Raymond Bonner’s book makes me tired, deeply tired, in the same way
that reading a contemporary book about the necessity of child labour laws
in Britain would no doubt make me feel. Before hastily putting it down,
I would have to ask, wait a minute, why is this writer exhibiting such moral
outrage about something that everyone agrees is right and is happening anyway?

Bonner’s premise is that in order for wildlife to survive in Africa
the aspirations and welfare of the people have to be addressed and met.
The concluding sentences in the book reads: ‘All we have to do to preserve
Africa’s wildlife heritage is care about the people as much as we care about
the wildlife. Both are in the hands of man.’ It took him about 300 pages
to say that. Along the way he branches off on various tangents that are
sometimes relevant but are more often diatribes aimed at straw men. It is
definitely tiresome.

Bonner is a journalist who usually writes about politics. His two previous
books were about US policy in the Philippines and El Salvador. For four
years, from 1988 to 1992, he lived in Nairobi where his wife, Jane Perlez,
was based as the Africa correspondent for the New York Times. They have
since moved to Warsaw.

Now, many ‘old hands’ in Africa would dismiss Bonner as a neophyte:
naive and inexperienced with no background to tackle a subject as complex
as wildlife conservation. I don’t agree. Bonner is an experienced investigative
reporter who could have brought a fresh, objective eye to his chosen topic.
Instead he has written a confused and misleading analysis of conservation
in Africa.

The first two-thirds of the book attempts to give a history of wildlife
conservation in Africa, including the work of two of the nonprofit organisations
that fund and carry out projects in Africa: the World Wide Fund for Nature
(WWF) and the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF). Bonner’s criticism of these
two organisations is unrestrained, the main brunt of his argument being
that they are run by ‘patricians’: rich, upper-class Westerners who have
no idea what Africans want or need, who do not seem to care, and who invent
crises to raise money to support their large salaries and comfortable lifestyles.

The criticism is petty, unrelenting, undeserved and, more important,
in no way constructive. When he is not attacking Western conservationists
he turns his venom against Kenya. At one point, Bonner justifies a white
South African working in Namibia as follows: ‘It might be expected that
whites would be the major actors in conservation in South African-ruled
South-West Africa. But the story is the same throughout the continent. In
Kenya, for example, whites hold the senior positions in the conservation
organisations, and whites or Asians own and operate most of the safari companies
and camps: Africans are secretaries, cooks and drivers.’

Let’s just look at that last sentence – Bonner has marshalled his facts
to support his case. Yes, the Western conservation organisations with offices
in Nairobi employ Europeans and Americans in some of the senior positions,
just as the New York Times, Newsweek, The Observer, CNN and the BBC do.
There are good reasons for having people from the ‘home office’ operating
in the field alongside local people, and that is exactly what conservation
organisations and Western news media do. And yes, Kenyan citizens of European
and Asian origin own many of the safari companies, but Bonner seems to forget
that Kenya is a multiracial society, and skin colour should not determine
a citizen’s ability to participate in that society.

But it is what Bonner leaves out that seriously bothers me. It is blatantly
false and extremely offensive to imply that the only Africans in conservation
in Kenya are ‘secretaries, cooks and drivers’. He ignores the most important
body involved in wildlife conservation: the Kenya Wildlife Service, which
has 3800 employees, ranging from construction workers, rangers, road engineers,
pilots, vets and senior wardens to directors. Apart from a few expatriate
advisers and two or three citizens of European origin, all of these men
and women are Kenyans of African origin. What’s more, since shortly after
independence 30 years ago, all the people setting policy – the directors,
assistant directors, and heads of departments – have been black Africans
until the appointment four years ago of Richard Leakey, a third-generation
Kenyan of European origin, to the post of director. This is not to say that
all has gone well in Kenya’s protected areas over the past 30 years, but
whatever successes or failures occurred were definitely the result of Kenyan
decisions and actions.

Over and over again Bonner tells us what Africans do or do not want,
but it seems that only a small fraction of his interviews were with black
Africans. I was far from convinced that he was presenting a broad spectrum
of views. In fact, I would say that he ignored what African conservationists
are saying and doing.

Take the pivotal event that Bonner harps on about throughout the book:
the banning of international trade in ivory by CITES (the Convention on
International Trade in Endangered Species) in October 1989. He claims that
virtually no African, no elephant biologist, no thoughtful conservationist
wanted the ban, but that everyone, with the exception of a few stalwarts
from southern Africa, capitulated to fund raisers from the Western conservation
organisations who, cynically, saw the issue as a great way to make money.
Yet Bonner does not include a statement from a single African delegate who
supported the ban. Didn’t he interview Paul Chabeda who headed the Kenya
delegation? Or Mankoto ma Mbaelele from Zaire? Or Alexander Peal from Liberia?
They represented countries with elephant populations in East, Central and
West Africa, but it appears Bonner did not consult them on their positions.

At the end of the book, Bonner grudgingly admits that ‘the advocates
of the ban can rightfully claim that poaching has declined and the price
of ivory has fallen. But that doesn’t mean it was the right remedy.’ Come
on, Bonner, give us a break. The ivory ban is one of the few conservation
success stories ever. As soon as the ban went into effect, elephant poaching
decreased spectacularly across Africa. By the time the next CITES conference
(which Bonner did not attend) came around in March 1992, a majority of the
African countries that had opposed the ban were arguing to maintain it.
The delegates from Burundi, Cameroon, Congo, Gabon and Zambia, five out
of the nine African countries that had opposed the ban in 1989, stood up
and spoke eloquently in favour of the status quo, explaining that if trade
resumed they would have to put their meagre resources into combating poaching
rather than into other conservation efforts. And not one of 20 African countries
that had voted for the ban in 1989 had changed its position. If the ivory
ban was as disastrous a move for Africa as Bonner says, why were all but
four African countries arguing for maintaining it? Bonner would say it was
those dreaded patricians again, but once again we never hear anything from
the African delegates themselves, because Bonner doesn’t report their views.

At the Hand of Man suffers from Bonner’s consistent discrediting of
the expatriate conservation community in Africa and his irritating air of
moral superiority. The overall tone diminishes the whole to such an extent
that it is difficult to take any of the points in the book seriously. And
there are some important questions asked. In fact, every once in a while
the book Bonner should have written peeks out from among the jibes and name-calling.
Parts of the last third of the book are worth reading, particularly the
chapter that addresses the important, but potentially damaging, role of
tourism in wildlife conservation, and the one that discusses the pros and
cons of sport hunting. These are thorny topics and ones of immediate relevance.

I know of no one working in conservation in Africa who is not aware
of the wildlife/human conflict and the need to resolve it. The burning questions
are how to eliminate the conflict and how to bring wildlife-related benefits
to the people. No one is asking whether it should be done; they are asking
how it can be done in a way that is sustainable and fair. There are innovative
projects and programmes in place already and more to come, but on a continent
with as many problems as Africa, there are no easy answers. Bonner certainly
doesn’t have them. He wastes most of his book attacking Western conservationists
and in so doing has produced a book that is hopelessly out of date and out
of touch.

Cynthia Moss is the Director of the Amboseli Elephant Research Project
in Kenya and is a senior associate with the African Wildlife Foundation.
She has worked in Africa for 26 years.

Elephants: Saving the Gentle Giants edited by Ronald Orenstein, Bloomsbury,
pp 160, £18.99

During 1988 and 1989 the plight of the African elephant caught the world’s
attention after scientists and conservationists revealed that Africa had
lost half its elephants in 10 years due to uncontrolled poaching and a rampant
illegal trade in ivory. In 1979 an estimated 1.3 million elephants lived
on the continent; by 1989 only about 600 000 remained and the decline continued
unabated. In an unprecedented galvanising of concern and outrage the situation
was turned around as a result of campaigns to raise public awareness in
the US, Europe, Africa and Japan. The culmination of these campaigns was
the transfer of the African elephant from Appendix 2 (threatened) to Appendix
1 (endangered) status of CITES (the Convention in International Trade in
Endangered Species) in October 1989. The new designation halted international
trade in elephant products including ivory, hides and meat.

The ivory ban took effect on 18 January 1990. It appears that there
was a rush of proposals to publishers around the world at about the same
time for books about elephants. We are seeing the results a year or two
later – I know of 23 elephant books that have recently been published or
soon will be. Is this elephant overkill of another kind? Probably not. Elephants
are exceptionally charismatic, complex, and intelligent, and I suspect that
they can sustain the attention and interest. A recent poll by the BBC Wildlife
magazine discovered that elephants were the readers’ favourite animal. In
addition, the history of the attempts to conserve elephants in Africa has
been one of bitter disagreements and opposing philosophical points of view
which are still unresolved today, but make for fascinating reading.

Two of the recent elephant books to appear are in large coffee-table
format lavishly illustrated with photographs. However, unusually for this
type of book, I found in both cases the text more interesting than the photographs,
which are fairly predictable and unexceptional. The African Elephant: Twilight
in Eden by Roger L. DiSilvestro provides an excellent, very readable account
of people’s relationship with and knowledge of the African elephant.

DiSilvestro has obviously researched his topic very carefully – I found
only a few minor errors in the areas I know well – and he has covered a
wide range of subjects in a relatively short text: elephant evolution, early
references to elephants by Greeks and Romans, African explorers and hunters’
experiences, the ivory and slave trade, elephant biology, modern ivory poaching
and trade, recent conservation efforts, and finally the problems that elephants
face today. He manages to discuss these topics with authority. When he tackles
some of the controversial issues, such as culling, he is fair and reasoned.

The edited volume, Elephants: Saving the Gentle Giants, complements
DiSilvestro’s book. While his is a fairly general account of elephant biology,
history and conservation, the edited book consists of five more or less
unrelated essays on specific topics interspersed with photographic sections.
Jeheskel Shoshani, an expert on the evolution of proboscideans, discusses
elephant biology; Perez Olindo, a Kenyan conservationist, presents a refreshing
African perspective; David Western, an ecologist, cogently argues for a
broader view on elephants as an important component of African ecosystems;
and Ian Redmond, a zoologist, details the fate of one small and unusual
population of elephants that use caves. Finally the editor, Ronald Orenstein,
who is a lawyer and conservationist, discusses the implications of the CITES
ban, and suggests the directions that elephant conservation should take
in the future.

Both books have introductions by Richard Leakey, director of the Kenya
Wildlife Service. Leakey is a relative latecomer to the elephant scene,
but an important player. As he and the other contributors point out the
elephant is far from saved. On 2 March the signatories to CITES will meet
in Kyoto, Japan, for two weeks to consider, among many other topics, the
resumption of a legal ivory trade, only 25 months after the ban went into
effect, or just over one gestation length for an elephant. Six southern
African countries (South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, Malawi and
Zambia) have tabled proposals to downlist their elephant populations from
Appendix 1 to Appendix 2, which would allow them to trade in ivory again.
Their argument is that they have healthy, stable or increasing elephant
populations that are not endangered, and they should be allowed to benefit
from the revenue from selling ivory and hides. Five of these countries have
signed an agreement to set up an ivory marketing board which they claim
will be strictly controlled and will prevent the illegal export of ivory
from their region.

Leakey and the heads of wildlife departments in many other countries
in East, Central and West Africa, have strong reservations about resuming
the ivory trade. They argue that if trade is legal, the demand will increase
and the price will rise. Illegal ivory will be smuggled out of Africa with
no guarantee that it will not be laundered and mixed with legal ivory in
the consumer countries.

As both books make clear, there has been a long, acrimonious debate
on the issue of elephants and the ivory trade with no simple solutions.
The issues are ethical, political, economic, biological and ecological.
However, for the moment, consider only some of the economic aspects. Elephants
are a natural resource for Africa. That resource has been grossly overexploited
over most of the continent with a few exceptions. Many local populations
are in danger of extinction. From most reports the rapid decline has slowed
since the ban took effect, mainly because demand has been greatly reduced,
the price has collapsed, and more money has been put into antipoaching efforts.
However, there has been no time to assess these changes adequately nor to
gauge whether popula-tions are recovering or not.

The 35 African nations that have elephants, the so-called elephant range
states, want to conserve this resource and use it in the most beneficial
way for their country. This includes simply keeping their elephants as a
national heritage with no immediate economic gain in mind. Some countries,
such as Zimbabwe and South Africa, argue that consumptive use of elephants
is an important component of their wildlife policy. Other countries, such
as Kenya and Tanzania, rely at the moment on the non-consumptive use of
their elephants to attract tourists.

DiSilvestro presents some relevant facts and figures in his book. A
living elephant in Kenya is worth $14 375 in income from tourists for every
year of its life, giving it a potential value of nearly $900 000. The ivory
from an average elephant would be worth about $1000 if it was killed and
the tusks could be sold at the price they fetched before the ban. In Kenya
alone elephant-related tourism brings in about $200 million each year,
more than 30 times what the entire continent made from dead elephants before
the ban. At the same time the revenue generated from Zimbabwe’s culling
programmes is seen as essential for the running of its protected areas.
(The revenue from hunting elephants, which in the case of Zimbabwe, is successfully
benefiting local people, is a separate issue – it is not affec- ted by the
Appendix 1 listing.)

The question being asked today is can the elephant issue be addressed
on a country-by-country basis or is it necessary to look at the problem
across the continent? At a recent meeting in Nairobi, attended by delegates
from 31 of the elephant range states, it appeared that a regional approach
was preferred. In purely economic terms, if the ivory trade were to resume
five or six southern African countries might benefit, but 29 or 30 other
countries would almost certainly suffer from the effects of a resumption
of intensive elephant poaching. Is it too much to ask those southern African
countries to sacrifice their ivory revenue until elephant populations in
the rest of Africa are secure?

I believe that simple question should underlie the decisions made in
Kyoto next week not the contentious questions of how many elephants each
country has, whether the populations within each country’s borders are stable
or not, or whether the illegal movement of ivory can be controlled in this
or that country. Africa’s elephants are not secure and to jeopardise them
once again before we even know what affect the ban has had would be poor
economic planning.

Cynthia Moss is director of the Amboseli Elephant Research Project.
She has studied elephants in Africa for 24 years.