Known for being the fearless powerhouse behind the iconic “Hands off our Elephants!” campaign that builds awareness among local leaders and citizens to join hands in the fight against poaching, Paula Kahumbu is one of Kenya’s most influential conservationists. When President Daniel arap Moi set a 12-tonne pile of ivory on fire on Tuesday, July 18, 1989, Paula Kahumbu had helped catalogue each of the tusks. Under Dr Iain Douglas Hamilton of Save the Elephants, they had the monumental task of measuring every piece of ivory in Kenya’s stockpile before the historic torching. Paula was working with a dynamic group of young people at a time when the crisis of elephant poaching was receiving international attention.
At the same time, the torching exposed young Kahumbu to the magnitude of poaching. “I thought we were fighting a losing battle, so I did not want to study elephants, thinking they were going extinct.” Today she is an influential and angry voice for wildlife conservation.
The sixth of nine children, she has happy memories of childhood with her siblings playing in the forests and rivers near Ngong. At school, outdoor club activities such as mountain-climbing and field trips nurtured her love for the wild, making her aspire to be a park ranger. She was also fascinated by a neighbour, who had a virtually limitless knowledge of animals. She could not have known that the neighbour, paleoanthropologist Dr Richard Leakey, would influence her career profoundly.
After high school, Kahumbu had a brief stint at a secretarial college before joining the National Museums of Kenya, where she met students from Britain presenting findings from field research.
“I decided that’s what I wanted to do,” she recalls. The Museum’s director introduced her to wildlife research, later zeroing in on elephants.
The burning of $3 million worth of tusks reduced the demand for ivory and poaching. “Kenya made a strong statement and the world responded by agreeing to an international ban on ivory trade,” says Kahumbu, tracing the roots of her career in conservation. She won a government scholarship to study geography and biology at Bristol University, UK, before proceeding for a Master’s in Wildlife and Forestry at the University of Florida, USA.
I would like to leave a legacy as having inspired our best generation.
Over the years, Kahumbu’s conservation work rather than research — her first love — has thrust her into the limelight. Convinced that conservation is largely about educating people, her role often involves sitting at a table and persuading influential people to talk about issues they do not want to hear about. It is a diplomatic skill she has honed through training and practice as she globetrots to spread the conservation message.
Kahumbu has been a TED global speaker, and is a recipient of numerous awards, including the National Geographic Award for Conservation leadership in Africa and the United Nations in Kenya Person of the Year Special Commendation.
Away from cameras and negotiating tables, she prefers to interact with animals. “We can learn a lot from observing them,” she says. Her favourite animal, the elephant, has an orderly intelligent society, with clear leadership. “You get the sense that they know you,” she says. “They can understand us better than we can understand them.” Her passion to protect and speak for these gentle creatures is rooted in a deep understanding and respect for their place on our planet. Kahumbu believes in progressive learning and growth. Among the workplaces where she honed her leadership and team-building skills is the landmark restoration project of Lafarge Ecosystems at Bamburi Cement in Mombasa, where she was general manager. The Bamburi nature trail, now Haller Park, testifies to the power of teamwork and scientific approaches to conservation and restoration. The project gave her a great sense of satisfaction: “It is a world-class example of successful rehabilitation of quarries. They receive nearly 200,000 visitors annually — more than most of our national parks.”
She wrote her children’s book series, Owen and Mzee, while working for Bamburi. The book that targets two-year-olds upwards became a global best seller, nurturing awareness and involvement in conservation from an early age. Kahumbu feels the youth play a vital role in conservation and devotes a lot of effort in nurturing them. “I would like to leave a legacy as having inspired our best generation,” says the conservationist, who makes time to speak at schools and universities. It gratifies her when individuals approach her and confide that they chose a certain career path because of something she told them.
She has taken one promising youth under her wing — a young Maasai boy named Richard Turere. The teenager invented a simple security light system to protect his family’s livestock, which is now saving lions in national parks. Impressed, Kahumbu secured a full scholarship for Turere at Brookhouse School. “He’s an amazing young man, who has influenced so many other children,” she says, alluding to the ripple effect of his invention, and to her faith in the power of education.
The conservationist lives with her dogs on the edge of the national park and enjoys reading historical novels and science books. She deeply respects the local custodians of wildlife. “I spend a lot of time in the bush, talking with rangers.” She explains that these unsung individuals are huge repositories of information on animals and their habitats.
Despite its challenges, conservation work has many positives. “I like travelling the world and meeting incredible people,” she says. However, spending time in the field gives the professor of ecology the greatest satisfaction. Kahumbu treasures her moments in beautiful parks, especially in Kenya. This is why she makes time to teach field ecology to undergraduates at Princeton University.
Pursuing her doctorate was a difficult time in her life because she took longer to finish the degree than expected. The divorced mother was juggling raising her children, a demanding career, and her studies, and she had moments of doubt and frustration. She even felt she was wasting her time and should stop her PhD and come back home. “But I realised I had to finish.” Her longing was to come back home and make a difference. The conservationist says she works not just for wildlife, but for posterity as well. “We have a huge responsibility to future generations… I’m grateful for my support system — my family and my many friends and advisors from all over the world.”
She learned early that life is not just about hard work; you must be ready to knock on doors, take advantage of opportunities and create them where it seems there are none.
She credits much of her success to the personal interest shown to her by Leakey. “Richard Leakey saw the potential in me when I was only 15. How many people do that?”
Similarly, WildlifeDirect, the brainchild of Leakey, unites people of goodwill from around the world to assist individuals who would otherwise be invisible. This has a powerful impact on conservation. With Kahumbu as CEO, WildlifeDirect has provided a voice to frontline conservationists and achieved much good around the continent. In 2007, when post-election violence halted the flow of tourists to the Maasai Mara Game Reserve, WildlifeDirect raised KES 14 million to help sustain the Mara conservancy during the period. The organisation is also behind the Lion Guardians project, which has engaged skilled Maasai trackers to protect lions instead of harming them, and to prevent human–wildlife conflict.
She led the Kenya Wildlife Society delegation to the Convention for International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in 2000, and successfully fought for legislation to keep ivory off international markets. Kahumbu also spearheaded a high-profile international petition to ban Furadan in Kenya and Africa in 2010. The deadly American pesticide was long banned in the US because of its high level of toxicity to birds, humans and wildlife.
Kahumbu is not afraid to seek help from any source, hence her decision to involve First Lady Margaret Kenyatta in the much-publicised “Hands off our Elephants!” campaign. This has enabled stakeholders, celebrities, the media and Kenyans as a whole to understand that poaching is ‘our problem’, not just some abstract foreign concept. The campaign was at the forefront of getting the Wildlife Conservation and Management Act 2013 passed into law. Kahumbu was awarded The Whitley Award in 2014, for the movement that aims to stop poaching and ivory trafficking.
Primed by her large family background, she believes in teamwork and consults extensively on weighty day-to-day decisions. An advisor herself, she has sat on the board of the Society for Conservation of Biology. She has also served as a trustee for Friends of Tsavo Wildlife charity and of the Friends of Nairobi National Park, among others.
With the ongoing devastation of elephant populations, Kahumbu’s resilience and strong spirit have helped her maintain optimism. “The wardens tell me stories of carnage on the ground and one can see their discouragement. But I don’t get depressed. I get angry. This means I can then go and knock on doors of politicians and demand that they fulfil their promises.”
Her approach stems from a deep-seated faith in the power of our leadership. Her aspirations for Kenya translate into a strong desire to see our government show political will. She notes that more than 50 years after independence, Kenya has an extremely high-calibre workforce. “It also possesses extremely rich resources, one of the most precious being its mega-fauna, or large animals.”
She asserts, however, that we urgently need to make smart, strategic decisions with long-term benefits to the country on securing our wildlife.
Words of Wisdom
- “If you just hand somebody something on a platter, they didn’t have to work for it, so it has no value to them. This destroys their self-respect. That is why I don’t give money to beggars; I would rather support a child in another way than give money to beggars.”
- “Nothing is handed to you on a platter. If you know what you want just go for it.”
- “Consistent affirmation has a very positive impact.”
- “African problems need to be solved by African leaders.”
This is what will define the Uhuru presidency. “We can become like many countries that have lost everything in the name of development, or we could become the world’s superpower for nature and conservation.” Kahumbu’s deepest desire is for Kenya to make the right decision.
Meanwhile, she maintains a positive outlook. From her fledgling experience as a young environmentalist at the monumental ivory inferno, she is certain that a single courageous decision from African leadership can have a profound and lasting global effect. “It can be done; we have been there before.”
Most recently, Kahumbu has very vocally championed against the redesigning of the standard gauge railway (SGR), resulting in its encroaching on the Nairobi National Park. The SGR route was changed from its initial course to spare the African Heritage House belonging to Allan Donovan. In 2014, Donovan petitioned to have the African Heritage House gazetted as a national monument, leading to the need to save it from demolition.
Her success in all her undertakings amounts to never giving up. “I’ve been fairly successful, but I think there is still a lot to be done.”