The Global March for Elephants and Rhinos (GMFER) is a worldwide call to action to condemn the poaching of elephants, rhinos and the trafficking of wildlife trophies.
The 2018 Global March for Elephants and Rhinos was postponed to precede this year’s Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).
This year’s march proved to be the biggest Global March. A team of trained volunteers from several universities and organizations provided support during the march. Participants were draped in black and white t-shirts and carried procession banners, flags, placards during March. They chanted and marched displaying placards with different messages from ‘No Market No Trade’, End Trade End Poaching, Stop poisoning wildlife, End the slaughter to show their solidarity in protecting wildlife.
Elephants are threatened by habitat loss, conflict with humans, and ivory poaching. At IFAW, we are striving to reverse these distributing trends.
Through a landscape-level approach, IFAW is working to protect critical elephant habitats by improving park security, securing linkages that connect parks, mitigating human-elephant conflicts, encouraging communities to realise benefits from non-intrusive alternative livelihood opportunities and involving communities to be part of solutions.
Conflicts between elephants and people aren’t new, but they are increasing. As human populations grow, habitat becomes fragmented, with elephants losing more of the space they need to live. But the “solutions” to human-elephant conflicts are often politically motivated and can lead to great cruelty to animals. Individual elephants and entire family groups may be fenced in to smaller and smaller areas or even culled. IFAW understands that managing such conflicts requires great care, paying attention to the human and animal interests at stake.
Our anti-poaching experts undertake needs assessments and provide the appropriate training and technical assistance where it’s needed most. IFAW and the Kenya Wildlife Service have launched an innovative project called tenBoma, which includes the development of a counter-wildlife crime intelligence fusion centre, engagement with communities living near wildlife, and modernization of KWS security operations to stop poachers before they kill elephants and rhinos. If successful in Kenya, this model project could be replicated in other countries for more effective poaching prevention.
Elephants in the wild seem to coordinate their movements even when widely separated. Male elephants seem to be able to find females in estrous even over long distances.
