Kenya elephant evacuation crumbles under jumbo load
Thursday, August 25, 2005; Posted: 12:55 p.m. EDT (16:55 GMT)
Rangers roll a tranquilized elephant as they prepare to move him.
The 22-year-old bull elephant is first loaded onto a trailer.
Rangers move the animal to a truck, after he is too heavy for the trailer.
SHIMBA HILLS, Kenya (AP) -- The 22-year-old bull elephant was tranquilized, bound with rope and loaded onto a truck for what should have been the start of an ambitious relocation operation.
Then Kenya Wildlife Service rangers discovered their truck wasn't up to the job.
The $3.2 million exercise, the biggest elephant relocation Kenya has ever attempted, was suspended indefinitely Thursday after the truck's trailer broke under the bull's weight.
The bull was to have been the first of 400 elephants to be taken on an eight-hour drive from crowded Shimba Hills National Reserve more than 350 kilometers (218 miles) to the northern part of Tsavo East National Park.
Kenya Wildlife Service rangers had planned to begin moving entire elephant family groups starting Saturday. The schedule for the government-financed operation is now uncertain.
Shimba Hills has 600 elephants, three times what it can comfortably handle, resulting in the animals moving into populated area and destroying crops and injuring people. Tsavo East National Park has 10,397 elephants, down from a peak of 25,268 in 1972.
Tsavo East suffered its heaviest loss of elephants during the 1980s and early 1990s when poachers devastated Kenya's pachyderms. Poaching has since subsided, helped by a 1989 global ban on the ivory trade that has seen prices drop.
Kenya Wildlife Service Director Julius Kipng'etich said Monday that his organization has increased security in the area where the elephants will be relocated.
"We deployed 83 young ranger recruits to Tsavo East last month ... If the poachers come, they will find us ready," Kipng'etich said. He said that they will also have regular aerial patrols.
Kipng'etich also said that Kenya Wildlife Service had taken steps to reduce the possibility of elephants damaging farms near Tsavo East, a constant threat facing wildlife authorities as Kenya's population grows and more people move to once-empty land to farm, at times close to national parks.
"We have also radio-collared six matriarchs ... and will be monitoring their movements using Geographical Positioning Systems or GPS so that our rangers can drive them away before they reach private farms," Kipng'etich said.
"We want to be pro-active in our management of problem elephants."
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/africa/08/25/kenya.elephants.ap/index.html
Thursday, August 25, 2005; Posted: 12:55 p.m. EDT (16:55 GMT)
Rangers roll a tranquilized elephant as they prepare to move him.
The 22-year-old bull elephant is first loaded onto a trailer.
Rangers move the animal to a truck, after he is too heavy for the trailer.
SHIMBA HILLS, Kenya (AP) -- The 22-year-old bull elephant was tranquilized, bound with rope and loaded onto a truck for what should have been the start of an ambitious relocation operation.
Then Kenya Wildlife Service rangers discovered their truck wasn't up to the job.
The $3.2 million exercise, the biggest elephant relocation Kenya has ever attempted, was suspended indefinitely Thursday after the truck's trailer broke under the bull's weight.
The bull was to have been the first of 400 elephants to be taken on an eight-hour drive from crowded Shimba Hills National Reserve more than 350 kilometers (218 miles) to the northern part of Tsavo East National Park.
Kenya Wildlife Service rangers had planned to begin moving entire elephant family groups starting Saturday. The schedule for the government-financed operation is now uncertain.
Shimba Hills has 600 elephants, three times what it can comfortably handle, resulting in the animals moving into populated area and destroying crops and injuring people. Tsavo East National Park has 10,397 elephants, down from a peak of 25,268 in 1972.
Tsavo East suffered its heaviest loss of elephants during the 1980s and early 1990s when poachers devastated Kenya's pachyderms. Poaching has since subsided, helped by a 1989 global ban on the ivory trade that has seen prices drop.
Kenya Wildlife Service Director Julius Kipng'etich said Monday that his organization has increased security in the area where the elephants will be relocated.
"We deployed 83 young ranger recruits to Tsavo East last month ... If the poachers come, they will find us ready," Kipng'etich said. He said that they will also have regular aerial patrols.
Kipng'etich also said that Kenya Wildlife Service had taken steps to reduce the possibility of elephants damaging farms near Tsavo East, a constant threat facing wildlife authorities as Kenya's population grows and more people move to once-empty land to farm, at times close to national parks.
"We have also radio-collared six matriarchs ... and will be monitoring their movements using Geographical Positioning Systems or GPS so that our rangers can drive them away before they reach private farms," Kipng'etich said.
"We want to be pro-active in our management of problem elephants."
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/africa/08/25/kenya.elephants.ap/index.html
