Fig 1.
Land ownership (private, communal or government) and types of use (managed to enhance wildlife or not) in the Laikipia-Samburu ecosystem.
There are three main land ownership types; private, communal and government. Ranches, community conservancies and national reserves have active wildlife protection measures in place.
Fig 2.
Land ownership and the corresponding land use types in the Laikipia-Samburu ecosystem.
Table 1.
The number of elephant carcasses recorded from 2002 to 2012, their cause of mortality and the average number of live elephants recorded within different land use types in the Laikipia-Samburu ecosystem.
Notes: HEC refers to elephant mortality resulting from human elephant conflict incidences. PAC refers to problem animal control, i.e., elephant mortality as a result of killing of problematic elephants by authorised personnel. The proportionate cause of mortality within each land use type is indicated in brackets. The live elephants refers to the average number recorded within land under each use type in the years 2002, 2008 and 2012.
Fig 3.
The distribution of elephants in the Laikipia-Samburu ecosystem derived from total aerial counts in (a) 2002 (n = 5,447), (b) 2008 (n = 7,415), and (c) 2012 (n = 6,365).
Elephants are found in large numbers within private ranches and the national reserves.
Fig 4.
The numbers of elephants that died from poaching and other causes from 2002–2012.
The dotted line indicates the level of poaching (i.e., 54% PIKE) beyond which populations cannot compensate via births and decline is imminent.
Fig 5.
Trends in the level of proportion of illegally killed elephants (PIKE) across the different types of land use for 2002–2012.
An increase in PIKE from 2010–2012 was recorded in most of the land use types.
Fig 6.
The proportion of illegally killed elephants (PIKE) in the six land use types.
Land uses are abbreviated as PRC (private ranches and conservancies), SET (settlements and farms under private ownership), NR (national reserves), FR (forest reserves on government-owned land), CCA (community conservation), and CPL (community pastoralism on communally owned land). There was no significant difference (abbreviated as ‘n. s.’ on the figure) in the PIKE level between private ranches and settlements Mann-Whitney U test (P = 0.96).
Table 2.
Candidate models in the analyses of the relationship between the probability of illegal killing of elephants (Pillegal), land ownership, land use and elephant densities.
‘WF’ denotes wildlife-friendly land regardless of ownership. The asterisk between covariates shows the only interactive effects of ownership and use that were found to be significant predictors of illegal killing.
Table 3.
Selection statistics for the top two models of the analyses of relationships between the probability of illegal killing of elephants, land ownership, land uses and elephant density.
The coefficient for each variable is presented alongside each variable. ‘WF’ denotes wildlife friendly land regardless of ownership.
Table 4.
The coefficients of the covariates of the top model and their statistical significance.
Table 5.
The deviance explained by various covariates of the top model for the probability of illegal killing of elephants in the Laikipia-Samburu ecosystem.
Land use and time factor explain 38% of the variation in illegal killing.