Aberdare National Park, Kenya – Beneath the dense canopy of redwood trees, a uniformed group flanked by armed men treads silently through the thicket, dodging the overgrown stinging nettles that spill over the narrow trail with impressive skill.

“Stop!” whispers Wilson Gioko, the team leader, as he points to a mound of fresh dung. The other men freeze in their tracks and look around, carefully observing their surroundings.

A loud trumpeting sound coming from deep within the forest confirms Gioko’s suspicions: there is a herd of wild elephants nearby. “We must not disturb them,” he says, guiding the group in the other direction.

For the Aberdare Joint Surveillance Unit (AJSU), every day on a patrol mission involves encounters like this. From dawn until dusk, this group patrols the forests of Kenya’s Aberdare National Park, in central Kenya, looking for evidence of poaching and illegal logging.

The park covers an area of 767 square kilometres (296 square miles) and includes a range of landscapes – mountains, moorlands and rainforests. The black rhino and mountain bongo are the most endangered species here, but antelope and buffalo are just as popular with poachers looking for bushmeat to sell.

Their work requires commitment – missions last for 14 days and nights at a time – after which they only have three or four days off.

The core members of the unit, the AJSU scouts, do not carry firearms but they are accompanied at all times by four armed rangers from the Kenya Wildlife Service and the Kenya Forest Service – government agencies devoted respectively to wildlife conservation and forest management.

The armed rangers provide security against the wildlife poachers (every year, approximately 150 rangers worldwide die while on duty, according to the Thin Green Line Foundation, a British charity which supports wildlife rangers). The scouts provide the in-depth knowledge of the forest they need to patrol. They also know the community that lives around it intimately, and understand the techniques favoured by poachers.

This knowledge is derived from first-hand experience. Before they committed to conservation and joined the unit, most of the members were themselves involved in wildlife crime.

“We used to hunt rabbits and deer,” says scout John Mugo, a quiet man in his 40s who never takes off his sunglasses. “We would go and put a snare, then the following day we would go and check whether it’s caught or not, just for meat.”

One of the original members of the unit, Mugo became involved in conservation 15 years ago, after he saw the positive effects that conservation initiatives were having on his community.

Mercy Nyambura, 42, is the only woman in the unit. She has cropped hair and a warm yet tough demeanour and says: “I used to be part of the conflict. Now I’m part of the conservation side.”

Growing up in a community in Nyandarua County bordering the west of Aberdare National Park, Nyambura was taught that her community was living in competition with the wildlife.

She recalls a time when “elephants, buffalos and baboons would invade our land and destroy everything”.

But, like Mugo, she soon saw that conservation initiatives could have a mutually beneficial impact. She has been a member of the unit for 14 years and, despite being the smallest person in the group, she is often at the front of the patrol line.

Gaining the knowledge of the ‘other side’

The AJSU was formed in 2010 through a joint project of the Kenya Wildlife Service and Rhino Ark, a Kenyan non-governmental organisation (NGO) involved in conservation. The purpose of the unit is to curb illegal activities inside the forest by removing snare traps which have been placed by poachers, managing bushfires, seizing poached animals or plants and arresting the poachers themselves.

According to Christian Lambrechts, executive director of Rhino Ark, hiring members of the community with a background in wildlife crime themselves was a strategic decision, not only to benefit from their insider knowledge and networks, but also to promote anti-poaching attitudes within the community.

“It was really important that we were able to bring them on board and benefit from the knowledge of the other side,” he says.

AJSU team leader Gioko recalls many moments when the scouts’ past experiences of poaching and logging have been critical to the success of an operation. Once, they were able to arrest a group of men planning an illegal dog hunt of endangered giant forest hogs; another time they were able to arrest a man who had poached a buffalo.

“[The scouts] know the tactics that are used by poachers,” Gioko says. “They will tell you that a certain poacher will strike from a certain direction, they will use this route to attain their target, what time do they get in, where do they sell their merchandise, etc.”

According to Giovanni Broussard, coordinator of the UNODC environment team in Africa, which oversees anti-wildlife crime programmes in the region, Kenya has massively reduced poaching over recent decades, partly as a result of the Kenya Wildlife Service’s hardline approach to the enforcement of anti-poaching laws.

“However, in recent years we have witnessed concerning new threats to the biodiversity of Kenya,” he says, “such as a surge in illegal poaching of bushmeat and the illegal trade of sandalwood, often perpetrated through collusion with public officials. The fight against wildlife crime in Kenya is not over yet and the level of alert must remain high despite the recent successes”.

Encroaching on habitats

The drivers of wildlife crime are complex. Zachary Kamau, one of the scouts, says: “When it is dry [season] there is no work in the community. People are idle.” Agriculture is the main source of livelihood for the communities around Aberdare, and when the rain stops, crop yields drop.

“So what do they do? They just get into the forest where they can cut trees, where they can burn charcoal, where they can poach, so that they can get at least something.” Traditionally, people here collect wood and burn it in kilns to make charcoal which they can use to generate energy or sell on to others. It’s a common practice but it’s illegal to do it with wood from a protected area.

As human populations continue to encroach into wildlife habitats, causing them to become more fragmented, people find themselves competing with animals for resources.

“Since there is a lot of poverty and no food, [we] would end up going inside the park, doing logging, at least to get school fees for the children and to buy food,” Nyambura explains.

In 2010, Rhino Ark and the Kenya Wildlife Service built an electrified fence around the perimeter of the national park – one of the first such fences constructed in Africa.

According to the Kenya Wildlife Service, incidents of both poaching and wildlife-human conflict are no longer on the rise in Aberdare, as a combined result of the fence and the AJSU’s efforts to deter and sensitise the community. While the fence stopped wild animals from going into human settlements, “some illegal activities were still going on”, says Daniel Kosgey, assistant director of Aberdare National Park at the Kenya Wildlife Service. “But they have reduced drastically thanks to the AJSU. […] This is a model that we need to embrace.”

Indeed, Rhino Ark has already replicated this model in Mount Kenya National Park (70km north of Aberdare) and part of the Mau Forest complex (200 km west of Aberdare). Within the next year, it is also planning to expand the AJSU in order to deepen its coverage of Aberdare.

The scouts say they believe a new generation is now emerging from childhood with a deeper appreciation for wildlife and the need to protect it.

As cicadas hum in the background marking the end of the working day, the youngest scout, Samuel Kariuki, says he has influenced some of his friends, who no longer engage in poaching. Most importantly, he has had an effect on his six-year-old sister.

“Day by day, she is saying, ‘I want to be like my brother, conserving [wildlife]’, ” he says, a broad smile stretching across his face.