Although he made his name with his archaeological finds of early humans, Richard Leakey became famous as the conservationist who turned the tide against elephant poaching. Bringing the slaughter of Kenya’s elephants under control required a military solution and Leakey was not afraid to apply it. Many poachers were killed, giving Leakey a reputation as a cold-blooded obsessive who put animals before people.
But the birth of the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), the eradication of elephant poaching and the ban on international trade in ivory are his legacy, and they form the basis of Wildlife Wars: My Fight to Save Africa’s Natural Treasures. This surprisingly personal memoir has much to tell about the fragile relationships between conservationists and governments.
Life for the average person in Africa is tough and basic needs are far from being met. This is the background against which Leakey fought his war and he constantly refers to the threat poverty poses to the preservation of Africa’s spectacular wildlife. His argument, here and in recent lectures, is that national parks managed exclusively for biodiversity protection must be created, and that this protection of global wildlife heritage should be funded by international sources.
Yet in the early Nineties the development agencies favoured “community-based conservation”. Leakey’s stand on protection of parks was seen as a lack of respect for local communities and used against him when he resigned as head of the KWS in 1994.
Wildlife Wars continues where Leakey’s memoir One Life left off. It spans a 13-year period, beginning in 1989 when Leakey became head of the KWS. Then the elephant slaughter was at its height across Africa. It is estimated that between 1975 and 1989 the international markets for ivory in Europe, the United States and Asia led to the death of 1,2-million elephants, slaughtered to make piano keys, games and fashion accessories. Kenya’s herds were reduced by more than 85% by armed poachers. Stopping the killing required changing the perceptions of ivory users, so eliminating the market, as well as mounting an armed force against the poachers.
Leakey says these challenges at times seemed impossible, especially in view of President Daniel arap Moi’s somewhat paranoid and wavering political support. The book captures the electric atmosphere at KWS during the first three years, when funds, personnel, facilities and a leader with a plan seemed to promise success. Leakey sweet-talked the World Bank into providing a grant that helped him to build a new institution employing Kenya’s top scientists and managers, and to create an efficient, armed wildlife-protection unit. The project was enormous, as was the transformation in morale among his 3Â 000 employees.
As the elephant populations began to recover, Kenya’s tourist industry revived to become the country’s main source of revenue. But the KWS success story suddenly changed when Leakey fell out of favour with Moi. Leakey knew that it was his persuasiveness that led to donor confidence, yet he was tied up in red tape by both the Kenyan government and the World Bank.
These were small problems compared with the political interference. With both humour and seriousness, Leakey explains the sacrifices he had to make in order to see his vision succeed. Things became really bad after a near-fatal aircraft crash in June 1993. Leakey suffered two smashed legs.
While his courage boosted his popularity at KWS and among ordinary Kenyans, his enemies in the government seethed. He suspected that there was a plot afoot to remove him from KWS.
Leakey was accused of corruption, mismanagement and planning to overthrow the government. He began to wonder if the plane crash was an accident. It is no secret that he was hated by some politicians for his uncompromising stance on corruption. The World Bank funding was lucrative for KWS and he was not sharing it. In 1994, having been ordered to share 75% of KWS’s revenue with communities outside the protected areas, Leakey resigned. He was brought back four years later to rescue the service from the brink of collapse.
Despite the gravity of the situation, Leakey makes light of the sometimes comical circumstances. It is clear that his life was at risk many times and he worked under tremendous pressure. Though he was aggressive and driven while running KWS, Leakey today describes himself as reflective. Many wonder why this palaeoanthropologist should risk his life for wildlife.
In moving reflections on elephant sentience, Leakey describes his introduction to elephant emotions and society by the well-known elephant scientist, Joyce Poole. He was outraged at the moral and ethical implications of poaching and culling for ivory, arguing that elephants, apes, whales and dolphins have emotions so like those of humans that they deserve to be treated as such.
Hard-core wildlife groups sniggered at his “bunny-hugging” tendencies, but they underestimated his impact. An international awareness campaign centred on an ivory bonfire — when Moi set fire to 12 tonnes of ivory in Nairobi National Park — which led to the ban on ivory trade through the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) and the collapse of ivory prices.
Although the ban was effective the respite was short-lived. Trade in ivory was partially reopened in 1997 with the support of some major international conservation groups.
Fierce lobbying held back further sales in 1999, but many fear that further relaxation may be approved in 2002. With international concern waning so quickly, Wildlife Wars is a timely reminder of the fierce and barbaric nature of this bush war and the tragedy of so many unnecessary deaths.