Countering Poaching and Wildlife Crime: Engaging from the Ground Up

The illegal wildlife trade (IWT) is now the subject of unprecedented scrutiny, having risen up international political agendas in recent years. This is long overdue: the trade is estimated by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime at $10–20 billion per year. The IWT is now the largest global illegal activity after narcotics, counterfeiting and human trafficking. It is driven by unremitting demand for ivory and rhino horn, most notably, as status symbols amongst East Asia’s burgeoning middle classes.

As these assets’ value has grown, the trade has become more professionalised, across source areas, transit states and consumer markets. In African range states especially, this has resulted in better-armed and organised poachers – with highly damaging effects.

These include the loss of at least 20,000 African elephants per year to poaching, according to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). Today, African elephants number as few as 419,000, according to the IUCN African Elephant Specialist Group – against 1.3 million in 1979.

From South Africa to Kenya, this has elicited a range of militarised anti-poaching responses. These have been prioritised over demand reduction, investigatory law enforcement and, importantly, efforts to engage those communities most intimately affected.

Yet experience dealing with other security challenges, from terrorism to insurgency and other forms of crime and conflict, has shown hard-security responses alone to be insufficient, with often only short-term impact. Rather, stakeholders have absorbed the need for complementary soft-security and development work that addresses root causes, in doctrine and in practice. Though local people are often best placed to either facilitate or counteract poaching, they have been largely neglected in the fight against wildlife crime. Until this dimension is prioritised, domestic and international efforts will fail to reduce the threat to this iconic wildlife – and to national and international security.

Indeed, the dominant hard-security approach has largely failed to stem the IWT. Based on CITES-mandated Elephant Trade Information System figures, the volume of wildlife contraband is estimated to have tripled since 1998. Record ivory seizures – totalling 116 tonnes – were made between 2011 and 2013, according to CITES. Beyond this, overly militarised responses have often had highly damaging social impacts in the source areas concerned.

The need to rebalance the bias away from militarised anti-poaching narratives is increasingly recognised in evolving international policy frameworks. Though the January 2014 European Parliament resolution on wildlife crime included just one action on communities (against over thirty on law enforcement), the following month’s London Conference on Illegal Wildlife Trade saw the emphasis begin to shift. Here, community engagement featured as one of four core strands in the resulting declaration agreed by forty-six states. At the follow-up Kasane Conference this March, local engagement was further recognised as ‘the least well developed international strategic approach’.

The problem lies in translating recognition into action. Despite the rhetoric, only two of the fourteen projects supported through the post-London Conference £4-million Challenge Fund had a community focus. A pressing need remains to reorient approaches in source areas to include a greater emphasis on local communities. There is similarly urgent need for research to deepen the evidence base around what works in practice – and what does not.

In particular, successful case studies require careful analysis to draw out lessons and assess their replicability. The Northern Rangelands Trust’s (NRT) community conservancy model in northern Kenya is one such example. Encouraging results suggest this as one of the most effective approaches to date. NRT has supported twenty-eight conservancies since 2004 – now managing 25,000 km2, much of which is critical range for elephants, and black and white rhino.

The guiding principle is local ownership. Conservancies enjoy full responsibility for decision-making through community-appointed boards and an elected Council of Elders. NRT assists in raising funds, advising on institutional and financial issues, supporting ranger training and brokering agreements with investors. And, whilst outcomes need to be set within a broader context – including Kenya’s enactment of stricter anti-poaching legislation since January 2014 – the Trust has experienced a number of successes.

Since 2012, poaching rates across NRT conservancies have stabilised and begun to decline. With NRT support, communities in northern Kenya reduced elephant poaching by 35 per cent between 2012 and 2014. Progress was also made with regard to rhino: last year, Lewa conservancy, for example, lost not a single rhino to poaching. This comes despite increasing demand, testified by high rates of poaching outside conservancies.

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This success is the result of a combination of community engagement and enhanced, more nuanced enforcement. A network of 400 community-drawn rangers is now trained to monitor wildlife through standardised data-collection mechanisms. The data is collated within a centralised database, which is shared with the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) and Kenya Police. This has allowed for improved monitoring of both wildlife movements and poaching patterns.

Rangers also have an extensive security mandate, covering livestock theft, intrusions into conservancies and road banditry, amongst others. Two specialist armed rapid-response teams are supplied with modern communications equipment by former British special forces. As national police reservists, they are trained to track and, ideally, capture (not kill) well-armed poachers on behalf of the KWS and police – and to deal with wider security threats. They are drawn from across ethnic groups, allowing them to operate effectively across tribal areas, and often respond in a timelier manner than central or county government agencies.

Many amongst the conservancies’ 280,000-strong population view this enhanced approach to local security as a tangible benefit. Inhabited predominantly by semi-nomadic pastoralists, the area has long been plagued by insecurity. Violence spiked in the 1990s as the proliferation of arms exacerbated competition amongst livestock herders from different ethnic groups over pasture and water. Pronounced poverty has fed into this; according to the government’s Economic Survey 2014, poverty rates in the northern counties of Isiolo, Samburu and Marsabit range from 65 to 76 per cent, compared to 45 per cent for Kenya as a whole.

As well as addressing local security, the NRT model has served to gradually counteract suspicion rooted in Kenya’s historically heavy-handed approach to conservation. Importantly, the scheme also generates financial benefits. In 2013, NRT reported that conservancies had generated 700 full-time jobs and tourism revenue of £545,000. Sixty per cent of this was invested in development programmes based on priorities set by communities themselves.

This shift in incentive structures has tipped the balance in NRT conservancies, highlighting the longer-term benefits of local engagement. Community members are often known to have participated in or facilitated poaching through the provision of logistical support and intelligence on wildlife or patrols. Today, this local knowledge positions them as the first line of defence against poaching – the eyes and ears of enforcement agencies.

These conservancy informant networks, founded on trust in community rangers, complement KWS intelligence systems. The emphasis on social pressure to expose criminals both within and beyond communities is a core component. Rather than victims of binary government-imposed conservation approaches, many communities now see themselves as partners. And, given the financial benefits, they now have a greater incentive to protect their wildlife than previously.

Alternatives are thus emerging to joining violent poaching gangs tasked by local organised-criminal middlemen. Communities around Lewa conservancy, for instance, are now under explicit instructions from village elders not to poach its wildlife. Local ‘buy-in’ has been bolstered by the construction of new schools and clinics. The question remains, however, whether this experience is the result of unique circumstances, or is replicable elsewhere.

The basic criterion is community ownership of, or strong rights over, natural resources, particularly where land-use rights are a source of conflict. This positions communities to control decision-making, set priorities and institute tailored approaches. Where this ownership is present, the model is replicable. However, various factors may have favoured its success in northern Kenya.

First among these is the imperative created by the area’s history of conflict and enthusiasm for the conservancy model as a ‘stabilising’ mechanism. In areas without such a history, this effect may be less significant. Local security is often cited as the most important consideration in the NRT case. Whether alternative incentives would be enough to motivate communities remains uncertain.

This links to a second condition underlying the model’s success. NRT has been highly effective in raising funds, with external donations the main source of income for conservancies. The ability to sustain this funding, however, depends on the presence of a trusted partner – such as NRT – and a conducive donor environment. Funders may be less forthcoming where there are higher levels of corruption, lower levels of transparency or low tourist appeal.

Such issues could restrict the NRT model to specific contexts. Indeed, given the importance of ploughing tourism proceeds into community-development schemes, what of areas affected by poaching – and associated violence and organised criminal activity – where tourist numbers are low, such as northern Democratic Republic of the Congo? Kenya is itself not immune to this problem. It continues to suffer declining tourist numbers due to deepening insecurity along its Somali border.

This speaks to a broader vulnerability, relating to the model’s financial sustainability. It costs NRT $1.5 million per annum to run the conservancies. Of this, $1.2 million is provided by donors – against only $0.3 million funded through commercial enterprise and a small contribution from government. A more sustainable model would see a more even balance between all three.

Despite its relatively small financial contribution, Kenyan central and county governments’ broader buy-in has been another vital factor in the model’s success in this context. As described to the authors by NRT officials, rather than feeling undermined, state agencies have recognised the conservancies’ superior functionality. Governmental engagement has been robust, underpinning all that has been achieved. The Kenyatta administration’s granting of ‘reserve’ status to community rangers is a testament to its appetite for this engagement.

Meanwhile, co-ordination with government agencies has proven effective. Raw and processed intelligence gathered by community rangers is passed to KWS, Kenya Police and other agencies from a central operations room. NRT, in return, receives privileged access to government agencies’ intelligence on poachers and local traffickers. Yet, such co-operation cannot be taken for granted.

Indeed, in other contexts governments may perceive non-governmental entities performing security and intelligence-gathering functions in spaces they poorly govern as more of a threat than an opportunity. Given the model’s dependence on state buy-in, this presents a potential obstacle. Corruption could also undermine the model’s effectiveness, compromising conservancy–government trust and co-ordination. In many parts of Kenya itself, this presents a significant obstacle.

It is clear, therefore, that NRT’s replicability is constrained by enabling conditions that may not exist in the same combination elsewhere. Yet what the NRT model offers are vital lessons to inform other tailored approaches, such as those being piloted by the Tsavo Trust in southeast Kenya. These concern community rights, the need for respectful and co-operative partnerships, and the importance of incentive structures based in local conditions. More broadly, they confirm that the IWT – like terrorism, insurgency, and other forms of conflict and crime – is another area in which community engagement, alongside hard-security responses, is key.

As the recognition in policy circles grows that even the best-resourced anti-poaching efforts will struggle where there are incentives for local complicity, these lessons become increasingly important. Ultimately, the survival of some of the world’s most prominent species rests on those communities living beside them. Their members can help choke off the vast revenues accruing to transnational traffickers at source. Learning how best to engage them must now be a top priority.

Cathy Haenlein
Research Analyst, National Security and Resilience Studies, RUSI, and Deputy Editor, RUSI Newsbrief.
Twitter: @Cathy_Haenlein

Dr Tom Maguire
Visiting Fellow, National Security and Resilience Studies, RUSI.