 I know that Africa doesn't always come across very positively in the international media. It's a continent known for conflicts, diseases, famine, all kinds of negative things. But I'm an African and I can tell you that Africa is a continent of greatness. In fact, Africa is a superpower when it comes to megafauna. With the last continent on this planet that still has its full array of what we call megafauna. Elephants, giraffes, hippos, rhinos, these gigantic animals which actually co-evolved with human beings on the planet. So you can imagine that it's very interesting that these animals have survived on a continent that is actually well known for being quite poor and maybe unable to deal with so many things. We've actually protected these extraordinary animals that are a global heritage. And why? I believe it's because we have an ancient, ancient relationship with these animals. It's not just because we evolved. It's in our DNA. It's also in our folklore and our stories. There is a tribe in Kenya and East Africa called the Maasai. They are pastoralists. And they have a story that goes that a bride was leaving home for the last time and walking off with her husband. Her father had told her, don't look back. Don't show regret. But she did. She disobeyed her father and she looked back. In that instant she was cursed and she began to turn into the first elephant. And this is why the Maasai believe that humans and elephants are related by blood. They believe that our spirits reside in elephants. And if the Maasai has come across a dead elephant on the savannah, they will stop and bless it by placing grass on the skull of that elephant. Grass is the most important part of their currency because they're pastoralists. And they believe that elephants would do the same for people. That if an elephant comes across a dead person, that elephant would stop and actually cover that person with bushes. And amazingly, scientists have actually seen this. Well, I'm a scientist. I studied elephants. I did my PhD at Princeton University. Like so many scientists, you know, spent decades pouring over data, analysing these incredible animals. What we're beginning to learn is that they are far more complex than anyone could have imagined. You probably all know that elephants have an incredible memory. They've got a brain many times larger than ours. They can hear from immense distances. If we were a herd of elephants in this room today, elephants in clusters would be able to hear us. They wouldn't just hear us. They would know what we're saying, and they would know who's speaking. They don't just listen with their ears. They listen with their feet and their trunk. They are incredible. And every year we discover more and more amazing facts about elephants, and every year we begin to lose them. One of the most amazing things to me is that elephants are beloved everywhere in the world. We give our children little toy elephants. They're on our pajamas. They're on our books. We show our children films about elephants. And children around the world grow up with these extraordinary animals in their lives. Well, in Africa, we see millions of visitors flooding into the continent to experience elephants and wild animals for themselves. How many of you have been to Africa and have gone on a safari? That's great. Amazing number of you. Those who haven't, I can assure you. Come to Africa and your lives will be changed forever. It's really extraordinary to meet animals like elephants. It's almost like they can read into your mind. Well, I love elephants because they're so much like human beings. They live in families. They have matriarchs. Here's a matriarch photograph I took of her standing beside a baby, shading it from the sun while she dusts herself. It's not even her baby. That was another female's baby. She is an aunt. And she's taken care of her sister's baby. And as soon as the sister rumbled and called for her baby, the matriarch nudged it with her foot gently, lifted it with her trunk, and the baby was taken to its mother. Elephants laugh. They make tools. They're incredibly intelligent. They understand the landscape. And they grieve. They cry and they return to the dead elephants of their relatives. They touch the bones. Every single year they return and they touch the bones, especially the tusks. They're extraordinary. There are many secrets about elephants that I think we'll never understand. But as Africa develops and it's developing at a massively rapid pace, people are moving to cities and we're disconnected from this great heritage of ours, these incredible animals. Very few Africans actually can go to our national parks anymore. And we're getting disconnected and we're losing touch with these extraordinary animals. This is Satau 2. He's one of Africa's largest tuskers. A few days after this photograph was taken, he was killed with a poison arrow. The poachers chose a poison arrow because it's silent. They couldn't be tracked. This poor elephant suffered for days before he fell. And as he was suffering, he was sending messages out to all the other elephants, telling them how much pain he was in and how much danger there was. Why? Because of the demand for ivory in countries half a world away. Primarily in China, Japan, the Philippines, Thailand and those countries. Because of the resurgence of the ivory trade as a result of a decision taken in 2000 and 2002, we have seen a catastrophic killing of elephants across the African continent. 30,000 elephants every year. That's one every 15 minutes. And as a result, we're seeing population declines in some of the most important areas. Tanzania has lost 76% of elephants in just five years. The Congo, 90%. Sudan, 95%. Some countries have lost their elephants altogether. Well, in Kenya, we saw this happening and we predicted exactly what would happen the moment the ivory trade was reopened. We saw poaching begin to increase. In 2012, it peaked and then it fell off. And it wasn't because our elephants had been decimated. It's because we took a national action. We launched a campaign which was driven by civil society in partnership with the government as well as companies like Amarula, which is their icon as an elephant. We also involved the media and we created a massive message that these are our elephants and we want to defend them. There are seven steps to what we did. First, we used evidence. We didn't just gather data on the dead elephants across the savannas. We also went into all the courtrooms. I have 10 lawyers who went into courtrooms and tracked every single wildlife trial and Kenya is the first country in the world to have a digital database of every single wildlife trial that gives us real-time data on what's happening in those trials. We mobilized thousands and thousands of people to join us on the streets to demand justice for wildlife. There is no leader in Kenya who can ignore the fact of thousands of people, especially youth and children, demanding justice for these extraordinary animals. Probably the most important thing that we did was we went to the media. We didn't just go to the newsrooms and tell these stories. We went to National Geographic, BBC, we went to Disney Nature and we asked them to give back those films that are made about Africa's wildlife and allow us to share them for free to air across Kenya. It might surprise you to hear that those amazing award-winning documentaries that you all grew up on, they've never been seen in Africa. They weren't made for Africa. So what we did was we asked for those films to be shown back in Kenya. And then we went another step. We said, well, we actually want to tell our own stories. We got a crew together. We got a Kenyan narrator. And we went into the field to record and document our own people, our own heroes, our rangers at the front lines, our scientists, our communities and tell their stories. And the amazing thing happened that we hadn't really anticipated. Five million Kenyans watch our TV show. We have twice as many viewers as National Geographic for our own local production. 40% of Kenyans say they want to volunteer for wildlife. And this has happened in just a space of two years. As a result of this, we've been able to expand our shows across the whole country, bring them into classrooms. I think it's just completely transformed the national consciousness about wildlife and the environment. We cultivated political will. We didn't just go to our president, who is a great champion for elephants. We went to his wife, Margaret Kenyatta. She's a great matriarch in her own right. The only first lady in the world who is taking on a wildlife initiative. She's the patron of the Hands of our Elephants campaign. And Judy Wahungu, the minister of environment, who pushed through necessary regulations and new legislation to support this initiative. We supported new boots on the ground. I'm not talking about ordinary rangers, just going into the national parks. I'm talking about elite forces from many different agencies working together at the borders, on the highways, in the parks, at the airports, and even at the seaports. And this has had a huge effect because it allows us to detect and arrest the criminals. We lobbied for the destruction of our ivory. I know for some people this looks a bit controversial. That's $15 million worth of ivory going up in flames. And it's not the only time Kenya has done it. Kenya has done this five times. But we believe that the only people who should wear ivory are elephants. And so there is really no need to store or keep this ivory. We've destroyed it so that it will never, ever appear in any international market. You know, when a country, a poor country like Kenya, takes such a huge political stand, it's quite contagious. Many other countries have now done it, including the United States, France, Gabon, even Hong Kong and China. And we pushed through new laws. Kenya today has the most severe penalties in the world. And the proof is in the pudding. This is one of Kenya's most notorious wildlife traffickers. His name is Faisal Muhammad Ali. It took us seven months to arrest this man. If I tell you about the trial, you won't believe it's far too fantastic. Evidence went missing. Witnesses disappeared. But thank God to this campaign. We created so much awareness in the country and just zero tolerance for criminals against wildlife that he was eventually convicted and jailed for 20 years. He's serving that sentence right now and he's been fined $200,000. He was the very first ever ivory trafficker to be arrested and tried in a Kenyan court. And since then we've had several more. As a result of that, poaching in Kenya has declined by nearly 90% in the last five years. And I'm so proud to have been part of the team that put together this strategy. So I would love to invite all of you to join me in Kenya, in Amberseli, where we have the world's most famous population of elephants. The Amberseli elephants are all named as individuals because they each have very special personalities. This is Tim. Tim is 49 years old. He is a super tusker, probably the biggest elephant left on this planet. He is so friendly, although he's massive, he's so friendly. When I go to Amberseli, if I see him and I call his name, he will turn his head to me and he'll even walk towards my car. Prince Albert, I would love to invite you to come and meet Tim. I'm sure that that introduction would lead to a lifelong friendship. But it's not enough to just save Kenya's elephants. As I told you, elephant poaching is happening across the entire continent. We're still losing elephants at a rate of 7% per year. And at that rate, elephants will be gone within our lifetimes from the wild. Within the next few decades, we could lose elephants from the wild. It's just a reality that's just impossible to accept and we will not accept it. And this is why I'm here in Davos. It's to really raise the level of urgency. We have to work together. And I believe that all the people in this room and the people here at Davos can work together to save this incredible iconic species. Imagine a day when the only elephants left on Earth are the ones in zoos, the ones on your mantelpiece. You know the little carvings you have on the mantelpiece or on your children's pajamas. It would just be unbelievably awful. So there are three things that I think we can do. First, don't buy ivory. It's kind of obvious. Don't buy ivory. But I think we should go a bit further than that. We need to make sure that our government's ban ivory trade into perpetuity. So I'd like a quick show of hands. People would be willing to write to their ministers or their presidents and say, let's ban ivory into perpetuity. That's fantastic. So please do it, because I'm pretty sure that if your presidents and ministers get such a letter from you as members and people who are some of the most powerful people in the world, it would make a massive difference. Secondly, support the grassroots efforts. We have people on the ground risking their lives every single day. They're parts of government. Some of them are in NGOs and other organizations. So please do support them. If anyone wants to know of organizations that they're out there, I'm very happy to share that information with you. And third, I'd like you to consider joining us in what we're doing in terms of creating global awareness. A Wildlife Direct we discovered that telling the stories about elephants and wildlife to Africans, not just the stories that are made by BBC like David Attenborough. He's fantastic. We love him. But when you tell a story by a local person to their own people, it has a magical effect. We have mobilized millions of conservation champions in Kenya. We call ourselves wildlife warriors. And I think we need to go way beyond Kenya. We need to take this initiative across the continent and to Asia where the demand is and probably across the whole world. We need everybody in the world to know about elephants, to understand them, to care about them enough that they will actually take actions. I'd love to work with all of you to make this possible. I'm working with National Geographic who have agreed to help me to scale this project. And I really wish that we could all work together to make this possible. Thank you.