We were heading into the unknown. We’d known the critical moment was inevitable since Big Life had started construction of electric crop-protection fences in the Amboseli ecosystem more than two years ago, to reduce the sometimes deadly conflict between farmers and elephants.

Animals that migrate out of Amboseli National Park frequently head east and into a series of conservancies that form a migratory passage known as the Kimana Corridor. They traverse this protected space to reach the Kimana Sanctuary some 15 km away, from where they are able to move onward to Chyulu and Tsavo National Parks.

At its narrowest point the corridor is only 250 feet wide, with human development on both sides and a tarmac road to cross before reaching safety in the Kimana Sanctuary. This pinch point is known as “Kimana Crossing,” and has been causing us a bit of heartburn, but a carefully engineered plan was developed to mitigate the impact on wildlife.

To start, we filed our plan and received approval from the Road Authority. From there, we constructed a series of speed bumps to slow the traffic approaching the crossing. As the fence crosses the road, the wire is elevated to permit cars and box trucks to pass underneath. To prevent animals from simply walking out the way the cars are driving, long dangling electrified wires are suspended that stop animals but not cars. When all was finally in place, the power was turned on, and the Kimana Crossing was live.

From there it was a tense wait. We had no idea how the elephants would react: would they use it? Was it going to be chaos funneling them through a narrow and potentially stressful gap?

We should never have underestimated these intelligent creatures. Within a day of the crossing’s completion in late 2018, the elephants had already worked out what they were supposed to do, and the first herd used it in broad daylight with young calves in tow. Since that moment, there has been steady use of the crossing by a variety of species on a daily basis, and our camera traps have even captured rarer species, such as lion and aardvark, using it to cross back and forth between the Kimana Sanctuary and the Kimana conservancy areas.

Amboseli is changing rapidly, and we are trying to look ahead and imagine what it may look like decades from now. One thing is almost certain, and that is the days of unrestricted movement will be over. Animals will need to weave their way through the human-developed areas across the landscape, threading their way from one block of natural habitat to the next. We will be working to ensure that they can make these journeys safely.

Thank you as always for your support of these efforts.

I won’t forget the last quarter of 2018 anytime soon. It took us all on an emotional rollercoaster ride.

More than two years ago, Big Life started work on a series of electric crop-protection fences in the ecosystem. The goal was to reduce local farmers’ losses to raiding elephants, which has always been a key source of conflict between the two species. With Phase 2 approaching completion, and over 75 km of fence line now constructed, we were faced with uncharted territory: the closing of the fence on either side of the Kimana Crossing.

It is at this point where elephants and other animals coming from Amboseli National Park have only a 250-foot gap to pass safely between the farmland areas on their way to the Kimana Sanctuary and the open spaces beyond. Furthermore, this same point crosses a heavily-trafficked paved road. To mitigate the impact, we constructed a series of speed bumps to slow traffic, but the whole experience is still very uncomfortable for any wild animal. I had no idea how the elephants would react: was it going to be chaos channeling them through a narrow and stressful gap?

Turns out, I needn’t have worried. It took no time at all for these intelligent animals to adapt. A day after the crossing was completed, the first herd of elephants crossed in broad daylight. Since then, there has been steady use of the crossing by a variety of species, and our camera traps have even captured lion and aardvark using it.

On the subject of crop-protection fencing, I am deeply satisfied to see how well it’s working. Two years ago, in the fourth quarter of 2016, Big Life rangers recorded a total of 112 acres of crops destroyed in 199 crop raids by elephants. Over the same period in 2018, rangers recorded only 30 acres destroyed in 49 incidents of elephant crop raiding. This is a 75% reduction in crop raids recorded by Big Life in the ecosystem, and the continuing problems are almost exclusively in the unfenced areas. More importantly, the community agrees with the success of the fence project. In a recent survey of 388 farmers, 97% of respondents said that the fence has been effective at eliminating human-elephant conflict.

There were scary moments this past quarter as well. Tim, probably Amboseli’s biggest bull elephant and one that Big Life rangers spend a lot of time protecting, got stuck neck-deep in a muddy swamp. The chances of saving him were slim, and we were all prepared for the worst. But as has so often been the case, we were able to call on friends and partners, in this case Kenya Wildlife Service and the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, and work together in an almost unbelievable effort to get him out. Somehow, Tim survived to live another day and has recovered from his ordeal, recently seen in musth for the first time in a couple of years, which is fantastic as it means that he is strong and in good health.

There was news, too, for our predator protection efforts. We took an important step with the official signing of an agreement for Big Life to expand our Predator Compensation Fund on Eselengei Group Ranch, which forms the northern boundary of the Greater Amboseli safe zone for wildlife. We were reminded of this in December, after three lions were killed when they ventured north beyond Eselengei and preyed on community livestock. The lines have been drawn, and we will continue to do everything we can to support conservation in the spaces where wild animals still have a home.

The fourth quarter ended with a bang. An exciting component of Big Life’s predator protection program, the Maasai Olympics reached its much-anticipated biennial peak on December 15. Two of the teams were tied going into the final event of the competition, an indication that this has become a sporting event in the truest and most exciting sense and was a real nail-biter for all attending.

At the end of another year, as always, I extend a huge and heartfelt thanks to everyone who makes our work possible.

Richard Bonham
Director of Operations, Kenya

READ THE FULL 4TH QUARTERLY REPORT

It is a story that has three characters:

Elephants, including some who carry the largest tusks on the planet, navigating their way across ever-changing lands in search of food, water, and space.

A local community, who are stewards of these lands, farming to provide a future for their families.

Rangers, who work day and night to mitigate the conflict between the two, striving to maintain some sort of peace.  

Until recently the plot was predictable. Each evening the farmers would prepare for darkness, staying out in their fields and building fires as a defense against what they knew was coming. The rangers would charge their torch batteries, and try to guess where the chaos might erupt. And the elephants would march toward the farmlands, where they knew they were guaranteed a nutritious feast.

There were never any winners in the morning. Farmers would have lost crops, sometimes their entire season’s produce in one night. Elephants might have left the farmlands with spear wounds, and the exhausted rangers would retire to their camps to get some rest before everything started again the following evening.

But, with your help, we’ve broken the cycle. Since 2016, Big Life Foundation has been working with local communities and partners on an ambitious solution – to construct an electric fence that would establish a hard boundary between farmers’ crops and hungry elephants. Approximately 120 km of fencing was required and the scale was daunting, but we’re now well over the half-way mark. Construction teams recently completed 23 km of additional fencing, extending the first 53 km of fence that was completed in Phase One.

The impact has been nothing short of extraordinary. There has been a more than 90% decrease in the number of elephant crop-raids in areas protected by the fence. Of equal importance, there are signs that the local community is starting to change their attitudes towards elephants. Only 22% of farmers said that they thought positively of elephants prior to the construction of the fence, a figure that has now risen to 77%.

A local farmer adjacent to the fence, said it best: “I can’t remember the last time I harvested this much. The fence is a great boon to farmers. In the past, farmers invested piles of cash on various mitigating methods. Their efforts hardly bore fruits. In hindsight, this [the fence] is the silver bullet we have been looking for.”

There are still many challenges ahead in the tale of the Amboseli elephants, but for now the fence has proven to be a life-saving twist in the ongoing saga of the relationship between humans and elephants.

Mary (name changed for privacy) is like many other 18-year old women in the world. She wants to finish high school and dreams of completing a University degree. It’s a sad reality that growing up in a place where only about 10% of girls make it to secondary school, she’s done well to get this far. She has watched countless friends drop out along the way, get married or become accidentally pregnant in their teenage years.

And that’s why she walked 7 km to a mobile clinic one morning, because she wants to have control over her future. She has chosen to adopt a method of family planning and do her best to complete her education. Others make similar decisions, but have to do it secretly. Myths and stigma abound, spreading fear incorrectly that “family planning permanently reduces fertility” or “family planning causes cancer.”

We’re happy that Mary is making her own decisions, and we’re happy to help her. Because conservation is about people, and we believe that where people live alongside wildlife, conservation and wildlife should support people.

So, in 2018 Big Life partnered (with huge thanks) with the Kajiado South Department of Health and CHASE Africa, to facilitate a series of seven mobile health clinics. These were conducted across a 335,000 acre-area that is home to approximately 21,500 residents, but has only four small dispensaries. People ordinarily have to walk large distances to get medical attention, often through thick bush with potentially dangerous wild animals.

Access to family planning is only one of the healthcare services offered, which includes access to professionals providing basic healthcare consultations and prescription medications, child immunizations, de-worming medication, and HIV screening and counseling. Throughout 2018, 1,535 people took advantage of the access to one or more of these critical services.

In 2019, we would like to start scaling up these clinics, both in number and geographic reach, with the ultimate goal of running them in all of the remote areas where Big Life Foundation operates. We believe that community development can and absolutely should go hand-in-hand with conservation efforts, because in the Amboseli ecosystem each is dependent on the other.