITES prevents them from doing so.

CITES came on line powerfully by the end of the 1980s, and shortly thereafter, South Africans began focusing on the promise of forensic science to determine exactly where the ivory came from. South Africans developed some very creative non-genetic, isotopic or chemical methods to determine the origin of confiscated, illegal ivory.

As genetic forensics improved, CITES also did, because both proved so successful. By 2004 South Africans were desperately trying to get the world to use forensic genetics to limit CITES’ reach:

“Being able to track the origin of illicit African elephant ivory could [allow] several southern African countries … to relax the ivory ban because they have stores of ivory and lots of elephants.“

From the getgo few have questioned the southern African claim that they manage poaching well enough. It was known from the early 1980s that the danger to elephants and other big game came mostly from the northern half of the continent.

Why, then, should they be penalized from selling their legitimately harvested ivory and horn?

Because science can’t trump politics. The “free market” however it may be regulated in China is free enough on the global arena.

In 1997, 2000 and again three years ago, CITES caved under the pressure of southern African countries and “carefully” organized the sale of stockpiled ivory in a few highly regulated auctions. Each time the results were stunning:

Poaching increased measurably and substantially.

In other words, once new ivory started trading in Asia legally, black market ivory followed suit.

Although southern African countries aggressively argued that the black market was not related to the auctions, it was a hollow fight. Now, as science progresses, their argument is changing and acquiring greater force:

Genetic science can pinpoint where the ivory comes from. In southern Africans view, there is “legal” ivory and “illegal” ivory, and whether it is at cargo warehouses or jewelers stores, genetic testing devices can separate the legal from illegal trade.

The argument is very similar to the recent argument that appropriate testing can distinguish between legally mined diamonds and blood diamonds. In fact determining the origin of ivory is much easier now with genetic forensics than determining the origin of diamonds.

There’s a very provincial nearly insidious thrust to the southern African argument. I believe in their heart of hearts they know that a market widened by allowing genetic testing to scrutinize increased sales of ivory will ultimately decimate elephant in the north of the continent.

And I believe in their heart of hearts they figure, well that’s OK, we’ll protect them down here. And indeed, they could. So the extinction of the wild elephant might be unlikely… in the south. And to hell with the north. ‘If they can’t get their act together as we have, too bad.’

To be sure it’s a serious sacrifice asking the south to forego legitimate conservation revenue just because the north isn’t as developed as they are. And with the advancements announced of the sort KWS did this month, the south will be ever the more eager to promote its cause.

But it’s the difference between seeing yourself in your narrow little part of the world, and recognizing your role as a global actor.

There’s just no reason that elephant anywhere should be sacrificed to intricate ivory sculptures placed in a glass case. That tradeoff – a living work of art for a dead one – isn’t moral in my view.

There’s little sacrifice to taking the moral road.

Last of the Matriarchs

Last of the Matriarchs

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This month marks the 40th anniversary of a celebrated field researcher, Cynthia Moss. Ms. Moss began her field research in 1972 where she remains today, among the elephants of Amboseli in Kenya.

Moss was the 4th untrained volunteer woman who turned up in the field in the 1960s and early 1970s and became famous worldwide for big game conservation. Her species was elephant. The three who preceded her by a few years were Jane Goodall (chimps), Dian Fossey (mountain gorillas) and Birute Galdikas (orangutans).

What the four have in common is chutzpah. Only Galdikas had any higher science education. Moss had a higher education degree in philosophy, but the other two had no science education above secondary school.

The first three all obtained their first posts in Africa from the famous paleontologist Lewis Leakey who Vanity Fair argues chose them less for their potential as field researchers as for their amorous attachments to Leakey. Read the outstanding book by Virginia Morrell, Ancestral Passions.

Moss on the other hand seems to have been the only of the four recruited for potential field ability. Her mentor is the dean of elephant research in East Africa, Ian Douglas Hamilton.

Moss began studying elephants in what at the time and ever since has been one of the best elephant habitats in Africa, Amboseli national park in Kenya.

The four ladies popularized big game especially in America and harnessed enormous support for African conservation by bringing to life in very anthropomorphic ways their favorite animal. They would not have succeeded, today.

Not only were they untrained in biology or field research, none are very nice. They all operated as little dictators in their neck of Africa, and except for Moss, their science – especially their early science – was nothing short of grade-schoolish.

But it took several generations of researchers following them before that was understood. Today none of the four except Moss is cited for their research, but they are all rightfully honored for opening America’s eyes to the plight of big game conservation in Africa.

And without opening America’s eyes, there would not have been enough check books to open to fund the body of research and protection which has truly saved their favorite animals.

South Africans in particular are very sensitive about this, because good big game research had been going in southern Africa for nearly a century before these four wholly untrained “entertainers” hit the seen and captured America’s treasury.

But South Africa even before the excesses of extreme apartheid had never been able to attract the interest of American animal rights activists. Probably they didn’t want to.

In addition to being an inward society for centuries, South Africans had mistrusted Americans for a long while. There was never the chemistry between the two societies that would have enticed an American public to become Africa animal sensitive.

So East Africa was the perfect place for them. (Galdikas ultimately ended up in Malaysia.) Just coming out of the colonial era, no good extended animal research had been conducted of East Africa’s big game or primates.

Notably the great scientist, George Shaller of the Bronx Zoo, studied mountain gorillas that still today is considered to have been better research than Fossey’s. And he preceded her by several years. But Shaller never stayed anywhere very long.

That was what all four women did best: Stay.

Except for Fossey who was murdered in revenge for her likely racist attitude to Rwandans, the other three spent long lives with their chosen animal. In so doing they published popular books, were increasingly interviewed on television and invited as popular speakers throughout America. Like today’s better known animal people such as Jack Hanna, they were much more entertainers than scientists.

Moss was the only of the four who significantly contributed to science, and it’s probably the reason she’s the least known. The other three made their initial marks in personality scandals or with brash claims about their animals that have long since proved incorrect. Moss, a few years younger and later to the scene, conducted meticulous research with methods that are still used today by young researchers.

I had my own personal battles with the three in Africa, because they were all in the beginning defiant of tourism. Each was so protective of their distant escape to Africa, they shunned rich people’s donations rather than agree to welcome them into the field.

I as the guide was considered the facilitator of this disrespect and violation of their little self-proclaimed kingdoms. Guides were easier to blame and a lot less rich than the clients

That changed radically over time as it became apparent tourism was part and parcel to funding African conservation research. Today there is no important NGO that does not coordinate laymen tours to their areas of funded research.

Nevertheless, the personal animus developed between myself and all three African research ladies is still hard to ignore. At the time their sabotaging of some safari dear to my heart and essential to my bank account was tantamount to war in the field. I concede now, though, that without their personal and truly remarkable chutzpah East African conservation would likely be in a considerably worse state right now.

Moreover, I’m no more trained in tourism or guiding than they were in animal research. So despite our feuds, we can truly all be wrapped up into the same amateur motivation that drove us all: an intense love of Africa.

And this particular anniversary of Ms. Moss’ 40 years in the field is the easiest of them all to celebrate, since of all four women, her dedication has been the most sincere and has produced the most true science.

Happy Anniversary, Cynthia! As the last of the great matriarchs, none will assume your place, unlike the thousands of matriarchs you have nurtured and saved in the African wild.