Enduimet: Zero Elephants Poached in 2013

We’ve all heard the abhorred numbers.

Up to 10,000 elephants poached for their ivory per year in Tanzania. Some 66% of the pachyderm population in the Selous Game Reserve decimated in the past 4 years. One elephant killed every 15 minutes.

Here is one statistic that hasn’t been reported: zero.

That’s the number of elephants that died in the Enduimet Wildlife Management Area (EWMA) at the hands of poachers in 2013. Not a single one.

With the support of Big Life Foundation and other partners, Honeyguide has worked tirelessly on anti-poaching and resource protection strategies with rangers and village game scouts of the EWMA. Historical poaching statistics are hard to come by from the days before Honeyguide started working in the area in 2010. Unconfirmed reports have up to 10-15 elephants being killed in 2010 alone, but the number could be much higher.

What we can confirm, though, is that poaching numbers dwindled every year since Honeyguide increased its support and activities in the EWMA until 2013 when zero elephants were killed.

“The mobile and dog units have been very effective in protecting the natural resources of Enduimet,” said Honeyguide’s chairman and top anti-poaching trainer, Ole Kirimbai. “Many other partners have played instrumental roles in Enduimet and all deserve praise.”

West Kilimanjaro serves as a key corridor for elephants between Tanzania and Kenya and the greater West Kilimanjaro-Amboseli ecosystem.

In 2013, with the support of Honeyguide, the Enduimet village game scouts arrested more than 40 poachers and assisted with multiple successful operations alongside rangers from Big Life and KWS in Kenya, TAPAPA and KINAPA in Tanzania, and the Tanzanian military and police.

Perhaps even more importantly, Honeyguide works closely with communities among all nine of the EWMA’s villages to protect their farms and crops from wildlife, improve their livelihoods, and increase education and capacities of community members and leaders. Honeyguide will look to expand its community and livelihood programs in 2014.

All this being said, Honeyguide fully recognizes that many challenges still exist in Enduimet for both communities and wildlife. For example, multiple elephants were killed in areas just outside of the WMA. An elephant even killed a villager in an incident in December 2013. Some communities feel they simply do not receive enough benefits to justify conserving such a large area of land.

In 2014, Honeyguide hopes to increase its role in mitigating some of these great challenges. We will be writing more regularly about Enduimet and our other project sites throughout the year.

But the number “zero” speaks for itself in confirming that community-based conservation and resource protection can work. Let’s hope this coming year will witness more successful community-based programs in Tanzania and poaching rates will start to slow down nationwide.