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The Elephant Problem: Science, Bureaucracy, and Kenya’s National Parks, 1955 to 1975

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 March 2015

Jeff Schauer
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Abstract:

This article examines debates about how to manage elephants in Kenya’s Tsavo National Park as a jumping off point for exploring the relationships among the local, national, and global constituencies that converged in the formulation of wildlife policy in Kenya during the 1950s and 1960s. Bridging the colonial and postcolonial years, the so-called Elephant Problem in Tsavo, while leveraging different international constituencies, pitted different administrative philosophies against one another and drew out different understandings of the application of ecological sciences in national parks. The result was a paralysis of policymaking which sparked an overhaul of the wildlife departments in the 1970s.

Résumé:

Cet article examine les débats sur la façon de gérer les éléphants dans le parc national du Tsavo au Kenya comme point de départ pour explorer les relations entre les circonscriptions locales, nationales et mondiales qui ont convergé dans la formulation de la politique sur la faune au Kenya pendant les années 1950 et 1960. Enjambant les années coloniales et postcoloniales, le soi-disant “problème des éléphants” au Tsavo a engendré des conflits entre différentes philosophies administratives tout en rapprochant différentes circonscriptions internationales et a révélé des attitudes divergentes concernant la mise en œuvre des principes scientifiques écologiques dans les parcs nationaux. Ces divergences ont paralysé le processus d’élaboration des mesures de protection, ce qui a déclenché une restructuration des départements de la flore et de la faune dans les années 1970.

Keywords

KenyacolonialismBritish Empireenvironmental historyEast Africanational parkspostcolonial
Type
ARTICLES
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 58 , Issue 1 , April 2015 , pp. 177 - 198
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2015 

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References

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KNA KW 1/6. Miscellaneous Correspondence, 1957 to 1977.Google Scholar
KNA KW 1/15. All Staff Matters, 1962 to 1967.Google Scholar
KNA KW 1/62. Policy Confidential. 1960 to 1962.Google Scholar
KNA KW 5/1. Administration of Game Laws; Association Clubs Committees; East African Wildlife Society, 1964 to 1967.Google Scholar
KNA KW 6/61. Kenya National Parks Executive Committee Trustees, 1963 to 1965.Google Scholar
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KNA KW 6/72. Working Papers for Meeting of Executive Committee of the Trustees. 1967.Google Scholar
KNA KW 8/7. Administration of Game Laws, Conferences, and Conventions. The Royal Commission and Game Preservation. 1953 to 1955.Google Scholar
KNA KW 10/1. Elephant Problems, 1961 to 1962.Google Scholar
KNA KW 10/2. Elephant Problems. 1964 to 1966.Google Scholar
KNA KW 10/3. Elephant Problem 1966 to 1968.Google Scholar
KNA KW 13/31. Nairobi National Park—Advisory Committee, 1946 to 1961.Google Scholar
KNA KW 13/37. Tsavo East General Correspondence 1971 to 1976.Google Scholar
KNA KW 20/9. Press Cuttings 1965.Google Scholar
KNA KW 20/11. Overseas Press Comment, 1962 to 1963.Google Scholar
KNA KW 20/13. Overseas Press Comment 1966.Google Scholar
KNA KW 21/14. World Bank, 1974 to 1975.Google Scholar
KNA KW 23/31. Warden’s Report—Tsavo Park (East), 1949 to 1956.Google Scholar
KNA KW 24/32. Tsavo Research Project, 1970 to 1972.Google Scholar
KNA KW/24/34. Tsavo Research Project, 1974 to 1975.Google Scholar
KNA KW 24/35. Tsavo Research Project 1968.Google Scholar
KNA KW 20/21. Daily Nation Press Cuttings 1968.Google Scholar
KNA KW 24/31. Tsavo Research Project 1968 to 1970.Google Scholar
KNA KW 24/33. Tsavo Research Project, 1972 to 1973.Google Scholar
KNA KW 24/34. Tsavo Research Project 1974 to 1975.Google Scholar
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Nuffield Unit of Tropical Animal Ecology—University Library (Cambridge).Google Scholar
Pitman, Charles. “African Wildlife” from Natural History Museum, Pitman File—Z.MSS.PIT C3.Google Scholar
Adams, W. M. 2004. Against Extinction: The Story of Conservation. London: Earthscan.Google Scholar
Berman, Bruce. 2002. “Bureaucracy and Incumbent Violence: Colonial Administration and the Origins of the ‘Mau Mau’ Emergency.” In Unhappy Valley: Conflict in Kenya and Africa, edited by Berman, Bruce and Lonsdale, John, 227‒64. Athens: Ohio University Press.Google Scholar
Brockington, Dan. 2002. Fortress Conservation: The Preservation of the Mkomazi Game Reserve, Tanzania. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Elkins, Caroline. 2005. Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya. New York: Henry Holt and Co.Google Scholar
Eltringham, Keith. 1984. Wildlife Resources and Economic Development. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Field, C. R., and Laws, R. M. 1970. “The Distribution of the Larger Herbivores in the Queen Elizabeth National Park, Uganda.” Journal of Applied Ecology 7: 273‒94.Google Scholar
Gibson, Clark C. 1999. Politicians and Poachers: The Political Economy of Wildlife Policy in Africa. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Holman, Dennis. 1967. Massacre of the Elephants. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
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Iriye, Akira. 2004. Global Community: The Role of International Organizations in the Making of the Contemporary World. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Kenya Wildlife Society. 1956. First Annual Report.Google Scholar
Laws, Richard M. 2012. “Large Animals and Wide Horizons: Adventures of a Biologist. The Autobiography of Richard M. Laws.” Edited by Arnoldus Schytte Blix. Available via the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge.Google Scholar
Martin, Glenn. 2012. Game Changer: Animal Rights and the Fate of Africa’s Wildlife. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Matheka, Reuben. 2005. “Antecedents to the Community Wildlife Conservation Programme in Kenya, 1946‒1964.” Environment and History 11 (3): 239‒67.Google Scholar
Mazower, Mark. 2009. No Enchanted Palace: The End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
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Parker, Ian. 1985. “Wildlife Resources and Economic Development by S. K. Eltringham.” The Quarterly Review of Biology 60 (3): 399‒400.Google Scholar
Sheldrick, Daphne. 1973. The Tsavo Story. London: Collins and Harvill Press.Google Scholar
Sheldrick, Daphne. 2012. Love, Life, and Elephants: An African Love Story. New York: Picador.Google Scholar
Simon, Noel. 2001. “The Anti-poaching Campaign.” In An Impossible Dream: Some of Kenya’s Last Colonial Wardens Recall the Game Department in the British Empire’s Closing Years, edited by Parker, Ian and Bleazard, Stan, 93‒103. Moray, U.K.: Librario Publishing.Google Scholar
Steinhart, Edward. 2006. Black Poachers, White Hunters: A Social History of Hunting in Colonial Kenya. Oxford: James Currey.Google Scholar
Western, David. 1997. In the Dust of Kilimanjaro. Washington, D.C.: Island Press.Google Scholar
Worster, Donald. 1993. The Wealth of Nature: Environmental History and the Ecological Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Vollmar, Fritz, and McGregor, Alan. 1968. The Ark Under Way: Second Report of the World Wildlife Fund, an International Organisation for Saving the World’s Wildlife and Wild Places, 1965 to 1967. Michigan: Héliographia.Google Scholar