Little Fellow was a good-looking young bull with splayed tusks and ear lobes that curled out. We estimated that he was about 16 years old, just reaching puberty.

But Little Fellow would not live long enough to pass his genes on to the next generation.

Over a period of six weeks he had been treated several times by the Kenya Wildlife Service veterinarian for a spear wound. The beep-beep-beep of a metal detector indicated that part of the spearhead was still lodged in his left front leg.

His injured leg was twice the size it should be. One look at it was enough to know that he wouldn’t pull through, despite the vet’s heroic efforts and the vigils of those, both elephant and human, who came to comfort him.

Pus oozed from the gaping wound. Septicemia had set in, and the infection was coursing through his body.

Exhausted, Little Fellow rested his head in the fork of a tree to take some weight off his body, especially his right front leg. (ElephantVoices/Petter Granli)

His infected leg was swollen to gigantic proportions. (ElephantVoices/Petter Granli)

Little Fellow could no longer walk. With tremendous effort, he could muster a sort of hop, dragging his enormous leg with him. He rested often, his trunk draped over a fork in a tree, seeking momentary relief from the suffering.

He knew he couldn’t lie down again—he’d learned that when he was immobilized for treatment and was unable to get back up without assistance from ropes attached to a vehicle.

Despite exhaustion and agony, Little Fellow was fighting for his life with dignity and purpose, staying near water, good pasture, and shade—within yards of the safety of the Conservancy Manager’s house.

He wasn’t the first male we knew who had come to die here. Lekuta, a mature elephant twice speared for his tusks and treated many times for the wounds, had also died close to Manager’s house. His bones lay scattered nearby, and elephant dung strewn among them was testimony that he had not been forgotten.

On Monday, February 25, Little Fellow died. Like Lekuta, he will not be forgotten by the people or the elephants who have cared about him.

The Urgency is Real

Born in the late 1990s, Little Fellow entered a world that was pretty safe for elephants. But today, 24 years on, it certainly isn’t. The ongoing slaughter is threatening the survival of the species, as well as tourism, economies, and stability in many African countries.

Little Fellow knew nothing about CITES CoP16, the meeting currently taking place in Bangkok, Thailand. He knew nothing of the many documents, arguments, and words that CITES attendees and experts have spent on elephants.

CITES is the organization whose mandate is to ensure that species are not endangered by international trade. It is the only instrument the world has to set boundaries on the exploitation of species and to decide upon global action when one is under siege.

The CITES delegations know nothing about Little Fellow. But they do know about the shocking number of at least 25,000 elephants killed last year for their tusks.

Based on what we know and what we hear, the actual number may be as high as 50,000. That’s ten percent of all the remaining elephants in Africa—a terrible and terrifying reduction in a single year.

We believe that the controversial CITES-approved one-off sales of ivory to China and Japan have contributed to the current mass killings of elephants by stimulating a huge increase in the demand for ivory.

We can only hope that Little Fellow didn’t die in vain. We can only hope that this time CITES and its member states will put elephants above trade and profit and stem the ongoing massacre.

We’re not in Bangkok. But from Kenya we’re following closely how CITES confronts the current crisis. Thailand’s Prime Minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, set the right tone when opening CoP16 on Sunday, March 3, by promising to ban Thailand’s internal ivory trade. We hope she has inspired other state leaders as well. If similar action is followed in China, the lives of tens of thousands of elephants could be spared.

We wish all the delegations a successful conference, and we urge that sound science, not politics and horse-trading, be allowed to prevail.

It is with a feeling of déjà vu and deep sorrow, though little surprise, that we find ourselves living through, and battling against, another elephant massacre. Our lack of surprise relates to the torpedoing of the 1989 ivory trade ban by legalized sales from stockpiles. The demand for ivory is not static—it can be massive or small depending on the market environment we provide. The controversial one-off sales simply gave the wrong signals to potential buyers and to the whole chain of people involved in the destructive business of elephant poaching.

Those arguing (again) for a “sustainable trade” in ivory ignore the principles of population biology associated with long-lived species like elephants, and they overlook the corruption and (lack of) ethics associated with their exploitation.

The way to stop this carnage is to make the trading and buying of ivory a serious crime and to create a stigma around wearing and displaying ivory. To stop the senseless killing of tens of thousands of elephants each year, we must let the full force of international and national laws and attitudes make it risky and shameful to buy, trade, and supply ivory.

It shouldn’t be impossible—if we stop sending mixed messages. And we need Asian governments, and China in particular, on board. Everyone needs to know that behind each new tusk on the market is another death and more destruction. We need top educate the people in question through public awareness, and there needs to be efficient law enforcement carried out by the countries of principal demand. We can only reduce the trade NOW with targeted government intervention, both in countries representing demand and supply.

We need your help to reach decision makers and potential buyers. To make the campaign described in our press release go viral, we are trying something a little different. To find out, read on!

Please help us end the massacre of the elephants!

Joyce and Petter

“We are asking people to help us reach out to potential buyers of ivory who don’t realize that elephants are dying in record-high numbers for trinkets and decorations. The only way to stop this wanton slaughter of elephants is to choke demand for ivory and stop the trade,” states Joyce Poole in an ElephantVoices news release accompanying the release of this poster. ”ElephantVoices is doing something unique by making the graphic art available online in several versions, so they can be shared on social networks and be used for T-shirts, bumper-stickers, posters and banners”, says Executive Director, Petter Granli.

“We urge people to share these messages far and wide, making them go viral. The poaching is endangering elephants, jeopardizing biodiversity, and threatening tourism, people’s livelihoods and stability in elephant range states. The writing is on the wall for elephants and we must act now”, Poole says in the statement.

Read the ElephantVoices News Release

Download and share the Asher Jay artworks

Thankfully, the traffic was light at that early hour, giving us mental space to contemplate the gathering we were to attend. We dreaded to think how many elephants would be on the final list. Our own educated guess was 150 individuals, plus or minus a few. Whatever the figure, we knew it would represent just those whose carcasses had been found. There were others out there, hidden in dense vegetation, in places without patrols, whose deaths would never be tallied. How many bodies and bones of males lay there still? How many females? How many calves had succumbed to starvation and grief caused by their mothers’ deaths? How many of them in the bush and on the day’s lists were elephants we had painstakingly photographed, registered, and described on our databases, but whose deaths we would never record?

Two days after an adult female was found killed nearby, adult male m0243 was seen looking after this six-year-old calf. Photo courtesy of ElephantVoices.

“We couldn’t use the word harmonize without cringing a bit.”

The goal for the day was not pretty. We were to meet with other stakeholders at the Narok County headquarters of the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) to “harmonize” the 2012 elephant mortalities that we had each collected from the world-renowned Maasai Mara ecosystem. We couldn’t use the word harmonize without cringing a bit. Synchronize would have been a better term, as there seemed nothing harmonious or agreeable about the task ahead.

The stakeholders had been called at short notice and came from across the Maasai Mara. There were representatives from KWS, Narok and Transmara County Councils, conservancies, NGOs and scientists, all gathered in a small room. We came armed with our dead—on paper, in pictures, in files, in folders, on spreadsheets, and in our databases. Many of them were also in our hearts, as individuals we’d known. Lekuta and Tenebo, two mature males named, respectively, by Olare Orok and Siana Conservancy scouts, were on the list. The beautiful matriarch, Goodness, so named by Mara Naboisho Conservancy Guide Derrick Nabaala, for her gentle disposition, was listed too. All three had been speared to death for their tusks.

The entire day went discussing the geo-referenced graveyards of elephants, the tusks that had been recovered, and lost, and the individuals’ gruesome deaths by shooting, spearing, and poisoned arrows. We clarified those who had died naturally, were slain in conflict with people over diminishing resources, or were killed for their ivory tusks. Had all been geo-referenced? For without a GPS point, they could not be verified and would not be counted among the dead. We added our “new” victims and struck the double-counted from the list.

“Look, look, look what is happening to our elephants! STOP the killing! STOP the trade!”

We worked until the end of the day when we made our way back home; others continued through the following day until every entry had been checked and agreed upon. Meant to take place every quarter, we have been waiting for this process. Once the data are harmonized, we may go to the press with the grisly figures, we may post them on Facebook, we may shout to the world with the hard facts, the undeniable evidence: “Look, look, look what is happening to our elephants! STOP the killing! STOP the trade!”

Meanwhile, the 2013 tally has begun, and the killing continues: six in January in one Mara conservancy alone. We are told that many people in China think that elephants shed their tusks, like antlers. The gruesome message that every tusk costs a life has to reach these buyers. We have to make the purchase of ivory, like the wearing of spotted cat fur coats, something to be scorned and despised.

Wearing a GPS collar allowing researchers to monitor his movements, Omondi pauses to listen. Like so many Mara males, he has a festering arrow wound. Photo courtesy of ElephantVoices.

As long as there is a market for ivory, it will have value. As long as it has value, it will be a resource controlled by people with power. The trade in ivory in Kenya, as elsewhere, is a corrupt and dirty business. Everywhere we go, we hear the same refrain: “It’s always like this during an election year,” or “It won’t get better until after the elections;” people insinuating that politicians are engaged in the trade in ivory to raise money for their campaigns. It may be true, but the scale of the problem is far, far deeper than that, and we are under no illusions that it will get better after the elections in early March, unless we act in unison and speak with one voice.

What does it actually mean to “harmonize” elephant mortality, and why should we do it? The simple answer is that with many people engaged in elephant conservation in Kenya, we need to agree on the actual figures so that we can document what is going on and react in an appropriate way. In reality the situation is a bit more complex.

To explain requires a bit of history. Prior to 1990 African elephants were on Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), permitting the sale of ivory from elephant range states under a quota system. It was a system open to so much abuse that East Africa lost 85 percent of her elephants in 15 years, and the continental elephant population plummeted from 1.3 million to 600,000.

In 1989 the Parties to CITES voted to place African elephants on Appendix I, thereby enacting a ban on international trade in ivory. The vote was certainly not unanimous, and many southern African countries and their trading partners were against it.

The next ten years saw both the slow recovery of populations of these long-lived mammals, but also the eroding of the ban. Several southern African country elephant populations were down-listed to Appendix II and so-called “one-off” sales of their ivory stockpiles were permitted to Japan and China.

Babies elephants at play in the relative safety of one of the conservancies. Photo courtesy of ElephantVoices.

In 2000, in response to concerns that these sales would stimulate the market, the Parties to CITES initiated a program called Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants, or MIKE for short. The MIKE program involves collecting specific data on elephant mortality from some 52 “MIKE sites” or populations of monitored elephants across Africa, with one of its primary aims being to monitor whether and how the decisions taken at CITES might be impacting levels of poaching on the ground.

While these data have provided a valuable indicator of poaching trends, they have also been highly criticized for not being able to prove or disprove any causality between ivory stockpile sales and levels of poaching. Already in 2007 there were telltale signs that all was not well, but as the number of poached elephants continued to rise, there was strong disagreement about whether the down-listings and stock-pile sales were the cause or whether the “ban” (undermined by them) was no longer working. By the end of 2012, the poaching situation was completely out of control, and MIKE was still unable to conclude whether the ivory sales were the cause!

There were other issues with MIKE that had troubled us. While MIKE has provided facts and figures to the authorities, in some countries it may also have led to a delay in sounding the alarm about the killing of elephants for ivory.

Kenya has two official MIKE sites, Tsavo and Samburu/Laikipia. In addition, the presence of elephant projects in Amboseli and Maasai Mara has also allowed detailed mortality records to be collected according to MIKE criteria.

A family with orphans led by a young female finds the road a good place for a mud wallow. Photo courtesy of ElephantVoices.

Scientists love facts and figures, as do government officials. Facts and figures mean information, and control of such information means power. Those who collect data often want to use it for their own purposes and may be reluctant to share it. Individuals and institutions may also keep a lid on figures because they don’t like what they reveal and may, therefore, want to control access to them.

In the early 1990s, when Joyce headed the Elephant Program for KWS, she set up an Elephant Mortality Database to help KWS monitor its anti-poaching efforts as well as the success of the ivory trade ban that had been enacted by CITES. It is this database that now holds the MIKE data and forms an important source of information regarding the level of illegal killing of elephants in the country.

As a result of the MIKE program, some of the information in the KWS Elephant Mortality Database is now of interest to a wider audience. Indeed, the whole world suddenly has a stake in those figures. Of particular interest to the world at large is the “PIKE”—or the proportion of the total dead that have been illegally killed.

Over the last six years or so the number of deaths and, particularly, the PIKE, has been steadily rising (we believe because of decisions taken at CITES). The figures have not been pretty, and it is fair to say that some individuals have sought to both window-dress and keep a lid on the facts to keep them from public view. Scientists have been intimidated for having differences of opinion about the numbers. There have been rumors that, for speaking out, some individuals have had their funding blocked, honorary wardens have been stripped of their titles, and others have been accused of colluding with poachers. Whatever the truth, in this climate of secrecy suspicion has flourished, causing frustration and anger to boil over, even among close colleagues and friends.

“Thankfully, the last few weeks has seen a major shift in attitude in Kenya.”

Thankfully, the last few weeks has seen a major shift in attitude in Kenya. The press is suddenly really on the ball “naming names” and pushing for action. The Prime Minister, Raila Odinga, has promised to act, and all signs indicate that heads will roll. The new Director of Kenya Wildlife Service is promising transparency and is reaching out to collaborators, and harmonization meetings are taking place across the country.

More than any country in the world, Kenya is an epicenter of elephant know-how. We have a team of internationally recognized Kenyan conservationists and elephant authorities, conservation expertise, institutions, and policies in place, and a galvanized public with the will to slow the rate of killings. As we write, members of a newly formed group, Kenyans United Against Poaching, are marching through the streets of Mombasa, chanting:

“No wildlife – No Tourism,
No Tourism – No Work,
No Tourism – No Economy,
No Tourism – No Vision 2030.
We Must Stop Poaching Now.
China Must Stop Ivory Trade.”

Elephants are an asset to Kenya and her people and, as we await the release of the official 2012 elephant mortality figures, we are hopeful that Team Kenya will work together in harmony to protect her elephants.

Joyce Poole has studied elephants since 1975, holds a Cambridge University Ph.D. in elephant behavior, and played a key role in obtaining the ivory trade ban in 1989. She is a world authority on elephant social, reproductive, communicative and cognitive behavior and has dedicated her life to the conservation and welfare of elephants. Poole headed the Kenya Wildlife Service Elephant Program from 1990-1994 where she was responsible for elephant conservation and management throughout Kenya. She is author of numerous scientific publications, two books and is lead author of The Elephant Charter. Poole and husband, Petter Granli founded and direct ElephantVoices. In 2011 they initiated an ongoing elephant conservation project in the Maasai Mara. Read more on elephantvoices.org.

Petter Granli is an economist with significant corporate experience in management and communication. His venture into wildlife conservation began in 1998 as one of the founders of the award-winning Norwegian eco-travel company, Basecamp Explorer, which he directed for three years. In this capacity he initiated the Maasai Mara Cheetah Conservation Project and several collaborative eco-projects involving the Maasai. In 2004, while working together with Joyce Poole, he initiated a human-elephant conflict mitigation project around the Amboseli area. Together with Joyce he founded and directs ElephantVoices. Read more on elephantvoices.org.