– ‘First of its kind’ –
Each collared elephant is tracked on a map overlaid with land use, logging their movements as humans encroach ever closer on wilderness areas, helping experts to monitor the impact on elephant ranging patterns.
The elephant movement data “will allow the country to secure space for wildlife as the Kenyan population grows,” KWS deputy director for conservation Patrick Omondi said.
Though only elephants are being tagged, the scheme will help experts monitor the movements of other species as well.
“We are only using elephants, as a keystone species, but that will give an indication on how this effects wildlife distribution in general,” said Sospeter Kiambi, who heads the KWS elephant tagging programme.
With ivory commanding thousands of dollars per kilo in Asia, conservationists have warned that African elephants could be extinct in the wild within a generation. More than 30,000 elephants are killed for their tusks every year.
Later this month, Kenya is due to set fire to the vast majority of its ivory and rhino horn stockpile – some 105 tonnes of ivory, seven times the size of any ivory stockpile destroyed so far, as well as 1.35 tonnes of rhino horn – in a highly publicised symbolic gesture against poaching led by President Uhuru Kenyatta.
The mass burning is expected to be attended by international celebrities, actors, conservationists and heads of state.
And though Kenya is striving to secure its economic future with infrastructure investment like the Mombasa-Nairobi road and rail link, it is hoped that the elephant tracking project will ensure that development does not come at the cost of wildlife.
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