Just like humans, ecosystems need occasional check-ups. They are constantly changing and we need some way to gauge their overall health, and assess whether current conservation strategies are working or not.

It’s easy for us to get a feel for trends from the ground, but to really take the pulse of an ecosystem, you’ve got to be in the air.  From above, it’s easier to get total counts of large mammals. It can’t be done slowly, it’s got to be done fast and over a large area to minimize double-counting.

It’s a logistical challenge, but thankfully one that the Kenya Wildlife Service takes on every few years, with support from partners. This year it involved four aircraft spending whole days in the air, counting everything larger than a goat. The exercise is repeated in both wet and dry seasons, making sure that the seasonal movements of people and wildlife are properly captured.

This last week Big Life was glad to be able to support this exercise with one of our aircraft, seen in this image alongside the KWS planes prior to the start of the day’s count, and a clear shot of Kilimanjaro meant clear skies for counting wildlife below.

The last count took place in 2014, so the exercise is timely and helpful as we continue to assess, and adjust, our programs as necessary to have the maximum impact. A big thanks to all other partners involved in making this happen.

There are fewer giraffes than there are elephants alive in the world.

It’s a bit of a surprise, given how little media attention they receive. Estimates put the current population at less than 100,000* following a drop of approximately 40% in the past three decades.

We know: it’s more bad news and it gets tiring. So, given that it’s the longest day in the year (in the northern hemisphere anyway) the Giraffe Conservation Foundation has initiated World Giraffe Day, an opportunity to appreciate these tallest terrestrial animals.

Despite their gentle nature, giraffes don’t have it easy. They are a favorite target for poachers, yielding a lot of high-value meat for the effort involved. They are also very susceptible to human activity, and can get entangled in fences or hit by cars.

Big Life rangers do everything they can to keep giraffes safe from these various threats in the Amboseli ecosystem, by catching bushmeat poachers and working with farmers to keep them away from fences. We’re confident that the local giraffe population is growing, and hope to receive confirmation of this from the aerial wildlife census that has just started.

So while our teams work to keep giraffes safe in Amboseli, we ask that you take a moment, perhaps a long one, to spare a thought for these wonderful animals and the efforts to secure their future across Africa.

*Number by Giraffe Conservation Foundation and IUCN

Winning the hearts and minds of the local community, and providing a mutual benefit through conservation, is the only way to protect wildlife and wild lands far into the future. To that end, Big Life invests in the future of participating communities by funding education and healthcare initiatives. 

This month, we conducted our first outreach health clinic thanks to our partners at CHASE Africa and the Kajiado South Sub-County Department of Health. The clinic was held in Oltiasika, a remote community that hasn’t had an outreach in many years and has suffered badly in the recent heavy rains, which caused damage to their roads and thereby access to healthcare facilities. A total of 256 patients were given basic primary healthcare and 148 children received de-worming medication.

Last year, with CHASE Africa and Dandelion Africa, we helped facilitate a total of 8 clinics through the provision of a vehicle, with an additional 2 earlier this year. Now, as we take on the further responsibility of running the outreaches ourselves, we thank Dandelion Africa for paving the way and for their fantastic training and on-going support.

We track a lot of numbers, but there are two that shape our world more than any other. One is the amount of money that we raise and put into our community conservation projects. The second is the amount of rainfall that hits the ground here in the greater Amboseli ecosystem.

Rainfall is a fundamental driver of the health of local communities, both human and animal, and this season has been an absolute bumper. Last year was brutal; the combination of an extended period of erratic rainfall and grazing mismanagement had tipped the ecosystem over the edge. Carcasses of both wildlife and livestock were a common sight. But in a very welcome turnaround, we’ve already received more rainfall in these first three months than we sometimes do in an entire year. The transformation of the landscape has been spectacular; the dust turned to a sea of grass humming with life.

The widespread availability of water and forage has allowed elephants to further explore the limits of their ranges, sometimes with disastrous consequences. Amboseli is a big ecosystem, but there is an edge, and a sharp fall-off in human tolerance for wildlife beyond this edge. We had a horrible reminder of this in January, when crop-raiding by elephants on and around Eselengei Group Ranch (a communally-owned piece of land in the north of the ecosystem, outside our core area of operation) led to violent retaliation by angry farmers. Five elephants were speared to death, and numerous others wounded. I worry that this is only a taste of things to come, and it emphasizes the need to continue to find ways to balance the needs of both humans and animals.

It is thus timely that Big Life is expanding our work in this same area, having created a mobile unit of rangers to patrol Eselengei in an exciting project funded by USAID. We are also working with the community to expand the Predator Compensation Fund onto Eselengei, in an attempt to ease the economic burden caused by high levels of livestock predation.

At the end of the day, most human behavior is driven by these economic realities, and the trade in illegal wildlife products is no different. These products are all worth a lot to the people who deal in them, and catching them is no easy task. Big Life continues to invest heavily, and with great success, in disrupting these supply chains. Following the cumulative total of more than 1 ton of ivory confiscated in 2017 (working in collaboration with Kenya Wildlife Service), Big Life has arrested 28 people this quarter with everything from ivory to lion teeth to a worrying increase in pangolin (live and scales).

As usual, there is a lot going on here at Big Life, but there is always time to say a big thanks to our partners and supporters. We couldn’t do this without you.

Richard Bonham
Co-Founder and Director of Operations

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