Kenya is welcoming an increasing elephant population after a concerted effort by the government, and nonprofits, to put an end to illegal poaching. Not only does the number of elephants poached in 2020 so far pale in comparison to the previous year, but the elephant population at large has more than doubled in the past three decades.
Owing to extensive poaching for ivory, Kenya’s elephant population dipped to a devastating low of 16,000 in 1989. Africa at large was home to 1.3 million elephants in the 1970s; as of 2020, only half a million remain, but that number is rising.
The hunting and poaching of elephants is already illegal; in order to deter poachers further, the Kenyan government has recently imposed longer jail sentences and heftier fines for infractions of the law.
Eighty recorded Kenyan elephant deaths at the hands of poachers—who largely sell ivory for use in traditional Asian medicines—occurred in 2018, said Balala. Thirty-four elephants were killed for their ivory tusks in 2019, and seven unlawful elephant deaths have been recorded in 2020 so far.
As a result, the previously catastrophic hit to Africa’s native elephant population is starting to subside. The absence of so many active poachers—“tamed” by the Kenyan government, as well as deterred by the global pandemic—has made space for an elephant population increase in Kenya to upward of 34,000 as of 2018.
In particular, Kenya’s Amboseli National Park at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro is experiencing a veritable baby boom.
Some early initiatives implemented in the last few decades include the following: In 1989, the Kenya Wildlife Service was inaugurated, making the anti-poaching movement visible to the masses; in January 1990, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) imposed an international ban on trading ivory.
“And unlike in the late eighties, the public has forgotten about this issue.”
In 2016, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta reminded citizens of the perils of poaching by burning thousands of seized ivory elephant tusks and rhinoceros horns at Nairobi National Park as a symbolic warning to poachers of the illegal trade.
Kenya’s 2020 elephant numbers, however, inspire hope into a previously gloomy outlook. Both governmental and NGO anti-poachers continue to work diligently, waiting with bated breath to see what will transpire for the African elephant.
