The peace and tranquillity of Samburu has seeped right into me. Awakening with the (somewhat cacophonic) chirping of various birds and retiring at night with the calls of the wildlife in the surrounding bush, I look forward to the next two months during which I’ll have the pleasure of admiring Samburu’s breathtaking beauty. As a student of wildlife conservation from Australia, I’m also eager to learn as much as possible about why STE is such a success in the field of conservation.
I’m very excited to be working on some long-term elephant monitoring (LTM) data in preparation for Dr. Lucy King’s upcoming field work at the beginning of next year. I’m collating information on the changes in family composition of various elephant families in Samburu over the last 5 years.
During my first week here, I went on a few drives for the mammal census and LTM and my most exciting story so far is that of a very curious bull elephant called Anwar. He was sloshing about, drinking and spraying himself with some muddy water from a large puddle, when he decided to take a closer look at us humans sitting in a vehicle not far from him. So, Anwar ambled over, sniffed out the vehicle and then his trunk extended right up to the open window and just hung there for a couple of seconds as we got a real close-up view of his beautiful, big nostrils!! So cool!