It’s a question that keeps farmers across Africa awake at night. If you fail, you’re going to lose some or all of your precious crops, and with it your ability to feed your family. Worst case, you might end up injured or dead trying to defend your livelihood.

If we want to keep elephants alive, we need to keep the peace between these large animals and the people that they share space with. Big Life achieves this with three approaches; ranger rapid response to farmers’ calls for help, electric fencing to keep elephants out of farmlands, and most recently, the use of thermal drones.

Of these, our fence has been successful at the largest scale, protecting a 60-mile boundary between wildland and farmland. 

To help us improve our understanding of what methods might help to deter these ‘fence-breakers’, we are collaborating with the Amboseli Trust for Elephants who have launched a study investigating this issue.

Led by Dr. Lydia Tiller at ATE, and in partnership with WildAid, this study seeks to test deterrents that have been used across the world. These include ‘Smelly Elephant Repellent’, a noxious concoction of natural ingredients that some regions in Africa have used successfully, a watchtower, thermal drones, LED motion sensor lights, and a trench dug in front of our electric fence.

As Dr Tiller says, “since every region—and every elephant population—is different, research is key to finding what works best. By testing and refining solutions, we provide communities with effective tools for peaceful coexistence.”

Stay tuned for updates on this exciting new study!

📸: Tal Manor / Amboseli Trust for Elephants

It’s been almost 5 years since the bulldozers rolled into a cluster of community conservancies bordering Amboseli National Park, in one of the ecosystem’s most important wildlife corridors.

Within days the machines had cleared 180 acres of natural vegetation in the ‘Kimana corridor’, starting a battle that made global headlines.

The company, Kiliavo, planned to farm avocados in an area designated for livestock raising and eco-tourism. Not only would this interfere with wildlife and livestock movements, but the borehole water requirements were beyond what the underground aquifer could sustain. The same underground aquifer that feeds the natural springs and swamps that thousands of people rely on.

Kiliavo assumed there would be no resistance, that no-one would pay attention to the misleading documents they submitted to get their initial approvals. They were wrong.

Local communities and stakeholders took action, ultimately resulting in a decision by Kenya’s National Environment Management Authority to revoke Kiliavo’s license to farm.

Kiliavo have since challenged that decision in an escalating series of court cases, and we welcome the latest decision by the Nairobi Court of Appeal to dismiss the most recent case, which is the fourth legal loss for the farm.  

Big Life is invested in the Kimana area through a range of conservation and community programs, and we have supported the community association in their fight from the start.

Kiliavo now have limited options for further appeal, and the recent court decision is another important victory that has wider implications.

Amboseli is facing a land rush, with developers buying up land for activities that violate local land-use plans, which were put in place to ensure harmony between competing land-uses. We hope that this ruling reinforces the message: violation of land-use plans is illegal, and the costs of trying are not worth it.

📷: Jeremy Goss

Education is the first and most crucial step to on the long road to success and stability for any child. That is as true here in the Greater Amboseli ecosystem as it is anywhere else.

In recognition of this, our education program was established over 20 years ago and has awarded more than 2,000 scholarships to local children to date. It is easily the most popular conservation-related benefit we provide, more so than our crop protection fence, and even more than the compensation we give for livestock killed by predators (although both are just as important).

To really inspire children to understand the positives of wildlife and conservation, they need to learn about it. That’s why we started our Conservation Education program in 2016.

Michael Tipaai is the program’s inspirer-in-chief. He visits 15 schools 6 times per year, including 6 trips into Amboseli National Park with students.  He focuses on children in Grade 6 who are 11-12 years old. We are extremely grateful to our longstanding partners of this program, including Chester Zoo.  They were instrumental in designing the curriculum and workbooks for these classes.

The workbooks are beautiful. Customized to focus specifically on the wildlife and habitats of the Greater Amboseli ecosystem, these workbooks contain plenty of images, games, and interactive pages that are ideal for all learning abilities.

Last year we reached 3,855 students through our Conservation Education program, and we hope to reach more students next year.

It’s only possible with your help.
Please support our critical conservation programs with a donation today.

📷: Joshua Clay 

For people living in the more remote corners of our area of operation, poor infrastructure, lack of access to basic healthcare, and general poverty means preventable illnesses often go untreated.

But Hannah Tumuti is making a difference. Her calm demeanor masks a fierce determination to improve people’s lives. Hannah leads the family planning and antenatal clinic at the government-run hospital bordering Big Life’s HQ. She also leads Big Life’s backpack nurse program.

Like all hospitals, people must visit them to receive help. Big Life’s backpack nurses flip the script, bringing healthcare to people by venturing out to remote villages with just a motorbike and a backpack filled with basic medical equipment.

“We are seeing a lot of change” says Hannah, “When we visit these villages, we sometimes see over a hundred people who come for vaccinations, minor illnesses, but most of all, for pregnancy and childbirth issues. Our days are long, and we return home late and tired, but these outreaches are rewarding because we know we have helped many desperately needy people.”

This program has been supported by our long-term partners CHASE Africa since its inception in 2018, and the number of backpack nurses has steadily grown to 22. Each nurse sees an average of 70 patients per outreach. Big Life conducts 42 nurse outreaches per month. That’s an average of 35,280 lives improved every year, an enormous accomplishment for 22 women.

“I’m very proud to be a woman and a mother, so I care deeply about helping women and children, especially here [in the Greater Amboseli Ecosystem], where they face so many challenges. So I am proud we to have saved thousands of people’s lives thanks to the backpack program. We need to empower women because if they are empowered, the whole community will be empowered.”

Hannah’s final comment strikes at the heart of what we stand for at Big Life. Immunizations and condoms may not seem like they have much in common with protecting wildlife, but if the general population is in poor health, the last thing they would care about is the wellbeing of elephants or lions.

If conservation supports people, then people will support conservation.

Learn more about our Heathcare Program. 

📷: Joshua Clay