On a beautiful sunny day in Amboseli National Park, against the backdrop of snow-capped Mount Kilimanjaro, a small group of cars was gathered at a safe distance around the prostrate bull elephant.
The elephant lay still in the dust, head on the ground, his enormous tusks and trunk stretched out in front of him. Tension rose among the onlookers as the minutes passed.
Then the huge elephant flapped his ear, got up gently, shook his head vigorously in a vain attempt to dislodge the strange object around his neck, and walked off. We all breathed a sigh of relief. The operation to attach a tracking collar to Tim had gone perfectly.
We gathered around as, Kitili Mbathi, Director General of Kenya Wildlife Service, thanked veterinary staff and KWS rangers for their professionalism in conducting the operation, and the NGOs present for their support: WildlifeDirect for initiating the plan and providing the finance, Save The Elephants (STE) for donating the collar, and Big Life Foundation and the Amboseli Trust for Elephants for their logistic and scientific back-up.
Addressing members of local Maasai communities present, Mr. Mbathi said: “We are committed to exploring effective methods to keep our communities safe while securing all of our elephants, especially valuable individuals like Tim.” The collar would keep Tim safe—and away from farmers’ crops.
But how does it work, one of the Maasai women asked. Frank Pope of STE explained the technology once an hour the collar lets out a beep, inaudible to humans, that sends details of his location to a satellite. This information can be picked up by rangers on their mobile phones so they know where he is. Fascinated, the women crowded around his phone to see how the information was displayed. “I get it,” one lady said. “It’s works just the same way as my cow bells.”
A security team tracks Tim’s position on a map on the cell phone. If it shows him moving close to agricultural areas, they can respond, move in to head him off before he causes any trouble. If the GPS shows Tim standing still for several hours, it sends an alert that Tim may be in trouble.
The great tuskers – elephants at risk:
Tim is one of the last remaining great tuskers in Kenya. This is the term used to describe African elephants—usually males—whose tusks are so long that they reach the ground. The great tuskers are an irreplaceable symbol of our continent’s unique natural heritage. But their magnificent tusks act like a magnet for poachers (and in some countries still for trophy hunters) and mean that these elephants are constantly at risk.
Over the years, the systematic extermination by hunters and poachers of big tuskers—and their gene pool—has acted as a form of “unnatural selection” that is the reverse of Darwin’s theory: as a result most elephants in Africa today have smaller tusks than they did 100 years ago.
2014 was a black year, when two of Kenya’s most iconic great tuskers, Satao and Mountain Bull, were killed by poachers.Thankfully, Tim is still alive and known to be a prolific father. He is much sought after by females in oestrus and has spent his adult life passing on his genes to elephant population in Amboseli. Now 47 years old, Tim was named by Cynthia Moss, founder of the Amboseli Trust for Elephants, as part of what has become the world’s longest running scientific study of the species. His name indicates that he is a member of the “T family”, like his mother Trista.
I have interacted with Tim several times and his name matches his feisty personality. He is friendly, smart and charismatic, popular among tourists and looked up to by younger bull elephants.
Unfortunately he is also, on occasion, a crop raider. As he enters late middle age, he seems to be getting more brazen. Moreover the younger males in his entourage are learning from his example.
This means that Tim is less popular among local farmers. The Maasai traditionally revere elephants.
However the expansion of commercial agricultural in areas once dedicated to livestock production is increasingly bringing people into conflict with elephants. Although Amboseli elephants are not usually aggressive, they can be bad-tempered and their large size makes them dangerous. In 2016 alone, 8 people have been killed by elephants in the area and 6 more have been seriously injured.
An elephant raid on a crop plantation can have a devastating impact on family livelihoods. When farmers find elephants in their crops at night, tempers quickly get inflamed. In Amboseli, farmers often take matters into their own hands and try to scare the elephants away with flares and noises as well as spears. Tim has survived more than one spear attack, and has the scars to prove it.
The urgency of our campaign was thrown into stark relief the next day when it was reported that another bull had been discovered dead in a nearby ranch, killed by poachers for his tusks. The bull could not be identified because of the state of the carcass. He died anonymously without much grieving. I couldn’t help feeling acutely aware that this could have been Tim. Gone without us even knowing it was him.
We know we can’t collar all our elephants, but hope that by keeping Tim alive he will serve as an inspiration in the search for sustainable solutions to the multiple threats facing elephants: poaching, human wildlife conflict and lack of space caused by habitat destruction.
I will leave the last words to Scott Asen, the benefactor who made it all possible:
To collar a majestic wild animal so that he can live out his life in peace and safety is an unnatural act. To build fences where farms have been allowed to encroach on historic migration paths in order to protect the lives of both settlers and animals—those, too, are unnatural acts. But if that’s what it takes to protect our wildlife, I support and encourage all of it.
Human population growth along with wholesale abuse of the environment have put us at war with wildlife. And it is a war that, if humanity isn’t careful, we will win. But it will be a tragic and Pyrrhic victory of epic proportion. Very simply, I worry that a world without animals will be a world we won’t want to—or be able to—live in. The last stop on the road to our own extinction.
Postscript, 16 September: Since being collared, Tim has rejoined his friends and has been observed peacefully in Amboseli National Park
Credits : The Guardian, September 2016
The elephant lay still in the dust, head on the ground, his enormous tusks and trunk stretched out in front of him. Tension rose among the onlookers as the minutes passed.
Then the huge elephant flapped his ear, got up gently, shook his head vigorously in a vain attempt to dislodge the strange object around his neck, and walked off. We all breathed a sigh of relief. The operation to attach a tracking collar to Tim had gone perfectly.
We gathered around as, Kitili Mbathi, Director General of Kenya Wildlife Service, thanked veterinary staff and KWS rangers for their professionalism in conducting the operation, and the NGOs present for their support: WildlifeDirect for initiating the plan and providing the finance, Save The Elephants (STE) for donating the collar, and Big Life Foundation and the Amboseli Trust for Elephants for their logistic and scientific back-up.
Addressing members of local Maasai communities present, Mr. Mbathi said: “We are committed to exploring effective methods to keep our communities safe while securing all of our elephants, especially valuable individuals like Tim.” The collar would keep Tim safe—and away from farmers’ crops.
But how does it work, one of the Maasai women asked. Frank Pope of STE explained the technology once an hour the collar lets out a beep, inaudible to humans, that sends details of his location to a satellite. This information can be picked up by rangers on their mobile phones so they know where he is. Fascinated, the women crowded around his phone to see how the information was displayed. “I get it,” one lady said. “It’s works just the same way as my cow bells.”
A security team tracks Tim’s position on a map on the cell phone. If it shows him moving close to agricultural areas, they can respond, move in to head him off before he causes any trouble. If the GPS shows Tim standing still for several hours, it sends an alert that Tim may be in trouble.
The great tuskers – elephants at risk:
Tim is one of the last remaining great tuskers in Kenya. This is the term used to describe African elephants—usually males—whose tusks are so long that they reach the ground. The great tuskers are an irreplaceable symbol of our continent’s unique natural heritage. But their magnificent tusks act like a magnet for poachers (and in some countries still for trophy hunters) and mean that these elephants are constantly at risk.
Over the years, the systematic extermination by hunters and poachers of big tuskers—and their gene pool—has acted as a form of “unnatural selection” that is the reverse of Darwin’s theory: as a result most elephants in Africa today have smaller tusks than they did 100 years ago.
2014 was a black year, when two of Kenya’s most iconic great tuskers, Satao and Mountain Bull, were killed by poachers.Thankfully, Tim is still alive and known to be a prolific father. He is much sought after by females in oestrus and has spent his adult life passing on his genes to elephant population in Amboseli. Now 47 years old, Tim was named by Cynthia Moss, founder of the Amboseli Trust for Elephants, as part of what has become the world’s longest running scientific study of the species. His name indicates that he is a member of the “T family”, like his mother Trista.
I have interacted with Tim several times and his name matches his feisty personality. He is friendly, smart and charismatic, popular among tourists and looked up to by younger bull elephants.
Unfortunately he is also, on occasion, a crop raider. As he enters late middle age, he seems to be getting more brazen. Moreover the younger males in his entourage are learning from his example.
This means that Tim is less popular among local farmers. The Maasai traditionally revere elephants.
However the expansion of commercial agricultural in areas once dedicated to livestock production is increasingly bringing people into conflict with elephants. Although Amboseli elephants are not usually aggressive, they can be bad-tempered and their large size makes them dangerous. In 2016 alone, 8 people have been killed by elephants in the area and 6 more have been seriously injured.
An elephant raid on a crop plantation can have a devastating impact on family livelihoods. When farmers find elephants in their crops at night, tempers quickly get inflamed. In Amboseli, farmers often take matters into their own hands and try to scare the elephants away with flares and noises as well as spears. Tim has survived more than one spear attack, and has the scars to prove it.
The urgency of our campaign was thrown into stark relief the next day when it was reported that another bull had been discovered dead in a nearby ranch, killed by poachers for his tusks. The bull could not be identified because of the state of the carcass. He died anonymously without much grieving. I couldn’t help feeling acutely aware that this could have been Tim. Gone without us even knowing it was him.
We know we can’t collar all our elephants, but hope that by keeping Tim alive he will serve as an inspiration in the search for sustainable solutions to the multiple threats facing elephants: poaching, human wildlife conflict and lack of space caused by habitat destruction.
I will leave the last words to Scott Asen, the benefactor who made it all possible:
To collar a majestic wild animal so that he can live out his life in peace and safety is an unnatural act. To build fences where farms have been allowed to encroach on historic migration paths in order to protect the lives of both settlers and animals—those, too, are unnatural acts. But if that’s what it takes to protect our wildlife, I support and encourage all of it.
Human population growth along with wholesale abuse of the environment have put us at war with wildlife. And it is a war that, if humanity isn’t careful, we will win. But it will be a tragic and Pyrrhic victory of epic proportion. Very simply, I worry that a world without animals will be a world we won’t want to—or be able to—live in. The last stop on the road to our own extinction.
Postscript, 16 September: Since being collared, Tim has rejoined his friends and has been observed peacefully in Amboseli National Park
Credits : The Guardian, September 2016
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