Big Life: A Bush Journal

by Richard Bonham
February 24 2012

We release stories of Big Life activities, but on a daily basis so much is going on that you never hear about. Here are just a few things that have happened yesterday.

1) Radio call from Rombo, the current hotspot for much of the poaching, bordering as it does the giant area that is Tsavo National Park:
Following a tip-off, the team set up an ambush on a track used by bush meat traders.
At midnight, a motor bike appeared and was stopped. It was carrying the butchered remains of a Dik Dik and Grants gazelle. The owner of the motor bike had been called in by poachers who had killed the two animals by using a spotlight to dazzle them, freezing them on the spot, so they could walk tight up to them, and then breaking their backs with machetes.
The poachers got away but it is undoubtedly as good to catch the middle man, as when he gets to court, he will be forced to forfeit his motorbike to the court, and hopefully receive a sentence for being in possession of game meat.

2) I received the following text message from Wilson Mancha, the commanding officer of Kimana area. ''Hi Sir, lion caused problems on OGR last night by jumping on roof of hut where young goats were being held with family sleeping. Lion scared away but killed cow in next boma''. Fortunately the livestock owners did not take any action, as they will receive payment for the cow that was killed by the lion.

3) Report from Osiwan outpost: The 200 liters of diesel fuel that Big Life has donated to the community had arrived. This enables the community to pump water away from the community water point. This was necessary because in the last dry season, elephants had destroyed some pipes to the cattle trough to get to the water, so now hopefully, the elephants should stay away. This kind of support and understanding in helping the local communities is what helps make them so supportive of Big Life's activities in return. We can only achieve the successes we do with their support.

4) A report came in from Saliata - an area is about 60 miles away from our nearest area of operations - to say that an elephant had been shot, and its tusks hacked out. The poachers had crossed the border into Tanzania. Another depressing reminder that we have to be constantly alert.

5) The Elmarba vehicle called in to say that he had been charged by a female elephant while trying to chase them out of crops and his only escape was to plough through a thorny bushes, which shredded the canvas that covers the back of his Land Cruiser. Damn, that's $500 of unbudgeted expenses we will have to find.

And so it goes...just another day here on the Kenyan side....

By Richard Bonham & Nick Sharp
January 29 2012

Crop raiding by wildlife has been dealt with ruthlessly by man since the first was crop sewn. As time goes by, with the world's population snowballing, land is being lost to agriculture, resulting in wildlife losing habitat at thousands of acres per day. This can only lead to one thing...human wildlife conflict.

To understand the seriousness of the issue, one has to focus to the mindset of a farmer. His only source of livelihood is the crop he's planted. Then a herd of Elephant arrive, and within a couple minutes, destroys not only a season's work and investment, but more seriously takes the food off the table that he was hoping to sustain his family with. He has a spear or bow and arrow ... and understandably does not think twice about using them. The result, a badly wounded or dead elephant.

Today in the Amboseli ecosytem, crop raiding continues to grow, and the only long term solution is to identify key farming and wildlife areas and then create effective barriers through electric fencing. This has been done in some areas, but the costs are so high it is unaffordable for the farmers, and so far we have been unable to raise the hundreds of thousands of dollars required. As a result of this, we have been deploying game ranger teams with thunder flashes to scare the elephants out of farms. This is an expensive exercise and not that efficient as in one night, the teams cannot be in ten different places at once. Elephants, being so intelligent, soon learn that there is no inherent danger with the thunder flashes and are soon to return for another meal!

As an experiment to deter Elephant more effectively, Big Life are experimenting with a new way to combat crop raiding elephants – “chilli grenades” made from a condom, a bit of explosive, some sand and of course lots of crushed chillies.
Because elephants have a large and sensitive olfactory and nasal system they are particularly sensitive to smells, in fact sensitive enough that just the smell of chillies will irritate them to the point of it being a deterrent.

Chillies have been used in such a way throughout Africa and Asia to great effect. Farmers usually encircled their crops with chilli plantations; effectively creating a barrier that the elephant just doesn’t want to cross. The plantations in the eco-system that Big Life covers are just too big to make this practical however, so Big Life are working on a new way to bring the power of chillies in combating elephant raids to the Amboseli ecosystem.

The “chilli grenades” are made of condoms stuffed with 3 teaspoons of chilli, 3 teaspoons of sand and a fire cracker. They are simple enough to be made in the Big Life HQ by our game rangers and are also very inexpensive, making distribution across the eco-system plausible. The grenades have been distributed to local farmers who, on sight of a raiding elephant, light the fuse and launch them above it. The cloud of chilli powder that falls on the elephant is enough to cause it temporary irritation and result in a change of course and a giving up of its quest for food. Human elephant conflict is avoided and, best of all, neither the elephant nor human are harmed.

Although this experiment is still very much in the early stages, results already look promising. We have also start meticulously documenting cases of elephant human conflicts (along with their outcomes), so should have concrete data on the effectiveness of the “chilli grenades” experiment very soon.

December 10 2011

Big Life Foundation just hit the One Year mark since we were up and running in the field. This is what happens to a decal on the side of one of the Big Life anti-poaching patrol vehicles in that time.

June 1 2011

This is from Llewellyn Dyer, our Field Commander in Kenya. It should have posted in early June.

Coming shortly : further developments with poachers already caught in Rombo after elephant and giraffe kills.

From Llewellyn :

When I first arrived in the Chyulus in December 2010, Richard Bonham gave me a quick synopsis of what Big Life was already doing, where we were operating and what the plans were for the future. One of the places that he mentioned we might expand to was a Group Ranch in the southeastern corner of the eco-system called Rombo, close to Tsavo West National Park. At the time I did
not think much of it, as we were so busy building bases and selecting and training rangers on Olgulolui group ranch around Amboseli.

However Rombo kept coming up in conversation with the rangers who said that the poaching there was out of control. Even the building contractor who was building our bases came to me and said, “The poaching in Rombo is very bad, they are selling game birds like chickens and bush meat like goats.”
To say the least I was very concerned so when Richard told me that we potentially had funds to set up a base in Rombo and that I should head down there and do a recce I was very excited. I had three things on my agenda to assess the level of poaching, to see if the group ranch wanted our help and if so to locate a potential location for the base.

When I arrived, I met with the existing community game rangers and the local KWS personnel to discuss the issue of poaching. They said that poachers were coming in from Tanzania on a regular basis to hunt for bush meat. The poachers were hunting with spotlights and the rangers often saw the beams at night, but as there was only one KWS vehicle covering a very large area they rarely had its support, so more often than not, they arrived on the scene well after the poachers had fled with their spoils. None of their existing elephant population had been poached for a while but we all agreed that they were very exposed to poachers and that something had to be done fast to boost their security.

The following morning, I met with the group ranch officials to see if they would accept our support and allow us to build a permanent outpost for their ranger who up until then were operating out of their own homes. Their response was a unanimous, “How soon can you start?”

We located a suitable place to put the camp on my second visit with Richard in the southeastern corner of the conservation area. It is located on one of the major ingress routes for poachers coming into the conservancy. I received a report shortly after this recce that 5
impala and 3 zebra had been killed less than a kilometer away from the proposed site in a single night, and not one of the poachers had been caught. However, the mere presence of a permanent camp there should act a deterrent and secure at least that part of the conservancy.

Since then we have purchased a vehicle and are in the process of building the camp, which should be active at some point in June. In
the interim we are providing them with support in the form of joint patrols led by a senior sergeant and supported with a vehicle.