Most of us learn hard lessons when we’re younger. One teenage boy recently learned a very important lesson in Kimana. 

It starts like any coming-of-age story: a young teen had been struggling in Nairobi, so his parents sent him to live with family in the country for a bit of perspective and fresh air. It wasn’t the easiest adjustment, and in his boredom, he noticed a small yellow airplane on an airstrip, left briefly unattended. Curiosity got the best of him. New to the area and not knowing better, he spotted a backpack in the rear seat and plucked it right out, amazed at his luck.

His luck very quickly soured, however. Because it turned out that the plane was Big Life Foundation’s Super Cub, and the bag belonged to Big Life’s Head of Security, who had stopped in for a meeting with Kimana Sanctuary’s community rangers on his way to the office.

When the meeting ended, Craig returned to the plane to find his backpack missing. Annoyed by the delay, but amused by the boldness of whoever had taken the pack, Millar didn’t stress. He simply called in Big Life’s tracker dog unit, who were already nearby for a training activity.

Didi, Bonnie, and Clyde immediately picked up the scent and were eager to get to work. They took turns tracking. First Clyde, then Bonnie, then Didi, then back to Clyde. The teenager had covered nearly 7 km by the time the tracker dogs caught up with him at his home, where he promptly and very sheepishly handed over the backpack.

The dogs got some good exercise and practice for more serious crimes, and the young teenager will think twice about petty theft in the future. 

Thank you for considering a donation in support of our tracker dog program.

Cost vs benefit. It’s an equation that doesn’t sleep, a fundamental driver of every human decision. Those interested in the conservation of the natural world ignore it at their peril. Because conservation is rarely about nature itself, it’s about human behavior.

With an unprecedented level of foreign investment and economic growth across Africa, cost-benefit equations are changing faster than ever before. At national and regional level, certainly, but of greater relevance to conservation outcomes are the daily decisions that each human being makes, almost always to maximise the economic benefit to them. And the impact of these decisions on the natural world is often immense.

We should not be surprised. Throughout history, humans across the planet have exterminated one species after the next, all in pursuit of economic gain. In some cases species were targeted because of the economic losses that they caused, as in the case of the large predators. Other species slipped quietly away as their habitat was turned over to the more economically productive land uses of agriculture and industry.

In a bizarre twist, eyewatering amounts of money are now being spent on recovering some of those species that were pushed to the brink of extinction. But in Africa these species (or their equivalents) still exist. National Parks are critical for their survival, but we are increasingly understanding the limitations of the current protected areas in Africa, both in terms of absolute acreage as well as the various habitats and ecological processes protected by them.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the Amboseli ecosystem of southern Kenya, where protected areas cover only a small proportion of the approximately 2-million acre landscape. At least 80% of large mammals leave Amboseli National Park and move onto surrounding community lands at some point in the year. It is these vast spaces between protected areas, and the human owners of that land, that are therefore most important for the ongoing survival of wild animal populations in the region. This is the space in which Big Life Foundation works, with communities and alongside numerous partners in the ecosystem, and supported by USAID.

It’s an ongoing experiment, and it’s not easy. Make no mistake, although lions and elephant look great on an Instagram feed, it’s not much fun living with them. Wild predators kill domestic livestock, often breaking into homesteads at night. Never mind the terror, this costs people money. Elephants eat and trample crops (and tragically, sometimes people too), and can easily destroy a farmer’s entire crop within a few hours, and with it the income necessary to feed their family.

The people suffering these economic losses are not a demographic that can necessarily afford to. This is real economics, real problems. How then can we expect a community to support conservation, when wild animals threaten their daily existence?

It’s an ongoing test. We have to work to reduce the costs, and maximise the benefits. To somehow incentivize decisions that benefit both people and wildlife. And there have been great successes in Amboseli. In these still traditional communities, networks of social reliance are strong, and one job might benefit tens of people. Tourism is an important income generator, and so is conservation. Big Life employs more than 300 people in the ecosystem, making it one of the largest single employers. Most of these staff are wildlife protection rangers, including a unit supported by USAID.

But jobs aren’t enough, conservation professionals need also to turn their attention to supporting industries that are compatible with wildlife conservation. An obvious synergy exists between livestock production and wildlife conservation, and Big Life is working with the African Conservation Centre and Amboseli Ecosystem Trust, supported by USAID and UNDP/GEF to create grazing plans on communally-owned rangelands, and stimulate the recovery of the grazing resources of the ecosystem. Alternative land-uses are knocking on the door, hard, and wildlife dollars will not win this battle alone.

Given that the benefits of conservation might not touch everybody, great attention also needs to be paid to reducing the costs of living with wildlife. When the costs run too high people take matters into their own hands, and cheaply available poisons mean that pests, large or small, can be easily dealt with. Big Life runs a livestock compensation program that reimburses some of the market value to those that lose livestock to wild predators, so long as no predator is killed in retaliation. This program has been phenomenally successful, and has been a key factor in the dramatic recovery and growth of the local lion population, at a time when the opposite trend is being observed across Africa.

Crop-raiding by elephants is an equally important problem, and community rangers spend their nights chasing elephants out of farms. But this is not sustainable, and Big Life is working to install electric fences along the hard edges between agriculture and wilderness, creating a long-term barrier between the competing land uses.

While so many people would agree on the intrinsic value of wild animals and wild spaces, there is no time for these philosophical debates. Because each day, in Africa and across the world, human beings are going about their daily lives, making decisions based on economic cost-benefit equations. If we want to see a world in which nature is valued, we need to create economic benefits associated with conservation. Or at the very least reduce the costs of living alongside wildlife. If we fail to do either, that nasty equation will have its way.

For millennia, humans have fought against nature, trying to beat it back in our attempts to create a comfort zone for humanity. Time and time again we have lost, as evidenced by the ruins of various civilizations across the world, reclaimed by forest, bush, and sand.

Modern agriculture is one frontline of this battle, and with the various chemicals and poisons available ‘we’ are actually starting to emerge on top. But no-one seems to understand that by defeating nature we are defeating ourselves. The pesky insects killed by insecticides are no longer there to pollinate the crops. The soils that we are ‘enhancing’ with synthetic fertilizers are no longer able to sustain the yields they once did.

It’s a common story from farmers across Amboseli: “This soil used to produce lots with little input, but now I get little unless I add a lot (of chemicals)!”

We say, enough. These chemicals are destroying the land, poisoning people, and poisoning animals.

Through the ‘One Heart Farm’ project at Enkijape Primary School, founded by Rhona Mitra and her supporters, Big Life is hoping to inspire children with the knowledge that there is an alternative. Over the course of three years, students have seen this patch of barren soil become a lush garden, and not one synthetic chemical has contributed to this success, the fruits of which are being used in the school kitchen when available.

A farm club exposes children to how natural systems work, and how humans can maintain a sustainable place within them. When you spot more birds and insects within a farm than out, that’s a sure sign that something is going right.

We intend to continue to grow this farm, and the project with it, to create a model that can both supply schools with healthy vegetables, as well as teaching children that you can work with nature, rather than against it.

As always happens this time of year, we are looking forward to rain. While the seemingly biblical rains of last spring held us over for longer than usual, the landscape here has long since turned to dust. And with it have come the usual complications.

During the third quarter of this year, there were 94 crop-raiding incidents, all involving elephants. Bushmeat poaching spikes as well during the dry season, but thanks to the hard work of our community rangers and field partners, we had fewer incidents this quarter than at this time last year. We also found, confiscated, and destroyed 42 snares this quarter, two of which were designed to target rhinos.

There is no keeping the Chyulu Hills rhino population, of which there are now eight, a secret. Thus, Big Life has 51 rangers stationed in seven outposts—an almost 1-to-1 ratio of outposts to rhinos—throughout the rhino territory, all dedicated to protecting this incredibly small but important population. The enforcement and security measures done in tandem with Kenya Wildlife Service are working, and the rhinos are increasingly more secure. For the first time in decades, two rhinos were photographed out in the open this quarter. That is a success worth celebrating!

The weather and the wildlife are not the only things about our landscape that have changed this past quarter. Our Area of Operation (AOO) did too. Management of our conservation initiatives on Olgulului Group Ranch were handed over to the local community at their request, which has freed up resources to expand to other areas needing our assistance. Conservation initiatives are expanding to the north of our core AOO in Eselengei, as well as to the south in Enduimet on the Tanzanian side of the border. We’ll be reporting on both communities as operations pick up moving forward.

As always, there’s a lot a stake here and much to be done. Thank you to our partners and supporters from around the world for making our work possible.

Richard Bonham
Director of Operations, Big Life Kenya

READ THE FULL 3RD QUARTERLY REPORT