Nick Brandt is an extraordinary photographer, as you can see by exploring this haunting portrait of Igor, an elephant he encountered in Kenya?s Amboseli National Park in 2007. I learned of Brandt?s work through this interview with the excellent Safari Talk blog.
But Brandt is far more than an image maker. Igor was slaughtered by poachers in 2009, giving extra resonance to a photograph that already speaks of the magnificence of an ancient and wise mammal species. That killing and so many others ? driven by the explosive growth in demand for ivory in Asia ? led Brandt in 2010 to co-found Big Life Foundation, a nonprofit doing its small part ? by raising funds for anti-poaching patrols around the Amboseli ecosystem ? to conserve elephants and other targeted wildlife. Here?s a useful new map of the activities. Here?s Brandt?s moving description of what drove him to move beyond documenting the region?s living resources.
Now Big Life has produced a short film about the situation in and around Amboseli, a vast area that includes the Kenyan park but straddles the Tanzania-Kenya border and spreads south to Mount Kilimanjaro:
In an e-mail exchange, I pointed Brandt to a recent National Geographic cover story and a New York Times Op-Ed article by the anthropologist Louisa Lombard, both of which concluded that the continuing slaughter of elephants cannot be stemmed without cutting insatiable ivory demand. I asked, ?Do you feel you?re fighting a losing war??
Here?s Brandt?s reply:
The only way to blunt losses is to cut demand.* It?s unlikely that we would ever even have needed to start Big Life had it not been for the explosion in demand for ivory and other animal parts from China and the Far East.
Do I feel like we?re fighting a losing war?
At least here in the Amboseli ecosystem, currently, no I do not. The poaching here in 2010 before we established such a significant presence was way worse than what it is now. This is thanks to the 250 rangers we now have on the ground across the trans-border ecosystem. For example, an elephant was shot and killed last week, but due to informer information, we know who the killer is and our rangers are in pursuit of him.
However, we are lucky, in a manner of speaking, that so far, due to our geographic location, we have not been subjected to raiding gangs of heavily armed military rebel groups like being experienced through Cameroon, Chad, CAR, DRC, etc, etc.
With insufficient funding and lack of necessary anti-poaching infrastructure, an awful kind of Sophie/s Choice is having to be made ? entire herds, entire populations of elephant herds are just being lost fast, significantly because very finite resources are being used to save other populations elsewhere.
So until demand for ivory and other animal parts from China and the Far East is radically reduced, there are many many other areas, indeed most areas of Africa, where, yes, tragically, the war will be lost. And shockingly quickly.
Please read the 2011 Safari Talk interview for a lot more from Brandt on his wildlife photography and activism.
[3:30 p.m. | Updated * In the line marked by an asterisk above, I deleted the word "yes" at the beginning of the sentence after Brandt noted he was not saying yes to it being a losing battle.]
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