Big Tim: Look on His MIghty Works, and Do Not Despair

“Human population growth along with wholesale abuse of the environment have put us at war with wildlife. And it is a war that, if humanity isn’t careful, we will win. But it will be a tragic and Pyrrhic victory of epic proportion. Very simply, I worry that a world without animals will be a world we won’t want to—or be able to—live in. The last stop on the road to our own extinction. ”

— Scott Asen, Wildlife Direct

On a beautiful sunny day in Amboseli National Park, against the backdrop of snow-capped Mount Kilimanjaro, a small group of cars was gathered at a safe distance around the prostrate bull elephant. The elephant lay still in the dust, head on the ground, his enormous tusks and trunk stretched out in front of him. Tension rose among the onlookers as the minutes passed. 

Then the huge elephant flapped his ear, got up gently, shook his head vigorously in a vain attempt to dislodge the strange object around his neck, and walked off. We all breathed a sigh of relief. The operation to attach a tracking collar to Tim had gone perfectly.

That was Kenya conservationist and elephant researcher Paula Kahumbu writing in The Guardian on Feb. 14, 2018, virtually two years ago to the day.

The elephant in question was Big Tim, one of just 100 remaining African tuskers — so named when an elephant’s tusks grow so long they touch the ground.

The operation, affixing a GPS tracking device as part of a larger program to track the area’s elephants and alleviate human-wildlife conflict by discouraging elephants from raiding farmers’ crops, proved a success. The latest satellite technology is helping keep elephants safe from poachers — and away from farmers’ crops.

At the time, Big Tim would have been in his late 40s — old by wild elephants’ standards where a prolonged surge in poaching and illegal hunting has put the entire species at risk.

This past Wednesday, the Kenya Wildlife Service reported that Big Tim had died, presumably of natural causes, at age 50.

Word of Big Tim’s passing, one of the most famous — and most photographed — elephants in East Africa made news headlines  everywhere from Nairobi’s Daily Nation to BBC, CNN and NPR in the US.

“Rest in Peace, Grand Old Man,” Elite Anti-Poaching Units and Combat Trackers posted on the group’s Facebook page. “Tim was loved by all and will be deeply missed,” the post continued. “He was protected 24/7 by the phenomenal rangers at Big Life Foundation and Kenya Wildlife Service.

“Over the years, we did not post photos of Tim to ensure his safety. But even as an aging tusker, Tim was prone to his escapades.” 

The accompanying photo was taken by Big Life Foundation’s Daniel Ole Sambu.

The satellite tracking program is costly and labour intensive but it has proven effective.

Amboseli, a 39,000-hectare national park a stone’s throw across the border from Mt. Kilimanjaro in neighbouring Tanzania, is situated on Maasai land, and the Maasai needed convincing that the satellite program wasn’t just another empty PR stunt on the part of NGOs that always claim to know what’s best for pastoral cattle herders. Security teams track collared elephants, like Tim, on a map on a cell phone. If the signal shows an elephant to be moving close to agricultural areas, the security teams can respond by moving the elephant away before they cause trouble. If the GPS signal shows the elephant to be standing still for several hours, it sends an alert that the elephant may be in trouble.

Tim’s passing is more than just another highlight moment in media sentimentality and anthropomorphism. “The tuskers are an irreplaceable symbol of our continent’s natural heritage,” Kahumbu noted. Over the years, the systematic extermination of elephant tuskers by trophy hunters and ivory poachers has acted as a form of unnatural selection, in that their gene pool  is not being passed to the next generation of East Africa’s dwindling population of wild elephants. Despite their seeming ubiquity in zoos and circuses, elephants do not do well in captivity because very few zoological exhibits — basically, none — can replicate the space needed to sustain a viable breeding herds, let alone feed the gene pool.

The name “Tim” wasn’t just an attempt to anthropomorphize a cuddly animal to the public at large. Amboseli elephant researcher Cynthia Moss, one of the pioneers of the world’s most comprehensive, detailed elephant study program, took a page from Jane Goodall’s chimpanzee research groups by naming individual animals with the first letter in their name corresponding with their family group.

Tim, in other words, is readily identifiable — to anyone, and not just researchers — as being a member of the “T” family group, like his mother Trista. Over the years, Moss’s NGO, The Amboseli Trust for Elephants, has provided comprehensive — and critical — information about the habits of wild elephants to the world at large. As the species teeters on the edge of oblivion, that is more important today than ever.

In death as in life, researchers hope that Tim’s memory will inspire further efforts to find viable  solutions to the increasing number of incidents involving human-wildlife conflict — not just with elephants but with all wild animals.

“In every walk with nature,” John Muir once said, “one receives far more than he seeks.”

https://biglife.org/news-events/bush-journal/famous-tusker-gets-hi-tech-necklace

KWS Director-General Kitili Mbathi (left) affixing GPS collar to Big Tim in 2016 with WildlifeDirect CEO Paula Kahumbu. Photo ©Paul Obuna/WildlifeDirect

©Paul Obuna/WildlifeDirect

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Wildebeest Migrations in Trouble

“Our planet is changing. It’s indisputable that migrations are heavily informed by climate and by wildlife corridors and the landscapes that are available. Every migration that we filmed and many we didn’t film is informed and challenged by the air-space, land-space and water corridors that are available to these animals.”

— David Hamlin, Great Migrations series producer

The annual wildebeest migration in Tanzania and Kenya’s Serengeti ecosystem is under threat.

And for once the rapidly emerging climate emergency isn’t entirely to blame, though it doesn’t help.

Instead its human population growth, habitat destruction and the constant encroachment of ever-expanding human  settlements, in the form of fences, farms, roads, railway lines, bridges and highways that are the primary cause.

Conservationists have made the case for wildlife corridors and, in some cases, highway overpasses, such as those that have provided a Bandaid solution in populated, urban areas in Southern California.

A recent study analyzed the movement of East Africa’s migratory wildebeest in five separate ecosystems, incorporating data from aerial surveys collected over some 60 years (1957-2015) in Kenya and Tanzania. The study found that four of the five migrations have virtually collapsed.

The world famous Serengeti-Mara ecosystem covers some 40,000 km² (15,400 square miles) and straddles Kenya and Tanzania. Researchers determined that since 1977, the total number of wildebeest in the area has stayed at roughly 1.3 million animals — but — the number of wildebeest making the annual crossing from Serengeti National Park in Tanzania to the Maasai Mara National Reserve in Kenya has fallen some 73% during that time — 157,000 wildebeest in 2016, down from 588,000 in 1979.

Over that same period of time, the number of migrating wildebeest crashed 95% in Athi-Kaputiei, near the Kenyan capital Nairobi, from 27,000 wildebeest in 1977 to fewer than 3,000 in 2014. 

Migrating wildebeest are down some 85% in the Greater Amboseli region, an area of roughly 7,700 km² (3,000 square miles) that, like the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem, straddles Kenya and Tanzania.

Migratory populations have fallen some 81% in Mara-Loita, in south-western Kenya, and 72% in the self-contained Tarangire-Manyara ecosystem, in northern Tanzania.

The threats vary from area to area — evidence, perhaps, that climate change is not entirely to blame.

Poorly planned agricultural expansion, poaching, illegal hunting for bushmeat, competition with livestock for grazing grounds, and unpredictable, ever-changing water points all come into play. Droughts are more prevalent, and unpredictable — that part is down to climate change.

The way land is used is changing, too, from pastoral herding to subsistence farming, with former grazing areas being turned into farmland.

This increases the likelihood of human-wildlife

conflict. Elephants for example raid villagers’ crops, instead of staying close the acacia tree cover and plains of protected areas like Amboseli National Park, and hungry lions roam outside park boundaries for the easier — and more plentiful — pickings of domestic livestock.

Kenya’s conservation policy focuses on protected areas, which is only natural, especially for a country that relies so heavily on tourism. The problem is that protected areas encompass just 8% of the country’s land surface, and contain 35% of the country’s total wildlife.

The other 65% ekes out a precarious existence on privately owned land, which wildebeest migrations cross at some point in their route.

Unlike Southern Africa, where privately owned game reserves outnumber national parks by a wide margin, there are relatively few privately owned game reserves in East Africa, and little incentive for private landowners to look after wildlife. Tourists tend to stick to a handful of well-known, heavily promoted areas, so other land uses — agriculture and livestock — have more appeal to the landowner trying to make a living off the land.

The study suggested a number of potential solutions to what will, if left unchecked, become an existential problem. “Saving the migrations means more regulation, securing more land, partnering with local communities and, ultimately, reducing human population growth,” the study authors noted,“regulation of livestock numbers, fences, settlements, farms and roads. 

“Land must be restored, settlements cleared and cultivation on migration routes stopped, and key rivers (like the Mara River, which could be dammed) must be protected.

“Major roads that cut across migratory routes should include underpasses and/or overpasses for migrating wildlife. And robust law enforcement is needed to reduce the illegal hunting of animals for bushmeat.”

The consequences of not acting will  be dire, Joseph Ogutu, University of Hohenheim statistician and one of the study’s lead authors, concluded. “Migrations of zebra and Thomsonʼs gazelle in Kenyaʼs Rift Valley and elephants in Kenya have already been lost. Wildebeest could go the same way.”

As mzee Jomo Kenyatta, founding president of the Republic of Kenya once said, “The natural resources of this country, its wildlife which offers such an attraction to visitors from over the world, the beautiful places in which these animals live, the mighty forests which guard the water catchment areas so vital to the survival of man and beast, are a priceless heritage for the future.”

Losing that would be a shame indeed.

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