The close of 2021 brought about an end to one of the more tumultuous years in recent human history. For many, the end of 2021 fosters optimism and a desire to realign our future with the trajectory stolen from us as the globe struggled to adapt to the arrival of the COVID-19.
However, as many of the articles we published over the course of last year make clear, the relationship between conservation and COVID is less easily confined to negativity. In many cases, the pandemic allowed the natural world a respite from human exploitation. In others, the lack of tourism, gave us time to reflect on our previous practices.
But, of course, we can’t so easily define the coronavirus’ impact on conservation as entirely positive either. Over the last year, we reported on how we’d noticed an upturn in bushmeat poaching as tourism dropped and jobs in the industry were lost. What’s more, at the start of the pandemic, organisations like ours witnessed how economic uncertainty resulted in a drop-off in charitable donations.
To add even more complexity to the relationship between the coronavirus and conservation, we discovered new elements to the tourist/wildlife relationship. With parks emptied of tourists, rangers in Botswana and South Africa noted a spike in Rhino poaching. They accredited this spike to the lost surveillance that tourgoers previously provided for the creatures.
Once we’d considered this, we began to ask ourselves what our return might mean to the animals that had enjoyed their greatest holiday from holidaymakers since holidays had taken people to the world’s wild spaces.
2021: Coronavirus & Conservation, and a complicated year in review
As we look back on the year past, it’s easy to see why it allowed for such close reflection. It’s similarly clear that a lot of what we reflected on was long overdue.
We, at the Tsavo Trust, with our specific aim of elephant conservation and in our jurisdiction over the Tsavo Conservation Area, were incredibly proud of the results that this reflection uncovered.
We played a part in Kenya’s first nation-wide wildlife census, were immensely proud of the privilege of doing so, and found great cause for celebration in the results found.
Despite that the general trend, continent-wide, is of the African elephant’s decline and that no clear accounting had been done before on Kenya’s elephant populations, here, the census suggested, Elephant numbers are on the increase.
Furthermore, as encouraging as these results were in isolation, the fact that this first-of-its-kind census was conducted is a great step in optimising Kenya’s conservationist capability and efficiency. Surveillance and monitoring will be hugely benefitted by this benchmark moving forward.
If you want to read more about the census and its results, you can do so here.
Tsavo Trust in 2022: Elephant, Community and Conservation in the New Year
We at the Trust look forward to a world of eased restrictions. We are excited to see increased footfall in Kenya’s national parks and increased engagement between the international community and Kenya’s wildlife. But we also look to this New Year with the hope that the lessons learnt over the last few are taken aboard.
Tourism was once considered the greatest tool in the conservationist’s arsenal. As habitats were being destroyed and wildlife witnessed indiscriminate exploitation in the latter 20th century, conservationists sought to present photographic tourism was a better, more sustainable source of income to the peoples that lived alongside wildlife.
(If you want to read more about the complex, and developing, relationship between tourism and conservation, you can do so here)
Today, wildlife tourism’s value is proven to many. In Kenya certainly, the national government understands all too well how important safari tourism is to the economy. Slowly, and however staggeringly, local populations do see this benefit.
A new year in conservation: resolutions as we move forward
It is no longer so important that we convince those that live alongside wildlife of its value as a living resource. It now falls to us conservationists to shape this relationship so that, within it, the natural world is not taken advantage of.
With the last few years’ worth of lessons in mind, we at the Tsavo Trust resolve to consider this new year as one of consolidation and optimisation. Conservation is still about engagement with wild spaces’ neighbouring peoples but it is less about the initial attempts to prove the value of this relationship.
It is more about consolidating on the victories gained in this sphere and optimising the programmes and mechanisms we have in place to ensure this close relationship can work to both sides’ benefit.
In order to do this, we, as we do year-on-year, will continue to reflect on our operational capability, our relationships with the international money markets and the tour industry here in Kenya, and we intend to ensure that all are best geared toward providing the best possible protection to Kenyan wildlife, and Tsavo’s elephants in particular.
Here’s to another good year!