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Building
Capacity
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Conservation
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Conserving Africa's Elephants

Recommended Actions

Within the broad context of the conservation and management of Africa's elephants, there is a need to focus attention and action on priority issues at the local, national, continental, and international levels. This section provides some explicit recommen dations to help direct the efforts of governments, communities, NGOs, and individuals towards more effective conservation and management of Africa's elephants.

While some of these actions may contribute individually to the formulation of much-needed national management plans, taken as a whole, they can also strengthen broader strategic thinking on the way forward for elephant conservation in Africa.

PhotoAs conditions vary so greatly across the range of the African elephant, it is not useful to place the recommended actions in any order of importance. Also, they are not an exhaustive list of trie d and true "recipes for success". Alone or in combination, however, these actions can contribute to conserving the species.

No single government, no one organization, nor a lone individual could hope to achieve the actions recommended on their own. Collaborative efforts will be vital to the survival of Africa's elephants in the coming millennium.

1. Slowing the Loss of Elephant Range and Habitats

    Local level
  • Develop community-based management programmes which ensure benefits to local people, or at least mitigate the presence and impact of elephants and other wildlife outside protected areas, particularly where options for other forms of sustainable land u se are limited.
  • Develop and implement more multi-use programmes where revenues from elephants, whether from consumptive or non-consumptive use, accrue directly to local communities.
  • Promote education and awareness among local communities to demonstrate the benefits of elephant conservation to them.
  • Design community-based land-use plans which take into account known patterns of elephant crop raiding and seasonal movements.

    National level
  • Develop a legal framework for community-based wildlife management, through lobbying and assisting governments to draft and adopt enabling legislation covering elephant populations living outside of protected areas, thus giving local communities essent ial user and ownership rights over elephants on their land.
  • Promote appropriate land-use planning at the national level in African elephant range states in order to lessen the impact of development activities.
  • Support the establishment of new protected areas, particularly in the central African rainforests.
  • Support the maintenance and rehabilitation, as and where necessary, of protected areas that have viable elephant populations and high conservation potential.
  • Support studies to determine the availability of land that could be used to expand elephant range through new and different forms of land use.
  • Train local wildlife managers, biologists, and community extension officers, to work on issues pertaining to the protection and conservation of elephants and elephant habitats.
  • Provide policy and decision makers with factual information on the issues and factors driving the continuing loss of elephant range and habitat.

    Continental level
  • Conduct studies on the implication of different types of forestry and other land-use practices on elephant ranges and habitats, including long-term effects of national structural adjustment programmes.
  • Provide financial and technical support (policy, legal, and economic), for the development of promising opportunities and options in the private or public sectors which may be identified through such studies.
  • Encourage dialogue and collaborative management, where elephant populations range across international boundaries.

    International level
  • Apply international pressure on timber companies to practice ecologically sustainable forestry practices.
  • Carry out full environmental impact assessments prior to large-scale development projects, including fencing, which might restrict seasonal movements in critical elephant habitats.
  • Encourage the sharing of "lessons learned", between Asian and African range states, on the implications of habitat and range loss and fragmentation for the long-term conservation of the species.

2. Protecting Elephants from Unsustainable, Illegal Off-take for the Ivory Trade

    Local level
  • Establish procedures to provide emergency funding at the local level, where important elephant populations ar under threat and where there is little law enforcement capacity.
  • Provide carefully monitored financial and/or material support and experienced technical assistance (as and where necessary), to key elephant conservation areas, in order to combat poaching and to provide an effective working environment for trained la w-enforcement personnel.
  • Discourage logging companies from encouraging their staff to shoot elephants and other wild animals to provide "meat for the pot".

    National level
  • Encourage the establishment of wildlife investigation departments, intelligence units, and reward systems, to dismantle illegal networks and deter poaching before it takes place.
  • Support the training of law enforcement personnel to the highest standards of discipline, leadership, and integrity.
  • Improve the development and enforcement of punitive measures, which effectively deter poaching.
  • Develop competent "problem animal control" units to deal efficiently with the removal of troublesome elephants before local communities take matters into their own hands, further risking human and elephant lives.
  • Provide technical assistance in the frafting of new legislation for the implementation and enforcement of CITES and policy reform to regulate wildlife trade, particularly in countries in West and Central Africa.
  • Encourage and assust governments to mark, register, and secure all ivory in accordance with CITES standards and to put in place effective and accurate tracking systems for ivory which is domestically sold.

    Continental level
  • Continue the process of dialogue among the range states of the African elephant to enhance regional co-operation in determining the levels of current threat, and to work on policially acceptable and technically practical solutions to the problem of iv ory stocks, illegal trade, and any future resumption of legal trade.
  • Conduct trade studies in key African wildlife product producing countries and entrepôts, to assess the distribution and levels of illegal trade currently taking place.
  • Support the continuation of TRAFFIC's Bad Ivory Database to track ivory seizures and the accumulation of ivory stocks in as many countries as possible.
  • Monitor the growth, distribution, and where possible, output of Asian-run, African-based ivory processing industries.

    International level
  • Discourage the reduction of law enforcement staffing levels in important elephant range states, currently taking place under broad structural adjustment programmes, through lobbying and policy work with international lending agencies.
  • Conduct additional trade studies in key traditional, current, and potential consuming contries, particularly those in the growth economies of East Asia, to estimate the levels and sources of demand.
  • Increase awareness, in Japan and other key ivory consumer countries in East Asia, regarding the status of the African elephants, and the impct on it of continued illegal trade.
  • Promote more effective ivory trade control mechanisms in traditional and newly-emerging consumer countries.
  • Investigate the further options available for the legal disposal of Africa's large ivory stocks and the harnessing of any resulting revenues to the benefit of conservation.
  • Develop and promote stronger linkages between the African and Asian elephant range states to discuss topics of mutual concern with regard to the ongoing illegal ivory trade.

3. Assessing Elephant Impact on Biodiversity Under Conditions of Local Overpopulation Resulting from Increasing Confinement

    Local level
  • Support studies on the long-term impact of elephants at varying densities on biodivesity (beyond the impact on plant communities alone), in a wide variety of sites, habitat types, and different management regimes.
  • Assist and promote the development of community-based conservation initiatives to expand the elephant range outside of protected areas, which can relieve congestion within protected areas where density-related problems exist.

    National level
  • Encourage and build the capacity of appropriate management authorities to clearly define their biodiversity conservation objectives, and preferred management actions, for each national park and protected area currently, or potentially, housing signifi cant numbers of elephants.
  • Support the translocation of family groups of elephants only from non-viable areas to areas where they will be viable in the long term.

    Continental level
  • Discourage the use of translocation as a long-term solution to problems of local overpopulation.
  • Support the development of an "expert" system for defining and determining the appropriate management actions to be taken in specific cases, where elephants exceed their "preferred management densities".

    International level
  • Explore the use of well-developed biological databases, and geographical information system (GIS) techniques, to determine critical sites within the range of the African elephant where the impact of local overabundance on biodiversity of global signif icance may be most keenly felt.
  • Build on experiences in Asia of the loss and fragmentation of elephant habitats, in order to develop practical management strategies for similar problems as they emerge in Africa.

4. Ameliorating Human-Elephant Conflict

Photo
    Local level
  • Help communities to understand those aspects of their farming systems which make them particularly susceptible to crop-raiding.
  • Develop and implement plans to reduce the impact of crop raiding through adopting and combining alternative cropping systems and deterrent strategies.
  • Conduct studies in both forest and savanna systems to determine the nature of crop raiding and work towards the prevention, mediation, and management of conflict in affected areas.
  • Continue research into deterrent methods including, but not limited to, noxious sprays, auditory warnings, and barriers.
  • Encourage the return of any proceeds or benefits from problem animal control operations to the locally-affected community.

    National level
  • Support further work aimed at applying possible solutions, as and where appropriate, to other areas where conflict is taking place.
  • Foster land-use planning that will provide favourable conditions for the long-term survival of elephants outside protected areas.
  • Finance monitoring and evaluation of damage compensation schemes, as and where they may exist, around protected areas.
  • Encourage the development of competent "problem animal control" units to deal swiftly and humanely with the elimination of troublesome elephants.
  • Depoliticize, to the extent possible, human-elephant conflicts by working to identify true problem areas and to work towards practical solutions in these cases.

    Continental level
  • Support IUCN.SSC African Elephant Specialist Group's Task Force on human-elephant conflict to compile informaiton on the nature of these conflicts, the approaches tried, and the successes and failures reported to date.
  • Support research to perform the necessary analyses on the information gathered above, and build models to predict the key areas of human-elephant conflict in the future.

    International level
  • Raise international awareness of the extent and complexity of the human-elephant issue to enhance understanding of the linkage between their common future.
  • Solicit support from the conservation and development donor communities to finance more work towards reconciling the needs of elephants, and the needs and interests of people, at local and international levels.
  • Facilitate linkages between Asian experts and African experts to share "lessons learned" in the areas of human-elephant conflict.

5. Determining the Status of Populations

    Local level
  • Develop monitoring programmes which use trained community wildlife scounts and game guards to report on elephant numbers and distributions in local areas.

    National level
  • Continue data collection for key, well-surveyed elephant populations to allow for the determination of long-term trends. These populations are found in Botswana, Kenya, Namibia, Tanzaania, Uganda, and Zimbabwe.
  • Carry out ariel surveys in the extensive unsurveyed savanna areas of western Tanzania; Boubanjidah, Benoue, and Faro in Cameroon; the suvanna range of Central African Republic and Congo; and the savanna regions of Benin, Niger, Nigeria, Togo, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Ghana, and Chad.
  • Conduct dung surveys in unsurveyed forests of central Africa; including Zaire, Gabon, Congo, Central African Republic, Cameroon, and Equatorial Guinia, to establish population estimates and to improve the reliability of the methodology as a toold for the management and conservation of forest elephants.
  • Conduct ground surveys in the forest range of west Africa, particularly those in Ghana, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria.
  • Conduct ground surveys in the western forest populations of Ethiopia.
  • Support, when conditions permit, aerial and ground surveys in Mozambique, Angola, and Sudan.
  • Support reconnaissance surveys in Guinea, Guinea Bissau, and the savanna areas of Sierra Leone and Liberia.

    Continental level
  • Support studies of elephant movements, particularly cross-border situations, long distance seasonal movements, and elephants in forest areas, in relation to specific movements, and elephants in forest areas, in relation to specific management problems .
  • Organize and convene technical workshops to review and improve on methods of counting elephants and establishing significant population trends over time.
  • Collect and consolidate qualitative data to improce current knowledge on continental elephant distribution and to more accurately determine their range.
  • Support ongoing research to determine the genetic relationship between forest and savanna elephants as new findings could have major implcations for their conservation.

    International level
  • Facilitate linkages between Asian elephant suvey experts and African elephant survey experts to refine the methodologies for counting elephants in forest habitats.

Photo

6. Building Technical Capacity

    Local level
  • Train community wildlife scouts and game guards in appropriate techniques of elephant survey work at the local level.
  • Recruit and train local community members to collect and provide information on illegal activities through the use of appropriate intelligence networks.

    National level
  • Update and improve the curriculum at all African wildlife management schools (e.g. Mweka, Garoua, and the new Southern Africa Wildlife College), on elephant survey techniques.
  • Support legal training in the drafting of updated legislation for elephant-related infractions and the prosecution of such cases at the national level.
  • Train and appoint individuals to work specifically on gathering intelligence related to illegal activities within and around protected areas.

    Continental level
  • Support training courses in ground and aerial survey techniques at the national and regional level in Frence, English, and Portuguese languages.
  • Support "in services" training programmes for the study of illegal trade in elephant products within appropriate management authorities in key range states of each sub-region.

    International level
  • Support African graduate students in pursuit of higher degrees to undertake research that is applicable to, and important for, the conservation and management of elephants (e.g. case studies of human-elephant conflict; transborder movements; the impac t of illegal killing on populations; the pattern of settlement in translocated elephants; or the relationship between elephant densities and subsequent changes in biodiversity).
  • Provide opportunities for African nationals to actively participate in international meetings, such as CITES and the Convention on Biological Diversity, where they may learn the skills of negotiation and lobbying which play such a central role in toda y's conservation world.

Next: List of Acronyms


Copyright 1997, The World Wide Fund For Nature