Kenya had just 16,000 elephants in 1989, and this rose to more than 34,000 in 2018, the tourism minister Najib Balala said.

“In the last couple of years, we have managed to tame poaching in this country,” he told reporters during a visit to the Amboseli National Park. The number of elephants poached so far this year stood at seven, down from 34 in all of 2019, and 80 in 2018.

The government has put in place stiffer penalties – longer jail terms and bigger fines – on anyone convicted of poaching or trafficking in wildlife trophies, saying poaching was harming tourism, a major foreign exchange earner.

Source: Reuters

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kenya-conservation-elephants/kenya-elephant-numbers-more-than-double-in-1980-2018-tourism-minister-idUSKCN2582B2](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kenya-conservation-elephants/kenya-elephant-numbers-more-than-double-in-1980-2018-tourism-minister-idUSKCN2582B2)