By Nora Quintanilla |
New York (EFE).- The Kenyan conservationist and biologist Paula Kahumbu collaborates in the new National Geographic series “Secrets of the elephants”, released in the US and with which she wants to make it clear that the future of this animal depends on the protection of their surroundings against development, as explained in an interview with EFE.
Kahumbu, a world-renowned expert on elephants, has joined the production of this four-episode series produced by filmmaker James Cameron because she believes that the audiovisual product is “a very powerful tool to inspire people to be interested and take the step to join the conservation movement,” he said by videoconference.
The program “emphasizes and illuminates the incredible beauty and wonder of elephants”, more similar to humans than we think, on a journey from the African savannah to the Asian cities where their “strategic thinking, complex emotions and sophisticated language”, describe the activist and the channel.
Kahumbu, who has spent his career researching elephants through institutions such as Princeton, highlights their adaptability in habitats as different as the desert and the jungle, and summarizes: “To save elephants we have to protect all these environments, and that’s what I hope people appreciate and support.”
Development threats to elephants
As the chief executive of WildlifeDirect, the NGO created almost 20 years ago by conservationist Richard Leakey, who was her neighbor and mentor, the biologist has fought the scourge of the ivory trade, but is now pointing to other, more pressing threats in which , predictably, the human hand is involved.
“The most pressing problems we see are the conversion of land from the wild to other uses such as agriculture, or the fragmentation of land using fences, roads, rails and other barriers that prevent animals from migrating. Much of our wildlife is migratory and that is one of the biggest threats”, he maintains.
“We are losing habitat and space for animals, and we are also losing animals not because of trade, but (because) they collide with those barriers and end up in conflict with people: they are on farms, they end up being attacked, and it is a very dangerous situation where many elephants have been killed and also people are killed or injured,” he adds.
Inform and fall in love with Africans
Kahumbu, one of the few professionals in Africa who are dedicated to documentary production on wildlife, advocates the need for more Africans to dedicate themselves to investigating the natural heritage of their continent and telling their stories from an African point of view to a african audience.
He talks about education regarding climate change in the United Kingdom due to the culture of documentaries promoted by channels such as the BBC, National Geographic or Discovery, but he qualifies: “These films made in Africa have never been seen in Africa, and there are no an environmental movement in Africa as such, not like in Europe or the Americas.”
These works have been made “intentionally” using Western filmmakers and storytellers for Western audiences, he notes, and the current moment demands a change of angle and focus because “Africa is trying to develop at a very fast pace to try to catch up with the West, and we risk lose this incredible legacy of biodiversity.”
Otherwise, he warns, “the risk is that we will lose all these magical places, like the wildebeest migration in the Masai Mara or the Congo Basin. It is going to affect the lives and livelihoods of millions of people, not just in Africa, but all over the world.”
“If we really want to defend our natural heritage against the onslaught of development, we need our population to be not only educated and informed, but also in love with it, and cinema is the most powerful means to do it,” he says.