Stemming black ivory
tives. If they recover a firearm or ivory, each team gets about US$1,000 (RM3,400). If they recover bushmeat from hunters they get less. Since 2011, they have made 1,420 arrests and 3,012 weapons have been confiscated.”
The compensation scheme costs around US$300,000 (RM1.02mil) a year to run, with money coming from western wildlife groups and the profits from the small tourist lodge that Bonham set up.
Improving lives
The work is a mix of education, development and conservation, he says. Big Life has built schools, and the Maasai have been taught to use a GPS and bloodhounds to track poachers.
“There are several types of poachers. One group comes over from Tanzania. They are sometimes armed, sometimes bushmeat guys. Then there are gangs from Somalia and guys from the communities. People get shot. I’ve been threatened many times. But my game scouts are risking their lives every day out in the bush. So why should I be any different?
“The communities who live with these wild animals, are spurred on by a new awareness and economic incentives made available through conservation. They now own and drive the process. They fight for conservation not against it.”
The lessons have been learned over a lifetime on the frontline of conservation. Bonham’s parents came from a now extinct generation of British colonial wildlife guards. His father Jack was one of Kenya’s first game wardens and lost a leg to an elephant; his mother was the daughter of another warden. He himself is now known as Enkasi – the White Maasai.
“My first wildlife memory, at the age of five, was hanging on to my father’s shorts watching him shoot, what at that time was considered vermin. It was a black rhino. My wife’s grandfather, also a colonial game warden, was given the task to shoot 1,000 rhino in one small area to clear land for settlement. That was only 60 years ago. Today a large part of my life is spent protecting the last eight remaining rhino from this very same population.
“It is extraordinary how things have changed. It was such a different world in those days. A game warden’s job then was anti-poaching and protection but a huge part of it was dealing with problem animals, like rogue elephants. There was only one form of control then, and that was lethal. You shot them.”
These days, he and his teams avoid killing where possible but predators like leopards, lions, cheetahs and hyenas are a constant problem.
“An elephant can trample a crop in 10 minutes. This year we have had four people killed by them. We try to scare them. We use bangers and paint ball guns to shoot chilli bombs. When one hits an elephant, they get a whiff and a sore nose. But they realise that big bangs are not dangerous. They learn.
“I am not optimistic generally about the elephant or the rhino. But there are solutions. The whole reason it is happening is because ivory is so valuable. You will never succeed with law enforcement on its own. You must get the price down. There’s a lot of temptation. You can get US$10,000 (RM34,000) with a spear for one elephant’s ivory.
“In the 1980s the market for ivory was Japan, Europe and the EU. The Bloody Ivory campaign educated people and the market fell. Kenya is passing a new wildlife act making killing an elephant much more serious. That helps. But you have to get the price to drop. Policing is not enough. It has to come from both ends. China, Britain, Kenya, everyone must act.” – Guardian News & Media