Over the last year, with the results of Kenya’s first national wildlife census offering us inarguable proof, we had the absolute pleasure of reporting on the recovery of Kenya’s elephant population.
Prior to the nation-wide census of last year, statistics on Kenya’s wildlife could only ever be roughly estimated. Those outdated and outmoded assessments suggested that, in the 1980s, Kenya’s elephant populations were as low as 16,000.
By dividing the country up into quadrants and through the nation-wide coordination of air, ground and, when the terrain permitted, aquatic teams, 2021’s wildlife census yielded the most up-to-date and reliable results on the state of this country’s wildlife that has ever been compiled. With the results published, we can now confidently put Kenya’s elephant population in the region of 36,280 elephant individuals.
That is a remarkable recovery over forty years and is proof of the effectiveness of Kenya’s aggressive anti-poaching stance (the specifics of which you can read more about here).
This recovery, as remarkable and unforeseeable as it was once considered, does not mean that Kenya’s elephant are out of danger. The African savanna elephant is still categorised as endangered by the International Centre for Conservation of Nature. It’s close relative, the African forest elephant is considered critically so.
What’s more, as wildlife protection services such as Kenya’s get a handle on poaching, the threat to African elephant changes. Habitat loss, increased instances of human/wildlife conflict and the effects of climate change are of increasing concern to conservationists.
Interestingly, and perhaps perversely, even the successes conservationists witness in combatting population decline are posing new challenges.
Wildlife conservation: population bounce-back and which spaces these returning creatures will inhabit
As we, resulting from good governance and incredible fortunes, witness the recovery of elephant population sizes, Kenya must consider how this bounce-back is to be managed.
Though stories of population recovery are dismayingly few and far between, there are case studies, taken from other parts of the world, that indicate as to the complications inherent in species recovery.
The 18th and 19th centuries saw humanity’s thirst for meat, furs, tusks, horns and fats combine with huge leaps forward in its ability to acquire them. For many of the planet’s varied animal species, this combination acted to devastating effect.
Whales, seals, rhino, elephant, big cats and the varied species of shark are only some of the more high profile creatures to fall afoul to this combination of phenomena. Many – the various rhino species being a great example of this – of these animals are yet to, or may never fully, recover.
However, there are some species, helped by protective policies, that are now witnessing a population bounce-back. In so doing, these creatures are forced to find spaces to fulfil their natural functions in a world that, year-on-year, becomes more easily defined by its human colonizers than its animal.
Veronica Frans, a PhD student at the University of Michigan recently authored an article on just this phenomena and how the handling of it will come to define a huge part of our relationship with conservation as we move forward.
Miss Frans used the case studies of three different recovering species to offer us an indication as to the complications of population recovery.
There are instances of recovery that are almost universally welcomed. Recovering whale populations, as seen from the Falklands’ coastlines, for example, brings the islands’ inhabitants great joy with little interruption to the habits they established while whale populations languished.
However, there are species, those that can be considered a threat to people or property, which, in their recovery, are not so unanimously welcomed.
The decline of global shark populations is quite well documented and readers of the Tsavo Trust’s articles will not be surprised by the knowledge that this trend is expected to continue as long as international fishing regulations continue to fail in their role as protectors of these keystone creatures.
However, there is evidence to suggest that protective policies along the North American coast is resulting in something of a bounce-back for the white shark. This recovery, unlike those of the Falklands’ whales, is causing some controversy.
White sharks are one of the few species known to attack human beings and their increased prevalence along the U.S.’s New England coast is the cause of some controversy amongst the seaside industry’s stakeholders. Shark sightings can cause a disruption to the tourism industry and, in worst case scenarios, the presence of these creatures results in conflict.
In 2018, a white shark was credited with attacking a swimmer off Cape Code. This event, understandably, caused anxiety, not to mention grief, amongst the local population.
Kenya’s returning elephant: a welcome homecoming with question marks over how they’ll fare with the neighbours
In another of the case studies looked into by Veronica Frans, sea lions were monitored as they returned to New Zealand’s mainland. New Zealand sea lions were, over the last 150 years, hunted nearly to extinction. As a result, they were forced to limit their nesting to some subantarctic islands 300 miles away from the mainland.
However, as a result of this species recovery, these creatures are returning to their historic nesting grounds. On their return, however, the New Zealand sea lion is coming into contact with humans that have now settled in the area.
The New Zealand sea lion is one of the least populous of the world’s sea lion species. It’s nesting females typically travel over a mile inland from the coast in order to have their offspring. It is thought that they do so to avoid the rougher conditions nearer the sea.
With this return, however, the New Zealand sea lions have been hit by cars and occasionally come up against afraid and, resultantly, violent peoples. According to accounts given to researchers of this returning species, the sea lions have been intentionally killed, been found up against fences or even located inside swimming pools.
It’s an interesting development, one not without its travesties. And, what’s more, it poses interesting considerations that can, and should, be adapted to the regrowth of Kenya’s African elephant population.
As Kenya’s elephant return, the elephant conservationist’s challenge is to ensure this homecoming runs smoothly. Today, Kenya’s human population is estimated at around 52 million. At the end of the 1950s, it stood at around 8 million.
While Kenya’s elephant populations plummeted, its human population soared and, inevitably, moved into some of the spaces vacated by the former’s decline. What’s more, and this is something our readers are well aware of, elephant are migratory creatures. They travel great distances seasonally, often searching for water or favoured food sources.
Kenya’s wildest spaces are, to a degree that its government can be proud of, protected to this day. However, the gaps in between these areas are filling up with human development.
As the conversation, in Kenya if nowhere else in Africa, shifts its focus away from poaching, it becomes increasingly concerned with the issues inherent in this change. Conservationists must now focus on financing the protection of migratory corridors, on ensuring that human settlements are protected from roaming elephant, and in making sure the food and water sources available to Kenya’s elephant are always available to them.
This is conservation in Kenya’s modernity. As PhD candidate, Veronica Frans, puts it at the end of her article, the encounters between these returning creatures and the humans they meet “won’t always be easy to manage, but … when communities understand the changes and are involved in planning for them, they can prepare for the unexpected, with coexistence in mind.”