There Are A Lot More Elephants In Kenya Now Compared To The Last Three Decades And Here’s The Reason Why
All the hard work to curb poaching has helped Kenya’s elephant population more than double over the past three decades, the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) stated on Wednesday.
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There were only 16,000 elephants in Kenya in 1989, however, around 2018 that number had grown to more than 34,000, KWS Director John Waweru claimed during a visit to Amboseli National Park to mark World Elephant Day.
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Amboseli National Park, which is located at the foot of Mt. Kilimanjaro, has reported the birth of over 170 calves this year and counting. In addition to that, two sets of twins were born this year, a very rare thing according to Amboseli Trust For Elephants, a nonprofit conservation organization in Kenya. However, the same group only reported 113 new calves born in 2018. (2019 is not really a good year for comparison since the gestation period for elephant pregnancies can take around two years.)
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Tal Manor, project manager for ATE, stated in an email to NPR: “The primary reason the population is rebounding is because of the surplus rains we have had over the past two years. Baby booms are mostly tied to ecological changes.”
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In 2019, the International Rescue Committee reported heavier rains than normal, which caused immense flooding, killed people and damaged crops in East Africa. These intense rains came after the area had years of extreme drought. For elephants, more rain means more vegetation for grazing and fewer deaths because of dehydration or lack of food. In general, in Kenya anti-poaching efforts are also intense and elephants are usually safer, which means (fewer) get killed compared to the other parts of Africa. That’s why Kenya’s elephant population is slowly increasing.
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Kenya’s Cabinet Secretary for Tourism and Wildlife, Najib Balala, claims that growth in elephant population is partly because of the country’s hard work to stop poachers.
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In 2019, the Kenyan government ruled harsher consequences for anyone convicted of poaching, including great fines and prison time, the AP reported. 80 elephants in the country were poached in the year 2018. This number dropped outstandingly in 2019 to only 34. And when it comes to 2020, the numbers are on track to hit an even smaller figure for the entire year. Balala added: “Our number of poached elephants starting from January to right now has been only seven. We’re still trying to erase this problem once and for all, though.”
