Our 10 years of experience using the MEP method of boots on the ground rangers and applied research all while taking a collaborative approach has disrupted poaching in the region and combatted conflict and habitat loss.
Chags Photography
In the last decade, Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) and MEP focused on teaching, training and employing Maasai men and women to be first responders to save wildlife and wild spaces. Their commitment has disrupted poaching in the GME, protected critical forest habitat and ecologically key areas and kept community’s farms safe.
“We started as primarily anti-poaching but we’re now moving into developing communities. Why? Because all of those people in the community are stakeholders in protecting elephants and Mara Elephant Project is trying to give them an avenue to play a part in elephant conservation.”
CEO Marc Goss
A Decade of Impact in Numbers
- Arrested 354 total ivory or bushmeat poachers
- Seized 1,494 kg (3,294 lbs.) of elephant ivory
- Reduced the number of elephants poached from 96 to 4
- Mitigated 479 conflict incidents
- Collared over 50 elephants
- Employed over 65 Maasai men and women to protect the Mara
- Launched a permanent ranger unit to protect critical forest habitat in the Mau Forest
- Launched the only helicopter dedicated to wildlife flying in the GME
- Collected over 1 million data points from collared elephant movements
- Celebrated zero poached elephants in the GME
- Deployed three new ranger units in critical forest habitats of the GME
- Employed over 30 additional Maasai men and women
- Collared an additional 18 elephants
- Launched the MEP Research Department to find long-term solutions to the greatest issues facing the Mara
- Removed 691 bushmeat snares
- Confiscated 461 kg (1,016 lbs.) of bushmeat
- Arrested 65 total ivory or bushmeat poachers
- Seized 480.5 kg (1,059 lbs.) of elephant ivory
- Mitigated 291 conflict incidents (that’s almost three a week)
- Reduced the number of elephants killed as a result of conflict to six
- Paid for 49 staff members to send two kids each to school yearly
- Established our own database called EarthRanger to visualize all of our assets in real time
- Tracked habitat loss in three key forest areas of the GME: Nyakweri, Mau and Loita
- Arrested 256 illegal logging or charcoal production suspects (that’s more than two a week)
- Destroyed 455 kilns and 782 bags of charcoal
- Confiscated 44,639 illegal posts, timber and trees (that’s over 60 a day)