Today they have a new lease on life. In 1989, under pressure from conservationists and Western donors, Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi appointed Richard Leakey director of the Kenya Wildlife Service. The son of anthropologists Louis and Mary Leakey, he has created a model conservation program. He cleaned up corruption and helped triple the park’s budget to $20 million. He was also a key supporter of global legislation to ban commerce in ivory. “The results are encouraging,” says Mark Stanley Price, director of African operations for the African Wildlife Foundation. The herds are growing by 15 percent a year; tourism is flourishing.
Leakey’s first priority was improving Tsavo’s lax security. Using funds from foreign donors, including the United States and Japan, he beefed up the ranger force from 30 to 130 and tripled salaries. He augmented Tsavo’s one brokendown Land Rover and one truck with 40 new vehicles. Wardens built observation posts, patrolled round the clock and scattered bases through the park. The wildlife service hired 30 rangers from the Orma tribe, Somali-speaking Kenyans who live between Tsavo and the Somali border. Their main mission: to recruit spies among the Orma nomads. Somali poachers have traditionally employed the Orma to guide them through the unfamiliar countryside. “The Orma know every movement the Somalis make,” says Gichange. “That’s where we’re winning the war.”
The wildlife service is trying to gain the sympathy of villagers. The subsistence farmers and herders at the edge of the park have bitterly complained for years about rogue elephants that destroy their crops and lions that kill their cattle and a few of their neighbors. Leakey initiated a revenue-sharing program that designates 25 percent of entrance fees collected in Kenya’s game parks for local populations; around Tsavo, money has gone for dispensaries, health clinics, wells and scholarships.
Tsavo’s staff remains wary; five elephants killed in February sent a signal that poaching won’t go away. And rangers continue to uncover stockpiles of ivory buried outside Tsavo, stashed in anticipation of a relaxation of the ban. “That tells us,” says Gichange, “that we can never let down our guard.
