Overgrazing Threatening Elephant Populations

In Kenya for the last few years, pastoral communities have had to endure losses worth thousands of dollars as long famine spells persisted. With scarce water and little pasture having been consumed by the scorching sun in the semi arid areas, pastoral communities witness their livestock starve until they drop dead.

As a result of this painful experience, the pastoralists had to think of viable survival means, which led them to the expansive wildlife ranches and reserves with plenty of grass. The danger from wild animals to the herders and their livestock was far outweighed by the much needed pasture.
The well fed livestock have reproduced and their population in this ranches and reserves increased leading to overgrazing. Though livestock has survived, the overgrazing has occasioned a new threat to the survival of other wild animals.

According to a new study published in an online journal, overgrazing by livestock poses a greater danger to elephants more than poaching. The six year study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that climate change and human encroachment on wildlife space are threatening the already endangered elephant.
Thure Cerling, leader of the study carried out by the University of Utah says, “Fifteen years ago, there was a lot of poaching in the area, and elephants were getting killed, but since then, security has improved considerably, so people are moving in with cattle. Now there’s a suggestion the elephants are finding it harder to compete with the cattle than with the poachers.”
Following a family of three elephants in the Samburu and Buffalo Springs national reserves the team found that for the animals to reproduce, they need to alternate between eating a diet of grass and shrubs.

Two weeks after the rains begin, an elephant, the study says, usually switches to a grass diet to bulk up for pregnancy and birth. But the team observed that when seasons changed and there was prolonged drought or livestock had fed on the early grass, the elephants did not conceive.

The study also showed an intricate interplay in the timing of the rainy season, the growth of grass and when the elephants breed and give birth.
Five weeks after the rains start, when the proportion of grass in the elephants’ diet reaches maximum levels, females in the 800-member Samburu-Buffalo Springs elephant population are most likely to conceive.

The elephants give birth 22 months after conception, with the peak of births just in time for another rainy season to provide water and grass for offspring.
According to Cerling, the study leader “It is clear that the grass provides nutrients that the elephants presumably need for successful reproduction,”

The jumbo: Prized Ivory Still its Curse

A latest conservation study notes 681 of 701 elephant tusks sold in the US in 2007, came from Africa. The Study titled Ivory Markets in the US by conservationists Esmond Martin and Daniel Stiles say the quantity could be higher as it is difficult to track down the movement of ivory from Africa. Zimbabwe took the lead followed by Tanzania, South Africa and Botswana.

“Tusks from Africa are first sent to a third country; tracking the movement is very difficult,” says the report. This is the latest published data since the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) conference in The Hague, The Netherlands, allowed the Southern African elephant range states a one-off sale of their ivory stockpiles in 2007.

The partial downgrading of the elephant from the category of species threatened with extinction is perceived to have triggered an upsurge in poaching. However, going by recent developments in Kenya, the threat against the Jumbo’s does not stop there.

According to Kenya Government records, regions where Chinese contractors are building roads are prone to poaching. The Chinese embassy in Kenya complained of perceived ethnic profiling of their nationals following information by wildlife authorities in Kenya estimating that foreign contractors killed 80 elephants last year. Apart from China, other Ivory leading markets in the world include Japan and the US.

The upsurge in poaching is also blamed on lax surveillance and porous borders with Tanzania. “We have difficulties in protecting our wildlife species, especially the elephant and the rhino. Tanzania lacks the equipment and technical know-how to track their stocks. They are also indifferent to appeals for joint operations in game parks to keep poachers off. They believe their elephant stocks are stable, but their rhino numbers have declined to less than 40, which speaks volumes about the level surveillance,” a Kenya wildlife security officer, who declined to be identified, said.