Tolstoy, one of east Africa’s few remaining Super Tusker elephants, roamed the open grasslands around Kenya’s Mount Kilimanjaro for more than five decades. That was until last year, when he died after being speared by a farmer seeking to protect his crops. “This is happening more and more,” said ranger Daudi Ninaai, standing over the animal’s carcass inside the Amboseli ecosystem reserve, whose 2,000 elephants include just five of the Super Tuskers famed for their enormous tusks.
The ranger fears other pachyderms will meet the same fate, as the increasingly frequent clashes between humans and wildlife in the Unesco-designated biosphere are exacerbated by the proliferation of new commercial farms growing crops such as avocados for the west and China. Beijing opened its doors to Kenyan avocados in August and expects to import 20,000 tonnes of the fruit this year. Incidences of “crop raiding”, where elephants damage or trample cultivated land, more than doubled from 156 in 2020 to 363 last year, according to Big Life, a conservation group.
“It’s skyrocketing . . . because the space is shrinking,” Samuel Tokore, a senior official at Kenya Wildlife Service, said of the human-wildlife conflicts. Kenya’s elephants, a must-see for tourists who contribute 10 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product, have traditionally been free to traverse through and between its national parks to find food and water, and roam over the border into neighbouring Tanzania.
But the fenced farms growing cash crops have drastically reduced their ability to travel freely. Tall barriers have been thrown up across their ancient migration routes while farmers have shown a willingness to use lethal force to protect their crops. ‘Nobody wants to wonder if they’re contributing to the deaths of elephants every time they bite into an avocado from Kenya Paula Kahumbu, WildlifeDirect Such incidents have caused the deaths of more than 50 Amboseli elephants over the past decade. The problem has been heightened by one of the worst droughts on record, which last year killed more than 200 elephants in Kenya alone. Benson Leyian, Big Life chief executive, said the animals were simply following traditional routes, but the new farms blocked “critical migratory corridors that are key to elephants moving between Amboseli” and nearby Chyulu and Tsavo national parks.