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• Protects elephants in the greater Mara ecosystem as a keystone species for conservation.
• Manages human-elephant conflict by collaring and tracking elephant movement, deploying anti-poaching patrols and rapid response units.
• Uses innovative techniques and technologies to eliminate the illegal killing of elephants in collaboration with partners, landowners and government.
• Engages with local communities and other key stakeholders to inspire and advance conservation of all wildlife and the habitat upon which they depend.
• Works to achieve best land use practices throughout the greater Mara ecosystem resulting in a sustainable economic benefit for the communities and people of Kenya.
Photo by Adam Bannister from Angama Mara.
A mixture of land-use changes resulting from human population growth, deforestation and poaching for elephants’ valuable ivory is causing populations to dwindle. Humans are encroaching upon historic elephant rangelands, and human-elephant conflict is on the rise. That, paired with the demand for ivory, means the illegal killing of elephants is at its highest level since the international ivory trade ban.
MEP was developed to fill a gap in protecting elephants outside of conservancies and protected areas in the Mara ecosystem. Elephants that are “safe” in the Mara have been in the formally protected national reserves. The Government of Kenya through Kenya Wildlife Service with the Narok County Government formally protects the animals within the Maasai Mara National Reserve (MMNR). Bordering three sides of the MMNR is private land, which forms part of the elephant’s natural rangeland. The private lands, over the last 20 years, have gone from group ranch ownership to individual ownership. During this period, tourism investors built lodges and camps on the private land. Over time, the community and the lodge and camp owners entered into partnerships to lease land for conservation.
MEP operates inside these conservancies when it needs to, but overall elephants in the MMNR and the conservancies have been relatively safe, and the Monitoring of Illegally Killed Elephants (MIKE) data continues to support this. As a result, most of the illegal killing of elephants, and hence the work MEP does, is concentrated in an unprotected area of 11,500 km2 outside these areas. MEP believes that by protecting elephants we are also protecting the greater Mara ecosystem.
To better understand and address the poaching issue, where the elephant rangeland extends beyond protected areas, MEP’s developed a three-part program called the MEP Method.
THE MEP METHOD TO PROTECTING ELEPHANTS IN THE GREATER MARA ECOSYSTEM INCLUDES ANTI-POACHING PATROLS & RAPID RESPONSE UNITS, ELEPHANT COLLARING, MONITORING AND RESEARCH, AND HUMAN-ELEPHANT CONFLICT MITIGATION.
Elephants are in crisis.
MEP’s goals include focusing on the protection of elephants and the conservation of the Mara ecosystem by increasing our research efforts all while investing in the education of local communities who live alongside wildlife and the future generation of Kenyans who will inherit this complicated mission.
Please join and support the Mara Elephant Project.
Links:
Website: www.maraelephantproject.org
