Towards a Global Elephant Conservation Programme

Below is the substance of an email I sent around to ATE colleagues two years ago, 26 June 2006 to be precise, following the meeting of African ministers in Congo Brazzaville under the auspices of AMCEN (African Ministerial Conference on the Environment). AMCEN is meeting again this week in Johannesburg. Although nothing much has actually happened in the meanwhile on the substance of the mail, our friend in GRASP (Great Apes Survival Programme), Melanie Virtue of UNEP tells us that there is rekindled interest on the subject of a similar programme for elephants. I thought it would be useful to go on record with our thoughts back then, to see if we can help build to the future. (I'll attach also an even older document, "Proposal for an African Elephant Habitat Conservation Programme Pilot Project" that Keith Lindsay and I cobbled together back in 2000. Parts are certainly out of date, but there may be one or two ideas salvageable.)

We have all been talking over the past few years of a Big Elephant Project, one that would cut across the regional bickering, not be constantly bogged down by the trade debate, stymied by weird science, and move the agenda towards creating a future for elephants with dignity, funding and government support.  I think we now have the possibility of funding, lots of good will, and a model to build on, GRASP.

At the recent meeting of AMCEN in Brazzaville, there was showcasing of GRASP, and Ian Redmond, whom most of you know, managed to get a significant little press-covered ceremony plugged into Plenary at which two more countries, Rwanda and Gabon, signed the Kinshasa Declaration affirming political will at the highest level for the protections of great apes and their habitats.  There was also a GRASP side event during the high-level ministerial segment.  Cristina [Boelcke, Director of UNEP's Division of Regional Cooperation, and, as it happens, my goodladywife] made sure that Shafquat Kakahel (UNEP's Ag. Exectutive Director [at the time] until the new guy comes), Rob Hepworth (Executive Secretary of the CMS -- Convention on Migratory Species -- and institutional father of GRASP when he was in UNEP a few years back (he was the UK secretary of the CBD before that)), and Olivier Deleuze (O-i-C UNEP/GEF office) were all on hand to say a few supportive words.  So, bottom line: good precedent and successful model to build on.

Just to remind you:

The GRASP Partnership has, as an immediate challenge, to lift the threat of imminent extinction facing most populations of great apes. Its mission is to work as a coherent partnership to conserve in their natural habitats wherever they exist wild populations of every kind of great ape and to make sure that where apes and people interact, their interactions are mutually positive and sustainable. GRASP also seeks to exemplify and relieve the threats faced by other kinds of animals, birds and plants sharing the forests where apes survive and to illustrate what can be achieved through a genuine partnership between all stakeholders in fragile ecosystems.

See the website, http://www.unep.org/grasp, for more good words and deeds.  UNESCO is the other main institutional partner.

The line we are starting to formulate goes something like this:  government good will and some form of international coordinating mechanism are essential to ensure the future of elephants throughout their range.  The current international forum, CITES, is perpetually confrontational because of the trade debate.  AfESG is working well under a focused mandate to corral scientific and technical information and expertise for ele conservation and management but has little political or ethical advocacy voice.   Currently, there is no umbrella to coordinate the three essential elements of long term elephant survival: science, conservation and development.  As often happens, I see a Venn-diagramme:

Interaction of elephant interests

It seems clear that there is a very strong field of support for the concept.  Ian Redmond clearly seems inclined to lend his remarkable energy to the cause; he is an old elephant hand, after all, who's been thinking along similar lines for some time.  Rob Hepworth affirms that CMS would be a willing partner (a number, eight, I think, West African Range States signed agreements under CMS in Nairobi last ?Oct concerning shared responsibility for transboundary ele pops), able and willing to provide legal frameworks for agreements between neighbouring states.   Without prejudice and not intending to put words in their mouths, I have little doubt that we can count on the support of such UNEP worthies as: Melanie Virtue (current UNEP Director of GRASP); Veele Vandeweerd (ag. Director of UNEP Division of Policy Implementation, under which GRASP sits [now moved on to become Director of UNDP Department of Energy and the Environment in NYC]); Shafquat Kakahel (although currently O-i-C UNEP, will almost certainly stay on as Dep.Exec.Dir [now retired, replaced with Angela Cropper]-- now a GRASP convert and added a good our-nearest-relative paragraph in his closing remarks at AMCEN, and, after eating and drinking with him for three days, thinks that eles are just about as nice (and less of a violation of Koranic teachings to support)); Achim Steiner (new ED coming in June, probably supportive given IUCN history, but certainly so if the rest work on him); Cristina (goes without saying!).  From the UNESCO side, there would seem to be little doubt that Ishwaran Natarajan, another old ele hand and good link to the Asian ele community (along with Ian who was born in Malaysia), would throw MAB behind the programme.  The GRASP patrons (Jane Goodall, Russell Mittermeier, Toshisada Nishida, Richard Leakey, Richard Wrangham) are known to all of us to a greater or lesser degree and would almost certainly lend a positive voice to an ele-GRASP (we'd need new, different eminence-grises, of course).  

And the governments?  Well, during the last day of AMCEN, our South African friends, grabbed part of the morning session to present Elephant Management in RSA.  The minister, M. van Schalkwyk, introduced the subject and handed over to Fundisile Mketeni, DDG Biodiversity and Conservation, Dept. of Environmental Affairs and Tourism.  It was, I guess, the usual guff about so successful is their elephant management that they now have 'too many' and are looking for solutions to 'restore populations to the carrying capactiy' and 'preserve biodiversity'.  The famous exponential curve showing that Kruger eles, 'unelss something is done', will reach N=80,000 very soon, illustrating the huge gravity of the situation and that those elephants must be extraterrestrial, exempt from our usual mammalian homeostasis.  It was a huge hijack, since there was no opportunity for rebuttal: bad form for rabid NGOs to intervene unless programmed at a high-level ministerial segment, and Kenya wasn't even in the room.  Some of the the Southern states chimed in, affirming the dreadful problems in their countries, but some (Angola, Zambia, I think) also called for better regional cooperation.

Afterwards, Ian and I had coffee with Mketeni and said, whilst the trade debate continues in CITES and the jolly healthy science debate continues amongst boffins, let's create a GRASP for elephants.  He affirmed that South Africa would be all for such a move.  In a brief, corridor encounter, the Tanzanian minister said it was in interesting notion, as did Dr. Mwinzi, DG NEMA, Kenya.

In the final report of the meeting, the Brazzaville Declaration, we find the following in which the ministers declare their resolve (para. 35):
To acknowledge our shared responsibility for a sustainable approach to elephant management that will protect and enhance biodiversity and support affected African countries.

The South Africans may well read that as endorsement of  their command and control approach, but I think we can take it as well as a mandate at least for the African portion of an ele-GRASP.

So, some next steps...

• An acronym.  Sounds trivial, but we cannot continue to call it 'a GRASP for elephants', and our working acronym, GROPE (Global and Regional Opportunity for the Protection of Elephants), is admittedly a shade flip.  So, start some offline scribbling.
• A brainstorming.  Ian is coming back through Nbo on Wed 31-May on his way back to the UK.  I've asked him to come through customs.  We'll send a car for him so he can come to the house for a post ba-Congo shower and a chat.  Melanie Virtue, Winnie and Cristina will come, too, to sit for a couple of hours and map out a way forward.
• A visit to Patrick Omondi, to brief him and get his/KWS support for Kenya's participation.  Would be excellent to have both RSA and Kenya as initial correspondents from Africa.

Obviously, this affects us all, especially the elephants, into the future, so please plow in virtually.

The short summary of the attached pdf proposal from 2000 reads:

This paper proposes a Pilot Project for designing an international African Elephant Habitat Conservation Programme that would have three inter-disciplinary thrusts: enhancing the knowledge base of elephant biology; reviewing critically the nature of elephant “trouble spots”; devising and implementing a mechanism to meet the opportunity costs of local human communities.