Miles Geldard, A Kenya-based financial expert, was named on Thursday the first CEO of the Elephant Protection Initiative foundation.
EPI said in a statement Geldard's appointment was crucial in protecting elephants and mobilising resources for conservation in 19 African countries.
"Miles Geldard has decades of experience in finance, is a committed conservationist, and has worked and lived across Africa," EPI said.
Geldard said, "I’m enormously excited by the opportunity to play such an important and unique role in elephant conservation. The EPI brings together an extraordinary range of African countries, united in their desire to save their elephants. I will do my utmost to help them achieve that goal."
Geldard has been an adviser to the Central Bank of Botswana, a global multi-asset investment manager in Europe and Asia with JP Morgan and most recently head of strategy at Jupiter Asset Management.
The EPI Foundation is the new secretariat helping its 19 African member states to raise the money to implement their Elephant Action Plans.
The plans aim to ensure a sustainable future for Africa’s elephants and a better future for the people who live alongside them.
Chairman of the EPI Foundation, the former President of Botswana Ian Khama, said, " I’m delighted by this appointment. Miles has a passion for Africa and conservation, as well as unparalleled expertise and contacts in the world of finance. He is ideally qualified to achieve the EPI’s most significant challenge: securing the finance for the implementation of action plans."
More than 100,000 elephants were killed by poachers between 2010 and 2012; 24,000 being killed in Eastern Africa, 42,000 in Central Africa and 41,000 in Southern Africa.
Kenya's elephant population n the early 1970s was about 167,00; today it is 35,000
Kenya has been fighting to have all African elephants listed in CITES Appendix I, domestic ivory markets closed and enhanced management of ivory stockpiles including where possible, their destruction.
The EPI was founded in 2014, by the leaders of Botswana, Gabon, Ethiopia, Chad and Tanzania.
The countries that later joined are Angola, The Republic of Congo, Gambia, Guinea, Mali, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, South Sudan, Somalia and Malawi.
(Edited by V. Graham)
