CONTRIBUTION
The organization Save the Elephants was founded in 1993, with science and partnership as its main pillars, to research into the animals’ ecology and behavior and develop pan-African strategies for their conservation. Two decades later, the organization set up a dedicated fund, the Elephant Crisis Fund, to finance small, community-led conservation projects in 34 African countries, at times using them as a testing ground to attract much larger funding. “Big investors are often keen to donate millions of dollars for a given strategy, but they don’t know if it works yet,” explains Frank Pope, the CEO of Save the Elephants, “So we fund a project of, say, 50,000 dollars on a trial basis, knowing it can catalyze a much bigger investment if we can make it work.”
The Fund was initially set up to tackle the crisis of the ivory trade, which for centuries had posed the greatest threat to the elephants’ existence. Despite being banned internationally in 1989, an illegal ivory trade network continued to exist, which the organization estimates killed some 100,000 elephants between 2010 and 2012 alone, a quarter of the African population at the time.
Its remit then was to support local organizations that Save the Elephants had identified as being most effective at protecting the animals, providing them not just with cash but also advanced knowledge on technologies and other techniques to put a stop to poaching, trafficking and the demand for ivory. It was also the first organization to bring traffickers to trial in the United States, ending the legal impunity they had enjoyed by exploiting international loopholes and, within Africa, the corruption of local judicial systems.
“We are constantly traveling to the countries we work with, listening to communities about which ideas work, so we can suggest them to others and ensure the knowledge gets shared, ” says Pope. Another key to their success is speed: they encourage applicants to submit short proposals, which are decided on at monthly meetings, and once funding has been approved it reaches the chosen project in a couple of weeks.
These efforts came to fruition in 2018, when China, the world’s biggest market, announced that they were closing down their domestic trade in ivory. Save the Elephants thought about closing the Elephant Crisis Fund, but decided that the vast network of contacts it had built up over the years could be used to go on monitoring elephant trafficking and address what had become the main challenge for the animals: coexistence with humans.
Elephants may at times break water storage tanks in lower rainfall areas, prompting the communities living there to seek revenge. But the greatest conflict affects wetter areas, where people live on subsistence farming. “Elephants don’t know what a crop field is, so they come into a cornfield and in one evening they can demolish a whole family’s food,” Pope explains. “Even if that family used to feel positive towards elephants, they will quickly turn against them in self-protection.”
But elephants are also, as Pope points out, a keystone species in the ecosystem, who distribute seeds, find water and open paths through the bush that other species can follow. To dial down conflict with humans, the awardee organization has come up with a “toolbox” that pulls together the accumulated knowledge of decades on what strategies work to prevent or mitigate elephant-human clashes. “One solution, for instance, is to plan building works and crop fields so they don’t stand within the corridors the elephants use. Leaving some areas of land free for the elephants can avoid a lot of conflicts.”
“We subscribe to the ideas of One Health,” the CEO continues. “If people are malnourished and children aren’t able to go to school, they’re not going to care about what’s happening with elephants. So part of our work is to empower communities.” Among the ways to do so, and at the same time aid the cause of elephant conservation, are growing crops that are not edible by elephants, promoting craft work and sales as an alternative livelihood, and strengthening judicial protection. “Africa has the world’s fastest growing population. As the continent develops, the landscape changes, and elephants are stuck in the middle of it all. We have a window of opportunity to ensure that elephants’ needs are also taken into account in ways that will help them thrive long into the future while reducing conflict between them and humans.”
Photo: © Will Burrard-Lucas