Hello everyone, this is my first dispatch from Kenya, February 5, 2011
Dust:
Driving down from the plateaus of Mount Kenya, we entered dry country. In Samburu National Reserve I squinted my eyes to scan across the arid plain where a line of light green trees bordered the Ewaso Ngare river. Dust storms arose from behind the trees and into the sky. A clear sign the river had dried up.
At this time in early February there is usually some water left in the river, with many elephant families drinking there, and it dries up over the next month or so. Water keeps the elephants coming here. The few elephants observed in the river this year can be seen digging holes in the dusty river bed. Before long they reach the water below the surface, the elephant’s last possible access to water here.
Those elephant families that are coming down these days often split up into subgroups to forage. So we drive long distances across cracked landscapes breathing in the fine grains of dust, but we do find elephants resting under trees eventually. Elephants resting under trees is what we are looking for.
Experiments:
Allow me to remind you that one of our stimuli is a super-alarm call sequence. The calls were produced by the Winds family in response to audio playbacks of the voices of Samburu tribesmen. We believe these vocalizations are ‘human alarm calls’. Well, we have had the occasion to play these vocalizations to two families resting under trees in the midday sun.
The response has been rather dramatic. Elephants prop their heads up ready for a challenge, and intensively scan the area of the sound source to see what could be there. They bunch up together in defense. And eventually they flee the area. So far so good. We will see how many families stick around in the dust bowl so that we can complete our work.
Resilience:
Threats to elephants here are not abating. Just before I arrived, poachers shot up a family of elephants known as the Virtues. Local rangers interrupted them before they collected tusks, but not before much damage was done. One of the big females, Enthusiasm, was dead. Three others were shot. Two little ones were OK, but the matriarch of the family, Resilience, was badly hurt. She took three shots in all: one in her chest, one in her back leg and one through her ear. She was separated from her family during the poaching attempt but luckily has a GPS collar, so she was tracked by Save the Elephants and the Kenyan Wildlife Service. Vets gave her some medicines and pulled out at least one bullet.
It has been two weeks since the incident. Although Resilience is still separated from her family, the good news is that her babies are being cared for by the rest of the group. We happened upon Resilience today. She was walking slow and limping, but she was moving at least, and eating. She was working her way down to the river. The picture shows Resilience drinking water from a hole in the river bed. We had seen her family about 4 miles away, not within the hearing-range for rumbles.
Although her injuries are serious, we are hoping that she will recover, and reunite with her family. I will let you know.