"There are no police, no rules, people and animals in this prairie are like animals, the strong survive, so the only thing I can see is death." "When I was a kid, I thought, one day, when I can tell my folks, stop, conflict is not a good thing, it will lead us into an endless cycle of poverty, and they can listen to me." ”
Born into a poor family in northern Kenya, Josephine Eekru grew up seeing too much violence and death, vendetta between people, constant hunting of wild animals, tribal wars over resources and feuds.
In 2011, at the age of 24, Ekrul founded the Northern Grassland Conservation Trust, a community conservationist organization in Kenya, which is different from cities that only target people, in addition to uncivilized people and animals, how to make people and animals, people and animals peaceful, sustainable and responsible sharing of land and resources is crucial.
Over the past decade, elephants and rhinos in Kenya and the surrounding region have been primed for poaching as the price of ivory and rhino horn soars in Asia, and elephants and rhinos are the backbone of local tourism revenues.
Between 2014 and 2015, 46 rhinos were lost across Kenya, and to protect the rhino population, Kenya even moved 11 rare black rhinos to the Sierra Wildlife Sanctuary, just a few hours' drive north, making Syrah the first temporary reserve in East Africa directly responsible for the conservation and care of this endangered species.
Ekrukru has also received death threats from poachers who do not like her mediation many times, asking her not to be nosy, and the local people have colluded with poachers for the sake of profit, and even become accomplices, and poachers cannot be described here, although they cannot be described as honorable, but they can be said to be very popular.
But today, you can hear the local people say, these are our elephants. These people became the eyeliner and ears of the reserve, and if suspicious strangers arrived, they would notify animal protection inspectors to prevent the animals from being threatened by the easy but dirty poaching funds that came.
Tribes are dotted around the steppes, and poachers have to walk through the tribe to get to the rhinoceros, and previously the tribe would sell them food, water and guides, but now the tribe will say, "No, no, we are benefiting from these rhinos, they are ours." "It's like all the people are soldiers and become peripheral supporters."
Today, at the instigation of Ekru, another 19 core members of poaching have laid down their arms to become peace coordinators of the Northern Prairie Conservation Trust, from hunters to protectors.
The most fundamental thing is that people who have lived here for generations have found that protecting wildlife is more beneficial to the region than poaching, especially to individuals.
Formerly the northern kenyan steppes, this vast land spanning northern Kenya and coastal areas is larger than Denmark's 17,300 square miles, where more than 600,000 people live with elephants, rhinos, lions, zebras, giraffes and African buffaloes.
Here, however, theft, roadblocks and raids, and even large armed struggles between tribes are everywhere, full of killing and bloodshed.
No one dares to come to such a security, even the adventurous Europeans are discouraged, there is no tourist visit, the economy is not developing, the local people are hungry, and they can only hunt wild animals in a desperate way.
Stopping poaching is important not only for the reserves themselves, but also for the livelihoods of the local people. It can protect jobs and benefit the other benefits created by protected areas.
Today, with the protection of wild animals, animal protection inspectors continue to crack down on theft, road robbery and other acts, tribal conflicts, the foundation intervenes in the official name to prevent the conflict from expanding into violent armed struggle, the crime rate of the whole society is declining, and the tribal conflict is decreasing.
Today, inns and shared vehicles are everywhere in the Samburu Reserve in the northern steppe, the grasslands are lush and full of life, and the animal protection community receives 20,000 tourists a year, and it is growing year by year.
This year, the Sierra Rhinos alone bring about $50,000 in tourism revenue to the reserve, and visitors make a special trip to the reserve for the rare opportunity to walk the grasslands with rhinos.
Tourism brings in $800,000 in direct revenue, which is a huge sum of money for locals who earn an average of a few hundred dollars a year.
This does not include funding from animal protection groups. After the tourism industry was launched, it attracted the support of the government, and directly benefited from infrastructure construction and new roads. Schools, renewable energy projects, water infrastructure, communication networks and microfinance projects followed.
Indirect benefits include livestock procurement projects, where herders no longer have to travel thousands of miles to drive livestock from pastures to distant markets, where they can be slaughtered and sold to travellers, drinking and eating;
More than 1,000 people are currently employed by the Northern Prairie Conservation Trust or in tourism-related occupations, including nearly 800 conservation inspectors, some of whom have been poachers before.
While the Animal Protection Group of the Northern Prairie Conservation Trust has made extraordinary progress in the fight against poachers, it is not enough.
While poaching has decreased significantly from the past, the security services of the Northern Prairie Conservation Trust are afraid to sit back and relax. The number of endangered African wild dogs and zebras has decreased in more than half of the protected areas, while other species such as African buffalo and grassland zebras have also experienced declines in some areas.
Worst of all, elephant poaching is still happening, in order to steal ivory, 50 to 100 are hunted every year, although the number of poaching is decreasing year by year, but the elephant herd race has not recovered, and each reduction is catastrophic.
So they developed a new plan: to adopt the latest technology to stop poaching and protect the safety of people and animals. The elephant conservation team is wearing globally located collars for the elephants, in addition to the rangers and vehicles being located.
Scientists integrate all the data of a specific area into a map to form a regional perception system, collect and display data, including geographical terrain, elephants, the location of inspectors and vehicles, previous poaching locations, shooting signals, climatic conditions, etc., to provide a good basis for decision-making at the military level.
The role and benefits of this system are extraordinary, tourists are not only interested in animals, but also interested in how to protect them, and today this perception system has become a punch point for Internet celebrities, and there are special workers to show and introduce to tourists.
Pointing to the smart screen in the middle, Echo said, "The orange-green map is dotted with all sorts of icons, representing radio equipment, rhinos, airplanes, field inspectors, etc., and their radio equipment has built-in GPS positioning." Other colourful signs scattered around show the location of the 35 elephants, most of whom are female leaders, which we track through GPS positioning collars. ”
"If an elephant with a collar suddenly starts running wildly, more than 60 miles, it may mean that the elephant herd has been attacked by poachers. As soon as the system detects the emergence of such a danger, it will warn the nearest inspector. ”
"If an elephant is either sharp and isolated, or does not move in one place for a long time, it means injury or getting lost, and we can also intervene in time."
Everyone knows that poaching takes place on the night of the full moon, but what other laws and patterns are hidden in the data that can be discovered but are not yet known?
Scientists introduced mathematical probabilities to predict the locations where poachers had invaded or clashed with wild animals, along with the climate, temperature, time, etc. of the time, into the system, and transferred them into digital databases for later review and processing.
At present, more than 10,000 incidents have been recorded, and the self-learning and analysis of the data by the machine can predict the time and place where poaching behavior is most likely to occur, and warn humans that the probability of poaching is high here, and the large jungle in front of them needs to check whether there are poachers or remind them to check the house a mile ahead.
In this way, even if you stand in a room 130 miles (210 kilometers) away from where the poaching actually took place, the command center personnel can track the incident in real time and issue appropriate instructions to the patrol team members.
Area sensing systems can at least make wildlife conservation efforts easier and improve the lives of people and animals in protected areas, prompting a determination to invest further in wildlife conservation.
Managers of 30 other protected areas have expressed interest in the system, including from South Africa and Asia.
But even if the regional perception system is advanced and more widely used, it will not solve all the challenges facing the Northern Prairie Conservation Trust and other parks and sanctuaries.
Because the system cannot address the corruption, mismanagement and indifference that plague protected areas, nor can it solve the larger problems caused by global warming and excessive population growth.