Protected in Kenya but hunted in Tanzania: Life on the edge for Craig, one of the last great tuskers of the Rift
Craig, 52, is one of the last "big tuskers" of the Rift. These elephants with particularly large tusks are only a few dozen left on the planet.
Brent Stirton / Getty Images for Le Figaro Magazine
REPORT - There are only a few dozen left on the planet. The "big tuskers", these elephants with imposing tusks, were doomed to extinction at the beginning of the century. Thanks to the fight of NGOs, some have survived in Kenya. But in neighboring Tanzania where hunting is still legal, they become targets as soon as they cross the border. Five of them have already been shot this year. Craig could be next.
By Vincent Jolly, special correspondent in Kenya , for Le Figaro Magazine
Today, Craig is still alive. Yesterday, it was not a given. Tomorrow, nothing is certain. Yet, there he is, in front of us, barely four meters away. Majestic, solitary, his big ears flapping and flapping in the wind like the sails of a boat, the elephant advances slowly in the green sea of tall grass that he tears up to feed himself. No matter how much you read about them, meeting a pachyderm so close is an almost mystical experience. Especially this one. Because Craig is one of the famous "big tuskers" of this region of the southern Rift Valley. That is to say that in addition to being of colossal size, the animal has two gigantic tusks. Long and thick, they emerge like two marble scimitars from its gray and cracked shell under which beat an ancient heart and soul.
Sublime, coveted for centuries for their ivory, these tusks are just one of the natural wonders that make up the elephant. Another, for example, is its memory. It allows them to remember specific congeners or even humans and to bond with them. There is their trunk, with which they manage to make and use rudimentary tools to perform several tasks. Finally, and above all, they are empathetic beings: they organize themselves to help the weakest among them, welcome and raise the orphans of the group and even watch over or bury their dead.
Craig does not run away from us and tolerates our presence. He is used to seeing humans. In this region of Kenya, he is a star. Tourists and wildlife photographers come especially to Amboseli National Park and its surroundings in the hope of seeing him. Him and no one else. Why? There is his size and his tusks, of course. But not only that. Craig does not only embody the idea of a naively fantasized wild Africa, this savannah bristling with twisted acacias and overlooked by the snow-capped peak of Kilimanjaro. He symbolizes what was – and what almost disappeared.
Just fifteen years ago, it was assumed that these "big tuskers" would eventually disappear from the face of the planet. Today, there are fewer than thirty of them and they are still under threat. North of this legendary mountain, rooted in African mythology, Craig is not only protected, but venerated.
“One-Ton,” a cousin of Craig, is named for his imposing silhouette. These “tuskers” have been a favorite target of poachers for decades.
Brent Stirton / Getty Images for Le Figaro Magazine
A Deadly Border
To the south, across the Tanzanian border, he is a target. That of trophy hunters. The problem is that this artificial line drawn by the Homo sapiens of Germany and Great Britain in 1893, Craig does not care. These red and sublime lands, scorched by the fire of the sun, have been trodden by his ancestors for more than 50 million years.
Since the beginning of the year, five "big tuskers" like Craig have been killed by hunters specializing in the search for large trophies. The five males each had tusks weighing more than 45 kilos and were also pachyderms known in the region. Until then, they could sleep soundly, because the companies offering hunting safaris to tourists in Tanzania respected an agreement in principle with their Kenyan neighbor: the "muses" of the region were never shot. A situation that has changed, in particular because of the practices of certain shameless actors.
Example with Kilombero North Safaris, which won at auction a reserve that borders the border with Kenya. On its website, the organization assures that "big game hunting, when practiced correctly, plays an important role in the conservation of African fauna and flora, while providing economic support to local indigenous tribes in the different regions." Noble mission. Except that, behind Kilombero North Safaris, we find individuals accused and convicted by the courts for illegal possession of firearms, money laundering and other misdeeds that do not sit well with the defense of the environment and animal welfare.
More and more Maasai are re-forming communities where land is dedicated to traditional livestock farming.
Brent Stirton / Getty Images for Le Figaro Magazine
As in human communities, the death of a large male elephant can have a greater impact than the loss of another member. And these "big tuskers," especially because they are old, are elements that are difficult to replace. Craig and the other adults help shape the behavior of the younger ones, especially the adolescents. Their survival is essential to preserve the genetic heritage that provides the animal with its impressive tusks. This hunt is not the first threat that Craig has faced. In half a century, he has survived much worse.
Insufficient efforts
He probably remembers the year of his birth: 1972. He came into the world wild in a country that had just become independent and had been freed from a drought that had lasted several months. His generation was lucky: a year later, in 1973, Kenya introduced a law banning all elephant hunting throughout the country – a ban that has never been interrupted and was motivated by widespread poaching and the increase in the ivory trade that worried the authorities. Even then, sources mention 12,000 elephants being killed each year.
This national ban on hunting was a good start, but it would not have the desired effect. From the early 1980s, while tourists continued to flock to contemplate these landscapes belonging to the first mornings of the world, the hot winds of Africa carried to Craig's ears the sinister murmur of elephants killed by the dozens, by the hundreds, all over the continent. In Europe, initiatives were launched to try to protect his fellow elephants. Some were successful, but not enough. The extent of the near-genocide that his species was experiencing is difficult to estimate: traffickers, motivated by the growing demand for ivory in Asia, and particularly in China, did not hesitate to venture into the most remote areas to get their hands on this white gold. And all were ready to pay the price in blood to obtain it.
Farms are eating away at the savannah from the elephant garden to the slopes of Kilimanjaro.
Brent Stirton / Getty Images for Le Figaro Magazine
1989 arrives and, with it, the ban on the international trade in ivory by the Washington Convention. It is also the epilogue of a century in which the elephant (and wildlife in general) was considerably exterminated during the large-scale culls carried out by the colonial powers to "open up" the continent. Not to mention the legal culls, such as in Zimbabwe (Southern Rhodesia until 1980), where the authorities killed more than 50,000 between 1965 and 1988 to control the pachyderm population. Similar operations in Uganda, Zambia and South Africa aim to make way for the ever-increasing number of Homo sapiens and their cities, fields and roads.
Financing terrorism
The turn of the millennium has not been any more salutary for Craig and his kind. The excessive growth of China and the development of its middle class are boosting an already buoyant ivory market. Poaching is becoming industrialized. Worse, it is intertwined with the worst criminal and terrorist networks that are proliferating on the continent. Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), the Sudanese Janjaweed and the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda specialize in the illegal trade in white gold.
In June 2002, a ship from Durban docked at the port of Singapore. On board, a container. And official papers referring to stone sculptures. Thanks to an alert from the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) based in London, the authorities decided to check the merchandise. 6.2 tons of ivory were seized. With tusks weighing 40 kilos each on average, this cargo represented several dozen dead elephants. The 2000s were then nothing more than a slow descent into hell... before the abyss of the 2010s. Overwhelmed by the situation, gangrened by corruption or overwhelmed by other problems they considered more urgent, governments were unable to stem the tidal wave of poaching.
More spared than its neighbors until now, Kenya suffers heavy losses in terms of its wildlife. One hundred elephants per year are illegally killed despite the efforts of rangers working in the country's various parks. From now on, it is no longer traps, spears or hunting rifles that kill them, but weapons of war. Poachers operate on the ground and from the air to locate, round up and execute entire groups in one go. In 2013, in Tsavo further north, a family far from Craig was massacred. Eleven were found dead. Further west, in the clearing of Dzanga Bai, in the Central African Republic, 26 others were riddled with Kalashnikov bullets.
Craig has survived every plague that has plagued his species for decades.
Brent Stirton/Getty Images for Le Figaro Magazine
Killed by mercenaries
Craig is no longer facing simple hunters, but trained soldiers. These mercenaries cross state borders to be able to harvest ivory in one place and then smuggle it out of the continent in another. Awareness is growing in environmental protection circles: these cross-border criminal networks can only be stopped by organizations that are also criminals.
In 2010, the Big Life Foundation was founded by photographer Nick Brandt, conservationist Richard Bonham and entrepreneur Tom Hill. Its unique feature? It was the first organisation in East Africa with coordinated anti-poaching teams operating on both sides of the border between Kenya and Tanzania. At the heart of their strategy is a collaborative approach centred on communities. Their philosophy is based on a virtuous circle that was previously theoretical: ensuring that conservation supports people so that people support conservation.
To move between parks and reserves, animals need corridors that are increasingly threatened by development.
Brent Stirton / Getty Images for Le Figaro Magazine
Fourteen years later, as Craig continues his journey ahead of us, everything has changed. While elephants continue to be targeted for their ivory in Tanzania, within Kenya and particularly in the heart of the Amboseli ecosystem on the slopes of Kilimanjaro, poaching has been reduced to a trickle. The authorities and the parks, in collaboration with a network of various associations including Big Life, have managed to stem the scourge. Other problems persist, however. In a country where the population has grown from less than 10 million to more than 55 million people, conflicts with wildlife have naturally increased. Agriculture, which has grown considerably, has nibbled away at more and more land until it has eaten away at the boundaries of parks and reserves. From the air, the observation is obvious.
The Breakup of a System
In this picture-postcard landscape where Kilimanjaro reigns supreme, the savannah is, in places, crisscrossed with more or less legal farms – when they are not tourist lodges, built without prior authorization.
A phenomenon that has worsened with the breakup of a system: the one where land belonged to communities. These large areas were divided into several small ones by those held by individuals, mainly Maasai who were then targeted by foreign buyers. Seduced by the lure of easy money, many have sold their land without understanding that they were giving up their main means of subsistence for a pittance. Farmers, subsidiaries of foreign companies, come to take advantage of this arable land that they can acquire at a very low price to grow avocados, onions, corn, tomatoes and other plant products… intended not for Kenyans, but for the international market.
Today, Maasai communities – with the help of organizations like Big Life – are seeking to buy back these plots to recreate natural areas where the local population can live from traditional livestock farming or agriculture that is in line with local wildlife. Here again, mediation and awareness-raising are key. The goal is to make people understand that by protecting elephants, which can certainly get into plantations and cause major damage, the inhabitants are defending the preservation of their land and, through it, their future and that of their children. In this capacity, Craig was able to benefit from the protection of rangers from the younger generation, who were much more aware of this reality that escaped their elders.
Elephants broke into this plantation and ravaged several hectares in one night. The farmers will be compensated.
Brent Stirton / Getty Images for Le Figaro Magazine
From time immemorial
But for Craig, the most important thing is the preservation of corridors. Like the Kimana corridor. An umbilical cord linking the Kimana sanctuary region with the Amboseli ecosystem, it is now surrounded by urban developments and farms. Craig and the other elephants now have only a passage about a hundred meters wide, almost a kilometer long, and cut by a road, to move between these two natural areas.
A proximity that de facto leads to conflicts with humans. This is what happened to Bronsky, another "tusker" that we found wounded in the leg by a spear. The depth of the wound is such that the veterinarian we are accompanying manages to almost completely insert his arm into the pachyderm's leg. He will survive. For now.
Like Daniel Kutata, many young Maasai have become aware of the economic stakes linked to the protection of nature.
Brent Stirton/Getty Images
Craig, meanwhile, walks away into the distance, disappearing into this sea of tall grass. Thanks to the collective initiatives and the relentless struggle of the rangers and those who finance them, he was able to celebrate his 52nd birthday this year. The life expectancy of a male like him is estimated at around 70 years. In Kenya as in Tanzania, his future is anything but assured.
His survival no longer depends on his strength or instinct, but on our ability to protect what he represents: a living link with immemorial times. For him to continue to roam these lands, the question of the place of these large mammals on a planet that will welcome 10 billion human beings by the end of the century must be asked in all its complexity. And to know if Craig, in addition to representing what was – and what almost disappeared – can also embody what will be possible in the world of tomorrow.
