A new window into Lamu’s elusive elephant population
For four days in the first week of September, the skies above the coastal forests of north-eastern Kenya, in Lamu County, were unusually busy. Three fixed-wing aircraft and two helicopters moved over an untouched mix of dense forest, broken only by patches of open grassland and winding rivers. Somewhere below were some of Kenya’s most elusive elephants, and a group of researchers and conservationists on a mission to find and fit them with GPS tracking collars.
The joint mission, conducted by Save the Elephants (STE), Mara Elephant Project, Archipelagus and Manda Bay, with support from the Kenya Wildlife Service and Wildlife Research and Training Institute, took place in Dodori National Reserve, and Kipini Conservancy, also known as Nairobi Ranch – part of the Tana River Delta, south of Lamu. The teams operated fixed-wing aircraft with spotters searching for elephants from above who guided the helicopter pilots carrying the vets in to dart the animals. Ground teams would then join them to fit the collars.
Lamu once had one of Kenya’s largest elephant populations. 1970s estimates place them at around 20,000, yet today, the population numbers only a few hundred. The remaining individuals have become ‘shy’ and difficult to find, let alone follow and study. Recent sightings of elephants in neighbouring war-torn Somalia have also raised speculation that these Lamu elephants might be part of a population crossing in and out of the country.
An aerial view of part of the collaring team in Dodori National Reserve © Frank Pope/Save the Elephants
It was a challenging operation. Dodori’s canopy is so dense that it’s almost impossible to see the forest floor from the air, and on the ground, thick vegetation makes the land tough to navigate.
“It’s a very beautiful forest but very challenging terrain to dart and collar elephants. It’s difficult to even see them,” says Dr. Giacomo D’Ammando, Save the Elephants’ Research Manager.
In the end, six elephants were collared. The first was a female, aptly named Dodori after the forest. She became the first ever tracked elephant in the Reserve.
Dr. Giacomo D’Ammando (centre) fitting a GPS tracking collar on an elephant during the Lamu collaring operation. © UAF
With the six elephants now fitted with tracking collars and visible on STE’s WildTracks App, researchers are able to monitor their movements and keep a watchful eye on them. This will be especially important if they do turn out to be the group of elephants crossing in and out of Somalia.
The last known confirmed recording of an elephant crossing into Somalia since the 1980s was in 2015 when by a bull named Morgan. He was collared by STE near the Tana River Delta and two months later set off on a 137 mile (220 km) journey, travelling quickly at night and hiding in thick bushes by day, until he crossed into Somalia. Morgan stayed there less than 24 hours but his trek at the time was described by STE’s late founder Dr. Iain Douglas-Hamilton as ‘exceptional’.
Part of the collaring team after successfully fitting a GPS tracking collar on an elephant during the Lamu collaring operation © Kevin Mutinda
If the elephants with newly deployed tracking collars do indeed cross into Somalia, researchers will be hoping to gain new insights on how they navigate such remote and vast landscapes.
“It’s (Somalia) an almost intact ecosystem that may have been partially preserved by insecurity. No one has moved into that area. We’ll see where these elephants lead us. Hopefully some of them will lead us to Somalia following recent reports and sightings of elephants there,” says Dr. D’Ammando.
As well as hopes for trans-boundary movement, the researchers are also keen to see if the two newly collared elephants in Nairobi Ranch, further south, will reveal their movement and interaction with their human neighbours. One of the elephants had a healed snare wound on its trunk and earlier in the year, an elephant calf was found in Kipini with a wire snare cutting deep into her leg. Both these cases point to a real urgent need to better understand the human-elephant coexistence dynamic.
Meanwhile, within weeks of the collaring mission, one of the elephants, Kiangwe, a bull, was tracked walking a distance of 125 miles (200 km) west of where he was collared, towards Tsavo East National Park. We are keeping up with his travels and we’ll see whether he follows in Morgan’s footsteps. We’ll keep you posted!
Read about Morgan’s journey to Somalia here.