incef

With support from the US Fish and Wildlife Service African Elephant Conservation Fund and the International Fund for Animal Welfare, INCEF created a series of films to raise awareness of Forest Elephants. The International Conservation and Education Fund is working with local media specialists and African scientists to produce and disseminate short videos on Forest Elephants, including their ecology and behavior, human-elephant conflict over land and resources, and the problem of continued poaching for ivory.

Videos will initially be used as part of grassroots outreach in northern Republic of Congo, around the Sangha Trinational Park. We hope video production and dissemination will reach across the border into Central African Republic in the near future. Though many people in this region share the forest with this elusive giant, most have never seen a Forest Elephant (Loxodonta africanis cyclotis). This projects seeks to introduce people to elephants as ecologically important, socially-complex creatures, which can be tolerated and even appreciated for aesthetic and economic reasons.

One film, the The Price of Ivory (Le Prix d'Ivoire), uses interviews with hunters and enforcement officers to reveal the true costs of elephant poaching: most profit goes to ivory buyers and middlemen, while Ba'Aka hunters risk their lives, wealth, and confiscation of weapons. Viewers also learn that there is no tradition of hunting elephants solely for ivory in Africa, and that foreign demand is destroying a keystone species responsible for forest regeneration, which could instead be used for non-consumptive ecotourism.

Another video resulting from this project, Human-Elephant Conflict (Conflit homme-éléphant), contrasts dramatic reenactments of farmers finding trampled and eaten crops with pragmatic approaches to farming in elephant territory. Solutions to conflict include fences, noisemakers, planting crops elephants don't eat, and using chili peppers as a crop border, as a fence application (chili pepper oil), and as a noxious smoke (burning bricks of chili and elephant dung). Rural congolese audiences watching these films will recognize their neighbors and local authorities, speaking in the national languages of Lingala and French, about wildlife issues and decision that impact them in their daily lives. The videos are 'local by design,' providing knowledge and testimony that can change attitudes and behaviors towards wildlife while offering solutions to the challenges of living with Forest Elephants.

In 2008 in collaoboration with the Wildlife Conservation Society a new film was added entitled Justice and Conservation following a poacher from the time of his arrest through trial and incarceration and what his subsequent imprisonment has meant in terms of his family, his health and his future. The laws governing the protection of elephants and interviews discussing why elephants are a protected species are part of this film.