Just after dawn, Tolstoy lumbers into view. A wandering giant with tusks almost scraping the earth, this great elephant has roamed beneath Mount Kilimanjaro for nearly 50 years.
He has survived ivory poachers, spear attacks and terrible drought, but the mighty bull could be confronting a new threat to his natural realm: surging demand for avocados.
A turf war has erupted over a 73 hectare avocado farm near Amboseli, one of Kenya’s premier national parks, where elephants and other wildlife graze against the striking backdrop of Africa’s highest peak.
Photo: AFP
Opponents of the farm say it obstructs the free movement of iconic tuskers such as Tolstoy — putting their very existence at risk — and clashes with traditional ways of using the land.
The farm’s backers deny this, saying that their development poses no threat to wildlife and generates much-needed jobs on idle land.
The rift underscores a broader struggle for dwindling resources that echoes beyond Kenya, as wilderness is constricted by expanding farmland to feed a growing population.
Kenya is a major avocado grower and exports have soared as they have become a hipster staple on cafe menus around the globe.
Already the sixth-largest supplier to Europe, Kenya’s avocado exports rose 33 percent to US$127 million in the year to October last year, the Fresh Produce Exporters’ Association of Kenya said.
In the middle of that bumper year, Kenyan agribusiness KiliAvo Fresh Ltd received approval from the Kenyan National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) to start its own avocado farm on land it purchased from local Masai owners.
The land was razed of shrubbery and fenced off, alarming neighboring title holders and conservation groups.
They argued that large-scale agriculture was prohibited in that location under management plans governing land use in the area.
In September last year, under pressure to revoke KiliAvo’s license, NEMA ordered it to stop work while it reviewed the case.
The company challenged that decision in Kenya’s environmental tribunal, where a case is ongoing.
KiliAvo’s lawyers, CM Advocates LLP, did not reply to request for comment in time for publication.
Work at the farm has progressed at a clip.
On a recent morning, beneath a snow-capped Kilimanjaro, farmhands laid irrigation lines to water rows of avocado saplings. The property has water tanks, a shaded nursery and boreholes.
Jeremiah Shuaka Saalash, a KiliAvo shareholder and farm manager, said that the farm had “rescued” many tourist workers left jobless when nearby safari lodges closed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
There was room for both industries to thrive, Saalash said, adding that a bigger farm was already harvesting vegetables nearby.
“I am championing for the coexistence of wildlife, and for us to have another source of income,” Saalash told reporters as tractors tilled the red soil.
Adjacent landowners and wildlife experts are adamant that the two cannot exist side by side.
They say elephants have already collided with KiliAvo’s electric fence — proof that it impedes migratory routes used by an estimated 2,000 animals as they depart Amboseli into surrounding lands to breed, and find water and pasture.
“Can you imagine if elephants in Amboseli died of starvation so that people in Europe can eat avocados?” said Kenyan conservationist Paula Kahumbu, who heads the campaign group Wildlife Direct.
Tolstoy, and other wildlife big and small, already compete with vehicles to cross into Kimana Sanctuary, a crucial linkage between Amboseli, surrounding rangelands, and habitats further beyond in Tsavo and Chyulu Hills parks.
“If we continue like this, Amboseli National Park will be dead,” said Daniel Ole Sambu from the Big Life Foundation, a local conservation group.
“These elephants ... will go, and the park will be finished. And that would mean tourism in this area would collapse,” Sambu said.
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