Using Poaching Levels and Elephant Distribution to Assess the Conservation Efficacy of Private, Communal and Government Land in Northern Kenya

Abstract

Efforts to curb elephant poaching have focused on reducing demand, confiscating ivory and boosting security patrols in elephant range. Where land is under multiple uses and ownership, determining the local poaching dynamics is important for identifying successful conservation models. Using 2,403 verified elephant, Loxodonta africana, mortality records collected from 2002 to 2012 and the results of aerial total counts of elephants conducted in 2002, 2008 and 2012 for the Laikipia-Samburu ecosystem of northern Kenya, we sought to determine the influence of land ownership and use on diurnal elephant distribution and on poaching levels. We show that the annual proportions of illegally killed (i.e., poached) elephants increased over the 11 years of the study, peaking at 70% of all recorded deaths in 2012. The type of land use was more strongly related to levels of poaching than was the type of ownership. Private ranches, comprising only 13% of land area, hosted almost half of the elephant population and had significantly lower levels of poaching than other land use types except for the officially designated national reserves (covering only 1.6% of elephant range in the ecosystem). Communal grazing lands hosted significantly fewer elephants than expected, but community areas set aside for wildlife demonstrated significantly higher numbers of elephants and lower illegal killing levels relative to non-designated community lands. While private lands had lower illegal killing levels than community conservancies, the success of the latter relative to other community-held lands shows the importance of this model of land use for conservation. This work highlights the relationship between illegal killing and various land ownership and use models, which can help focus anti-poaching activities.

Poaching lowers elephant path tortuosity: implications for conservation

“…The PIKE is a reliable metric for comparing levels of illegal killing even between sites with different sampling efforts per unit area (Douglas‐Hamilton et al , Jachmann ). Despite PIKE comprising both human‐elephant conflict incidents and poaching ones, in the Laikipia‐Samburu MIKE site, poaching accounts for the highest numbers of illegally killed elephants, with over 91% of illegally killed elephants in the MIKE site in any of the years studied (Ihwagi et al ). Because the number of poached carcasses represents the majority of all illegally killed elephants, the estimates of PIKE in the ecosystem are almost synonymous with the actual poaching levels, and we can thus make direct reference to poaching levels in many instances.…”

“…A participatory network verifies each report of a dead elephant (Kahindi et al ). During the 2007 to 2012 poaching surge, the levels of poaching in the ecosystem increased in tandem with the continental trend, and even some of the previously safe land units, like private ranches, were affected by the surge (Douglas‐Hamilton et al , Ihwagi et al ). Our study goal was to evaluate elephants’ behavioral adaptation to the increasing levels of illegal killing in their core foraging areas using path tortuosity as the main study parameter.…”

Optimizing the positioning of wildlife crossing structures using GPS telemetry

“…We therefore conducted a parallel analysis on a subset of the total dataset comprised of 40 individuals collared in 2014–2015 where collars were deployed systematically across the MIKE site. These GPS locations are representative of elephant density in the ecosystem as characterized by aerial survey data collected in 2002, 2008 and 2012 and locations of natural mortality collected as part of the MIKE ecosystem wide monitoring program (Ihwagi et al., ). This dataset can be considered spatially unbiased.…”

Developing a theory of change for a community‐based response to illegal wildlife trade

“…; Ihwagi et al. ). The actions in pathway B aim to develop or support initiatives or enterprises that can generate local benefits from wildlife and build individual and community capacity to benefit from these initiatives.…”