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Port of Call |
LAST UPDATE July 12, 2005
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| site design imagesparkle.com |
| February 28, 2005 |
Mombasa, Kenya – Dealing with the Effects of Poaching in Tsavo National Park |
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| Residents of the barren, yet beautiful savannahs of Southern Kenya find it difficult to make a living from the land. |
Rich in large game and other wildlife, the savannahs and bush lands of Tsavo National Park in southern Kenya are thought by some to be ideal for game drives and safaris. Every year, thousands of tourists visit the park’s 8000 square miles of pristine wilderness, eager to catch a glimpse of the multitude of animal and bird species residing within its borders. What many tourists do not see, however, is the terrible poverty that people in the area are experiencing.
Tsavo National Park was founded, in large part, due to its extreme inhospitableness. With an average annual rainfall of less than 20 inches, arid soil composure, and enormous population of disease-carrying insects, the area was determined to be unsuitable for agriculture or the raising of livestock. The areas surrounding the park, as well, experience similar conditions and residents of the area find it incredibly difficult to secure a livelihood. In such circumstances, people are often forced to take desperate measures in order to support themselves. |
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| This display of the jawbones of poached elephants and rhinoceroses helps visitors to comprehend the severity of the problem of poaching. |
Poaching, the illegal killing of wildlife, is one such measure that some residents have resorted to in response to the increasingly difficult conditions they are facing. “The areas surrounding the park are incredibly poor and are growing poorer,” Mr. Jackson Kingoo, a Research Warden with the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) explained. “They have almost no way to make a living and must find some way to survive; poaching provides that.” In Tsavo National Park, poaching mainly takes two forms: poaching for bush meat and poaching for ivory.
According to Mr. Kingoo, poaching animals for their meat has become a significant problem over the past three to four years. This meat is consumed locally, as well as sold in larger cities, where it is used as a cheap source of protein. In many cases, bush meat is the only source of dietary protein available to residents of rural areas. Poachers in search of meat have developed ruthless, terribly efficient ways of tracking, stunning, and killing their prey; an experienced poacher can have a significant impact on a herd of dikdik (a type of small antelope) in a single night. The poached animals, however, can help the poacher support his family, as well as provide the area with a desperately-needed source of protein. |
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| Many lives, elephant as well as human, are lost every year due to poaching. |
While poaching for bush meat is a relatively recent problem, the problem of ivory poaching is one that conservationists have been facing for many years. Ivory has long been valued for its beauty and utility, particularly in Asian countries, and ivory products are readily available in many places all over the world. In fact, Japan holds the unfortunate honor of being one of the largest consumers of ivory in the world. Every year, hundreds of elephants are killed to provide Japanese consumers with ivory name seals, items that could just as easily be made with wood, stone, or plastic.
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| Elephants require regular feedings of milk for the first two years of their lives. |
In the 1970s, there were an estimated 37,000 elephants residing in Tsavo National Park. By 1990, that number had dropped to less than 5,000. Increased ivory poaching, combined with a severe drought in the early 1970s, brought about the deaths of more than 22,000 elephants. Through the tireless efforts of KWS over the past 15 years, however, this number has grown to almost 10,000.
More than fifty Peace Boat Participants had the opportunity to travel to Tsavo National Park during their visit to Kenya and talk with Mr. Kingoo about KWS’s Research Center and its commitment to conserving Kenya’s rich natural heritage. One of the many tasks KWS has undertaken to help increase the number of elephants in the park is its Elephant Orphanage programme, which is sponsored by the Daivid Sheldrick Wildlife Trust.
Elephants are incredibly advanced animals; they have intricately developed social behaviors and many of their behaviors are learned, rather than instinctual. Because of this, orphaned calves usually perish if they are not quickly adopted into another herd. KWS’s Elephant Orphanage programme was established to help these young elephants learn the practical and social skills necessary to fully integrate into an adoptive herd. |
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| Learning about the effects of poaching is the first stop to preventing it. |
Through a visit to the orphanage, participants were able to spend time with the orphaned elephants and see KWS’s efforts first-hand. There, handlers spend 24 hours a day with the calves, helping them to recover from the trauma of seeing their mothers killed and teaching them valuable life skills. Fukazawa Yuji, a 22 year-old Peace Boat participant, was particularly impressed with the orphanage’s work. “Because Japanese buy a lot of ivory, I believe we should tell people what we’ve seen in the orphanage when we return,” he told fellow participants. “Just saying that there is a problem isn’t enough; we need to tell them specifically about the things we’ve seen here.” |
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Mr. Kingoo was hopeful about the results of Peace Boat’s fourth visit to the orphanage. “You are now ambassadors of Kenya to Japan. We know that Japan is one of the largest ivory markets, but you taking the time and resources to come here and see our work, this can make a difference. It would be very important if we were to see a decline in the demand for ivory. This would lead to a decline in the number of lives, human and elephant, lost to the pursuit of ivory.”
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Link:
The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust – http://sheldrickwildlifetrust.org
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