World Elephant Day was celebrated on August 12th.
The practice of giving over a day’s significance to a cause or event worth drawing attention to has become quite widespread. The modern world uses the earmarking of a day as a chance to maintain momentum for the causes that need it. We use it to mark remembrance for the events that define us. We’ve used them to enlighten and educate on the past that’s been forgotten.
With wildlife, we use days such as World Elephant Day to do all of those things: to remember, to educate and to keep us on track. However, researchers at the Griffith University in Australia have found another measure of usefulness for days such as World Elephant Day.
Through the careful analysis of all tweets that the day produced in relation to elephant, Griffith University believe they have created an evaluation of how much modern human societies know about elephants and their present security in the world.
Outdated concerns suggesting a lack of awareness for modern elephant conservation issues?
One of the primary purposes of this weekly bulletin that we produce is in educating you, are stakeholders, on the shifting challenges that we face as elephant conservationists. From the beginning, we have ensured that this blog gives you an honest, up-to-date insight into what we face and in what ways we predict elephant’s existence will be shaped in the future.
Regular readers will therefore be very aware that, in Kenya, as in much of southern and eastern Africa, poaching is not so great a challenge as it once was. In early 2021, we were able to inform our readers of the fact that only 11 elephant were poached in the entire country.
This has coincided with a notable stabilisation of the historically well-advertised population decline of the last few decades. In Kenya, in fact, the elephant population is growing.
Resultantly, the elephant conservationists of Kenya know that their challenges cannot be easily couched within the narrative of protecting elephant populations from decline. In fact, our mission, as we see it today, is in ensuring that this country is well-shaped for a peaceful cohabitation between humans and elephant.
If you want to read in greater detail about the challenges we face in a world where elephant population recovery is a possibility, you can do so here.
Nowadays, we discuss habitat loss and human elephant conflict more often than we do poaching. It seems, however, that the tweets brought about as we celebrated, educated and remembered on World Elephant Day were not reflective of the changes to the conversation about elephant conservation.
Findings from Griffith University’s analysis of World Elephant Day tweets
Griffiths University’s study was conceived on the acknowledged assumption that twitter was one of the modern world’s more powerful platforms for the sharing of conservation news.
Researchers found that there was indeed a huge uptick in tweets referencing elephant conservation. They also found that the majority, 72%, of tweeters with an identifiable geo-location were not from elephant range territories. Amongst this demographic, those removed from the realities of living alongside elephants, tweets were most likely to reference elephant welfare concerns and trophy hunting of elephant.
Elephant welfare is, of course, always a concern regardless of the species long-term security but trophy hunting is not considered a threat to the existence of elephant.
Contrastingly, tweeters from elephant range countries did mention the more pressing concerns elephant face. Those from African range countries (14% of elephant-related tweets) were most likely to mention human-elephant conflict, poaching and elephant-related tourism.
The picture varied slightly in Asian range countries (13% of tweets), where poaching was not referenced but human-elephant conflict and elephant-related tourism were mentioned.
Considerations for those concerned with elephant conservation’s forward-planning
Commentators that have read the Griffiths research have been quick to point out the mismatch in perceived concerns relating to elephant between people that live amongst them and those that only know elephant from afar.
Certain tweets made reference to the fact that non-rangeland commentators did not fully understand the causes they were tweeting in support of.
What is of further, and equally worrying, interest is the fact that less than 1% of total tweets paid mind to the threat habitat destruction poses to elephant conservation. Neither rangeland neighbours nor international tweeters seemed to show a real understanding of the growing threat that this poses to both elephant and the humans that live alongside them.