So this week we waved goodbye to Hannah as she completed her internship with STE, scaled the broken bridge one last time and returned to England to embark on her PhD studies, with which we wish her the very best of luck. I for one would love to hear all about her attempts to weigh these Asian elephants of hers…I’m not convinced it would be as simple with their wild counterparts!
At the same time we welcomed a new arrival to camp in the form of Oria who, incidentally, is named after Iain’s wife Oria Douglas-Hamilton. Predictably, this caused a little confusion amongst certain members of the team (most notably David!). As a geography student at Royal Holloway, University of London, Oria is here for 10 days to collect data for her final year dissertation, but I’ll pass you over to her to introduce herself properly…
I am currently working on my dissertation, whose subject will be the triangular relationship between nature conservation, human development and wildlife tourism. More specifically, I would like to explore the different ways in which wildlife tourism has been developed and managed until now in Kenya, and which strategies seem to be most successful within the current cultural, socio-economic, political and ecological contexts. I feel so lucky to be based at STE for my research. It suddenly makes much more sense to apply in the field what I have learnt. The atmosphere here is great. Everyone is welcoming and helpful: Chris, David, Jerenimo, Steve, Lembera and of course Heather. I am sure I will have a very stimulating and rewarding experience here at STE. My first experience of STE field research was so different from my previous safaris and I felt very fortunate to be part of it. Being surrounded by this new family of elephants who recently arrived in the reserve gave me a huge feeling of insignificance.
In other news, we accompanied Chris on a long term monitoring (LTM) trip around the reserve this evening. Here we encountered the Biblical Towns family and for both of us a certain individual stood out. Babyl, who featured in the BBC television documentary “The Secret Life of Elephants”, permanently damaged her back leg/hip when, at the age of nine, a larger bull attempted to mate with her. The team were particularly concerned about her during last year’s severe drought as she was not seen for quite some time. Thankfully, however, she made it though and by all accounts she doesn’t seem to let her obvious disability stop her going about her daily life. An extraordinary Ellie!