As Elephant Action Network Gathers at CGI, AWF Reports Successes Protecting African Elephants

African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) joins former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Clinton Foundation Vice Chair Chelsea Clinton, several African heads of state and a number of conservation groups to once again draw attention to Africa’s elephant crisis.

At last year’s Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting, Secretary Clinton and Chelsea Clinton announced the Partnership to Save Africa’s Elephants. Because of the strong success of last year’s single commitment, this effort was scaled into the Elephant Action Network, which now includes 21 different commitments made by 16 individual organizations, which reach 58 different countries and touch upon each of three key pillars: Stop the Killing, Stop the Trafficking, Stop the Demand.

“We are genuinely impressed by Secretary Clinton’s and Chelsea’s commitment to this issue and grateful for their resolve in making it a central issue at the Clinton Global Initiative for a second year,” says African Wildlife Foundation CEO, Dr. Patrick Bergin. “Their unwavering support speaks to the urgency and seriousness of this poaching crisis, and continues to attract greater public and government attention to the cause of defending Africa’s elephants from the bullets, poisoned arrows, spears and poisons that claim them by the tens of thousands every year.”   

AWF’s own commitment as part of the Elephant Action Network has already netted a number of successes on the ground in Africa. In Zambia, AWF has been supporting scouts conducting anti-poaching patrols in and around Lower Zambezi National Park under the direction of a local conservation NGO. Over the past year, more than 8,000 foot and aerial patrols have been carried out, resulting in a 50 percent decrease in elephant poaching between 2012 and 2013. On the porous Kenya–Tanzania border, AWF has been supporting scouts on both sides of the border, with more than 35,000 man hours of counter-poaching patrols logged during a recent three-month period in southern Kenya, resulting in the arrests of several poachers. In northern Tanzania, AWF-supported scouts patrolling the Enduimet Wildlife Management Area have reduced elephant poaching to zero.

“When you apply the right amount of resources and manpower to an area, you can significantly disrupt poaching in that area,” says Bergin. “These are exactly the kind of results the Partnership to Save Africa’s Elephants intended to realize when it was formed last year.”

In May 2014, to enhance the wildlife protection work AWF has already been engaged in in several landscapes in Africa, AWF launched a three-year, US$10-million Emergency Response Fund to advance actions under the key pillars of Stop the Killing, Stop the Trafficking and Stop the Demand. In addition to enhancing protection on the ground around elephant populations, AWF is also supporting sniffer dogs in Kenya—a major source and transit hub for illegal ivory—and hosting a series of dialogs between Chinese and African civil society leaders on how to better promote a sustainable development agenda for Africa that protects the continent’s wildlife and other natural resources. In addition, AWF continues to address the demand side of the equation with its partner, WildAid, through a number of elephant public service announcements starring well-known celebrities, including Yao Ming, Li Bing Bing, Prince William, Edward Norton, and David Beckham.

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