Elephant
Collaring
By Gichuki Kabukuru
The ACC in conjunction with KWS and other
interested groups recently collared a pair of jumbos in the
southern Rift region of Shompole and Olkiramatian in Magadi;
Gichuki Kabukuru, a communications officer with the Kenya
Wildlife Service, thereafter had a face-to-face interview
Ken Mwathe, The Head of Ecology at the African Conservation
Center (ACC) on the importance and value of this kind of research
where elephant movement and general habits can be monitored
via satellite technology.
The
following are excerpts of their interview.
SOUTH
RIFT ELEPHANT PROJECT
a)
What motivated this idea of collaring?
The
South Rift Elephant Project’s motivation goes back more
than 16 hours ago. In 1990, Kenya’s elephant population
had plummeted from an all high of 167,000 in 1973 to only
16,000. This was due to massive poaching of elephants primarily
for ivory, whose back market thrived. Due to poaching, elephants
retreated to the safety of protected areas such as Amboseli,
Tsavo, Aberdares, Mt Kenya and a few private ranches in Laikipia.
The
formation of Kenya Wildlife Service in 1990 significantly
arrested the poaching, improved security both inside and outside
parks. As a result, within a short period of about 16 years,
the elephant population has nearly doubled to about 30,000
today.
This
increase in population and improved security has prompted
elephants to begin moving into their former dispersal areas.
In Kajiado district for example, there are young people about
20 years old who never saw elephants when they were growing
up but have been seeing them in recent years. In this district,
elephants have recently emerged in Magadi division group ranches
of Shompole and Olkiramatian. This is partly because of establishment
there of a conservation area measuring 20,000 hectares.
Elephants
are also being regularly sighted in the Kenya/Tanzania border
areas of Torosei, Meto, Kajiado Central, Namanga where they
cross the border into Tanzania and also to Amboseli. As the
elephants disperse conflict with people and livestock is inevitable
since some of their former range areas have been settled.
African
Conservation Centre has been working with communities in the
dispersal areas outside protected areas to promote benefits
through sustainable utilization of wildlife resources on their
land, which happen to be the new areas where elephants are
dispersing.
The
new phenomenon has raised the need for information. We need
to answer the questions:
- Where
are elephants dispersing to?
- What
is the status (tenure) of land into which they are dispersing?
- What
is the potential for conflict and how can these better
be resolved by better understanding elephant movement?
- What
land use options exist to facilitate local communities
to benefit from elephant conservation and tourism?
This
information will benefit the local people first. As the group
ranches become subdivided, information on critical elephant
areas will enable communities interested in tourism to accommodate
elephant needs when making decisions on how to utilize land.
KWS will be able to anticipate and mitigate human-elephant
conflicts. Their response time will also be reduced due to
access to readily available information.
b)
What is the cost of the whole exercise?
The
cost is about Ksh. 4 million ($50,000). One of the biggest
cost is that of satellite collars purchased from Televilt
in Sweden. One collar costs $5,600 (Apprx 400,000) and we
are using 4 collars for the whole exercise. The other costs
are those of hiring a helicopter, fuelling a fixed wing aircraft,
running of vehicles and providing food and accommodation to
participating team.
c)
Which teams are involved and why?
The
participating team is composed of members from the local community
– Shompole and Olkiramatian. Leaders and game scouts
from the two communities are involved in the operation but
were also part of the planning team. They are involved because
the elephants are dispersing on their land – they are
the primary stakeholders!
Others
involved are:
KWS
– legally mandated to conserve and protect wildlife
in Kenya
ACC
– A local NGO working in Kajiado, Narok and Northern
Kenya, promoting community benefits through sustainable use
of wildlife. ACC also encourages retention of open lands in
order to benefit wildlife outside protected areas
Save
the Elephants – This NGO has many years experience in
monitoring and collaring elephants in northern Kenya
Ol
Donyo Laro Lodge – This is one of the tourism enterprises
in the Magadi sub-region
The
Art of Ventures (AOV) – Together with Shompole community,
they run the Shompole Lodge. Elephants add value to tourism
in their facility.
d)
What are the risks involved?
When
dealing with wild animals there is always an inherent risk
if they run beserk. Elephants are even more dangerous because
of their sheer size and well known social cohesion. Darting
a female can especially be risky if the rest attempt to protect
her. This could make fitting of the collar difficult. However
we have put in place to ensure that such things are in control
during the exercise.
Other
risks include those associated with the use of a helicopter
and fixed wing aircrafts.
e)
Explain the technology and how it works
The
elephant collars use the Global Positioning System (GPS) to
send data from the elephant to the user’s work station.
GPS is a system that was first developed and used by the US
Army to find the precise position of enemy targets. It uses
satellites (rotating in space) to define the exact location
of an entity to within certain limits of accuracy. The accuracy
of US Army is 2m while that of GPS units used for research
is 8 metres.
It
is this GPS which is fitted into the collar. This vital unit
will be constantly sending information to the user at regular
intervals (e.g 1 hour). The collar can be programmed by the
users to adjust the intensity of sending data.
In
our case, data will be sent to the satellites which will then
be downloaded into Televilt’s server in Sweden. This
data will then be sent to Save the Elephant’s geodatabase
which is housed at Wilson Airport (Rivercross Tech). From
this database, the end users – ACC, KWS etc can download
information on specific elephants. The elephant positions
are displayed as dots within a background map overlay of the
project area.
f) What is the use of the data collected and who will
be responsible
The
data will be used to:
- Make
better land use decisions by the communities
- Determine
the location of elephants and therefore anticipate and
mitigate human elephant conflicts
- Provide
information that enables a better understanding of elephant
ecology in the project area
g)
What is the opinion of the community in this whole exercise
The
community has been part of the planning of the exercise and
they are very supportive. But more importantly, they have
benefited from conservation through tourism via other projects.
In other words, the elephant collaring is not the first activity
being undertaken by the actors in this community. The communities
can and do identify such as such as Shompole Lodge, Sampu
Tented Camp, Shompole Domestic Bandas, Shompole and Olkiramatian
Game scouts and Shompole Women Bandas
h)
Who is funding the whole operation
US
Fish and Wildlife Service
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