Today we received a report that a dead elephant was found in the East side of Shaba reserve. We immediately went out to investigate and to write up a MIKE (monitoring the illegal killing of elephants) report. Shaba is known to be a very insecure reserve and the past few years there has been a great deal of civil attacks and a large level of poaching. It had become a place few tourists visited. Though recent reports had suggested that the unrest had calmed down and that tourists were beginning to return to the area.
We found it to be completely empty of tourist apart from one vehicle. There was a high presence of Police and rangers within camps in the reserve and the Head Sergeant insisted we travel with armed rangers within the reserve. After quite some time, passing through many camps and talking to many people we managed to locate the dead elephant carcass. We found it had been shot at least twice. We were not sure if it was shot outside the park and travelled into the reserve to die or if it was killed within the reserve. Fortunately the KSW (Kenyan Wildlife Authority) had come the previous night and had extracted the tusks, so they could not be taken and sold on the ivory market. Although on the way we heard from a number of people that there were reports of at least four other poached elephant carcasses just outside the reserve. These reports were deeply disturbing. There is now a great deal of fear that poaching has started up again in the Shaba area with a vengeance.