In all my travels across Africa, I have never encountered elephants with tusks as long and as heavy as those in southern Kenya. In many parts of Africa, large-tusked elephants have all but vanished, eliminated by the reversal of natural selection through human activity. Poaching and trophy hunting have systematically removed elephants with the biggest tusks leaving small-tusked elephants to dominate the gene pool. The same goes for lions with the biggest manes, big leopards and other species targeted by the wildlife trade. Today, large-tusked elephants are heavily protected, but the threat of international organised poaching syndicates still exists. The elephants with tusks so long, they graze the ground, are continuously monitored to protect them from the threat of poaching and in some cases retaliation as a result of crop raiding.
Tusks and trunks at a waterhole. Tusks this size are rare today and these elephants are heavily protected, guarded day and night.
The mafia-like poaching gangs operating across the continent are highly organised and heavily armed. The illegal trade of wild fauna and flora is estimated to reach a turnover of several billions of US dollars this year alone. What makes Africa’s ivory poachers so successful is that organised crime syndicates controlling the trade are rich, to begin with. They arm local poachers with sophisticated weapons, and they run secret supply and smuggling networks. These syndicates recruit people in poor areas who have few alternatives to make a decent living and the syndicates offer them high salaries, making it difficult to refuse. The hired poachers are increasingly daring, going after animals in national parks, in private conservation areas, and even in extreme cases, in zoos and museums. With deep pockets and a “nothing to lose attitude”, these syndicates are successfully decimating wild populations of species that are endangered and already threatened by other causes (loss of habitat, climate change).
An iconic image of Kenya: tusker walking in front of a snow-capped Kilimanjaro.
So, how do these dogs fit into the complex mosaic of wildlife conservation and organised crime? At first glance, the tracker dogs seem like the cutest of pooches but after spending some time with them you quickly realise that these are far from your friendly neighbourhood dogs. As soon as one of their handlers slips on the “work harness”, the dog’s demeanour changes. The animal knows that playtime is over and it is time to get serious. The handler puts a cloth on the track that needs to be followed. He then places this cloth in a sterile plastic bag and holds it to the dog’s nose for a few seconds or minutes to fully expose the scent. The dog is then ready to track the scent and it is up to the handler to keep up. Once the dog is on the move, things can go quite quickly!
Didi, a tracker dog with exceptional tracking skills has already assisted Big Life Foundation and Kenya Wildlife Service rangers in tracking down poachers who had slaughtered five elephants for their tusks. The poachers were arrested but a young elephant who witnessed his family being massacred passed away due to the traumatic experience.
Didi is an eight-year-old mixed breed with what looks like a bit of Belgian Malinois in her. She was rescued from a dog shelter in Nairobi and from her arrival in the Chyulu Hills in 2013, she was put through a programme to train her as a tracker dog. Bonnie and Clyde are one year and seven-month-old bloodhounds and were trained at a specialised facility in Laikipia, a county in Kenya.
To the dogs, it may be a highoctane game; for the handlers, it can sometimes turn into a life or death situation.
The training programme focuses on tracking, obedience and compliance skill sets. The course also equips the handlers with dog handling skills, maintaining a rigorous regime of daily exercise and general cleanliness. The tracking aspect of the training is the most important as this is the skill set the dogs will need to master for their future role. Once they are fully trained, they go through a six-day patrolling routine with regular ten-kilometre runs. During the patrols, the dogs test their skills through mock exercises that are geared towards improving their skills, fine-tuning their obedience and better their response time. Sundays are set aside for resting and grooming.
Clyde, a bloodhound gets ready to demonstrate how he tracks a scent and find a poacher or stolen items.
The dogs and their handlers attend the training programme together, honing their skills and strengthening their bonds. Once the trainer deems the handler and the dog ready, both join the main anti-poaching team with the Big Life Foundation. The handlers tend to have interesting stories; ‘anti-poaching dog handler’ isn’t the most obvious job across Kenya. Most of the handlers are from near-by and have a story that begins in the vicinity of the Big Life Foundation. One gentleman was a former cook for the dog unit; his interest and dedication led to him becoming an accomplished tracker dog handler today. Others begin as rangers for the Big Life Foundation and transitioned to handlers when they discovered a passion for the dogs and their work. Still, others have more remarkable stories such as Mutinda who started off as a career poacher, spending much of his teenage and later years involved in wildlife-related criminal activities. Thanks to the dedication and persistence of Richard Bonham, one of the founders of the Big Life Foundation, Mutinda was attracted by the prospect of a legal, steady income and today is one of the team’s most charismatic handlers.
Among the qualities of a good anti-poaching dog is obedience, while qualities of a good handler include passion and hygiene.
According to the handlers, bloodhounds are the best suited to the job as they use both tracks and scent to find poachers as opposed to other breeds that tend to only follow tracks. That being said, Didi is a celebrity in her own right, having led to the arrest of poachers and the recovery of ivory. It all began in July 2015 in the Tsavo West National Park when the bodies of five elephants were discovered with their tusks hacked off. The Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), along with the Big Life Foundation tracker dog team, were deployed to hunt down and capture the poachers. Didi led the sting operation with the KWS team in tow, following the tracks across the border into Tanzania right into the village and the hut where the poachers were hiding out. Didi unearthed the blood-soaked machetes that the poachers had used to remove the tusks from the elephants they slaughtered. The result of the operation was the capture of the poachers as well as the retrieval of the tusks which had been sawed off the elephants. Although a third suspect was arrested, a flaw in the judicial system led the three men to be released later. However, we hope that this lesson is one that they will never forget and share with their colleagues, causing them to reconsider turning to poaching as a source of income.
While this incident did not yield the expected results, the handlers agree that every successful mission is a great boost to their morale. The dogs and their handlers are at the forefront of a global war on wildlife trafficking and every success is a victory for the conservation world.
A common eland, the second largest antelope of Africa, begins its day as the sun rises behind it.
The Big Life Foundation was created by a trio of visionaries, photographer Nick Brandt, conservationist Richard Bonham and entrepreneur Tom Hill. Since 2010, the Foundation works towards protecting elephant populations in Kenya and in the bordering areas of Tanzania. The Big Life Foundation plays a crucial role in controlling elephant poaching in Kenya and Tanzania by launching transboundary anti-poaching efforts, partnering with local communities that are sometimes caught in human-wildlife conflicts, and protecting land that sustains fragile populations of wildlife. The Amboseli-Kimana-Kilimanjaro complex is at the heart of their operations.
Acknowledgment: thank you to Nikki Best and John Kasaine from the Big Life Foundation
Photos: Malini Pittet
This article was previously published in the Kent Alumni Magazine: https://www.kent.ac.uk/alumni/pdf/2018-07.pdf
Author
Malini Pittet began her career as a wildlife biologist, specializing in large felids conservation (leopards, jaguars, ocelots) working in the Amazon, Yemen, India, etc. Although she loved it, she was increasingly frustrated that important information was being buried in scientific papers without concrete action and change on the ground. She was also looking for ways to spread awareness about conservation; the success stories as well as the plights of wildlife worldwide. She decided to change her career and focus on wildlife photojournalism and travel consultation in an attempt to bridge this gap. Photojournalism gives her the opportunity to work with projects that are making a difference for endangered species. Travel consultation has given her the opportunity to bring people to places they would otherwise never choose to travel to.
Blog Design
Roopsha Sengupta is the Editor-in-Chief at ClubSciWri. She did her Ph.D. at the Institute of Molecular Pathology, Vienna and postdoctoral research at the Gurdon Institute, University of Cambridge, UK, specializing in the field of Epigenetics. During her research, she was involved in many exciting discoveries and had the privilege of working and collaborating with a number of inspiring scientists. As an editor for ClubSciWri, she loves working on a wide range of topics and presenting articles coherently, while nudging authors to give their best.
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