Burning Ivory, Burying Elephants: How GoK Undermines The Conservation Cause

Burning ivory is nothing new. Since the President Daniel Arap Moi lit a 20ft pile of tusks at the Nairobi National Park in April 1989, many others around the world have followed suit, some choosing to crush rather than burn. Moi’s successors as President have also maintained a tradition of occasionally staging ivory burns to send a message that ivory has no value beyond the life of an elephant.

Tomorrow, President Uhuru Kenyatta will do him one better, tagging not just the second burn of his Presidency but also the biggest of them all – he will incinerate almost all of Kenya’s ivory stockpile, some 105 tonnes as well as another 1.5 tonnes of rhino horn. This he will do before an assembled audience of other African Heads of State, Hollywood celebrities and, perhaps most importantly, global media. Once again Kenya will shine as a paragon of elephant conservation.

Only it isn’t. In fact, Kenya has kept burning ivory while burying its elephants. While nowadays the conservation community is wont to heap accolades on the Kenyan government for its stated commitment and actions to halt the poaching of our wildlife, just two years ago, they were singing an entirely different tune. Veteran conservationist, Richard Leakey, who last year made a celebrated return to the Kenya Wildlife Service as the Chairman of its Board, had in 2014 warned that poaching was “a national disaster” and that known ringleaders were operating with “outrageous impunity”.

While many point to corruption among the law enforcement agencies as the source of this impunity, few eyebrows are raised when it is revealed that decorative ivory is to be found in State House and specifically in the President’s and First Lady’s offices. There were no murmurs of discontent last year when the Presidential Strategic Communication Unit released a photograph of President Kenyatta receiving US Secretary of State, John Kerry, at State House Nairobi, flanked by two elephant tusks.

In an oped in the Guardian, Paula Kahumbu, another strong and necessary voice for elephant conservation, writes that the ivory burn is not “really about burning ivory at all: it’s about saving elephants … eliminate demand for ivory and put value instead on living elephants”.  In other words, any economic value that may be gained now or in the future from the sale of ivory is not worth the extinction of the species.

But this is an argument that the government itself has undermined. When agreeing to the routing of the standard gauge railway through the country’s wildlife sanctuaries, KWS’ Leakey said that although “ideally there should be no transportation in a national park," the plan was a "pragmatic" balance of wildlife and development concerns. In this case, building through the park as opposed populated areas will save money.  The deal cemented the idea that wildlife is fair game when it stands on the path of “development”, a sharp contrast to the rhetoric surrounding tomorrow’s event.

Finally, there is the question of who actually benefits from the conservation of elephants. It is not enough to simply burn ivory to send messages to the outside world. Elephant conservation should not be about preserving them for tourists or burnishing politicians’ credentials or the government’s image. There needs to be a concerted effort to engage Kenyans and especially the communities bearing the cost of living alongside these animals, both in terms of lives and livelihoods, while enjoying few of the benefits. 

In his famous “bunny huggers” speech at the 1997 CITES conference in Harare Leakey linked wildlife conservation to the struggle for “accountability, justice and opportunity”. He noted that Europeans do not seem to have suffered from the extinction of species such as mammoths or woolly rhinoceros. “Will Africans miss the elephant or the rhino if these too disappear?” he asked. As the Kenyan government and the global conservation movement prepare for their moment in the spotlight, it is a question they would do well to ponder.

There's More To Protecting Elephants Than PR

It is a ritual we have been treated to by every administration since the Nyayo days. The government rolls out part of its stockpile of ivory and the President lights a bonfire for the cameras. The flames are meant to illuminate the state’s commitment to the preservation of our wildlife, to ending the international trade in ivory and other wildlife products and to the fight against poaching.

Uhuru Kenyatta got in on the act on Tuesday when he lit up 15 tonnes of ivory tusks in the Nairobi National Park. It is the largest haul to receive the presidential baptism of fire. By comparison, Daniel arap Moi torched 12 tonnes in 1989 while Mwai Kibaki only managed a relatively measly 5 tonnes. Further, “to underline Kenya’s determination to eradicate poaching,” according to the President’s website, the Government will burn the rest of its contraband ivory stockpile within the year.”

Last year, African elephant populations passed what was described as a crucial “tipping point”. Essentially, more jumbos are being killed than are born. As reported in the Los Angeles Times, according to one study, the continent lost about a fifth of its elephant population -an estimated 100,000 elephants- between 2010 and 2012. And the share of elephant deaths attributed to poaching has shot up from 25% a decade ago to 65% today.

The Kenya Wildlife Service claims the country has lost 466 elephants in the last two years. But in an opinion piece for the Guardian last year, conservationist Dr Paula Kahumbu said nobody in Kenya believed the KWS numbers. Her own estimate of the number killed in just the first five months of last year was ten times the official figure. A 2014 census of elephants and other large mammals in the Tsavo-Mkomazi ecosystem, which straddles the Kenya-Tanzania border, showed that the population had declined by 12.5 percent or over 1,500 animals.

Any way you cut it, our elephants (and rhinos) are in crisis. And it is true that this is largely driven by Far-Eastern, and especially Chinese, demand for wildlife products –a fact any conservationist or Kenyan government lackey will gladly point out. However, they are less candid when it comes to the liability of the Kenyan state itself.

In March last year, an investigation by KTN reporter, Dennis Onsarigo, revealed that the Uhuru administration was not only aware of the identities of the top 11 poaching kingpins, but was actively protecting them.  A year later, this fact appears to have only succeeded in eliciting a stunning silence from the media and the normally vocal conservation community. There have been neither public demands for the allegations to be further investigated nor for action to be taken against either these specific individuals or their protectors.

It mirrors the silence that greeted revelations in late 2013 that “decorative” pieces of ivory stolen from the offices of the President and First Lady in State House, Mombasa. According to one report, these included pieces that weighed up to 100 kilograms. And all this during a period when Margaret Kenyatta was busy launching the “Hands Off Our Elephants” campaign. Few since have sought to know what ivory was doing in her and her husband’s official residence and offices. Few appear keen to point out the hypocrisy of the President’s office being decorated with ivory at the same time we are seeking shaming others for doing the same. Is it still there? If so, will it be part of the “contraband” the President has promised to destroy? Predictably, the government has not seen fit to volunteer this information.

Since the Kenyatta administration took office, and despite the historical baggage one would expect the name to carry (his mother was widely believed to be implicated in poaching during her husband’s tenure), there has been a marked reluctance to challenge the conduct of the government and its officials in executing their duty to protect our natural heritage. Apart from a brief bust up when the administration refused to declare poaching a national disaster, conservationists and the media have largely pursued a strategy of non-confrontation. But this now seems to be a case of scoring some brownie points but losing the game. It is all fine to rant and rave against the (mostly illegal) international ivory trade. However, ignoring the fact that the government aids and abets the slaughter at home undermines any international effort to stamp it out.

In fact the silence only allows the state to present a false face to the world and to hide its murderous mischief behind a pile of smoking tusks. Regardless of the questionable efficacy of burning ivory as a means of destroying it, the administration can always rely on dramatic pictures to obscure any critical interrogation of its record. It is an effective and dependable public relations ploy. Unfortunately for our elephants, it is no substitute for serious policy and action to protect them.

A version of this article was published by Aljazeera.