Hello everyone, this is my second dispatch from Kenya, February 9, 2011
I have some sad news. Resilience succumbed to her bullet wounds and has perished. We found her yesterday in an open plain where she spent her last hours.
Allow me to tell you a little bit about her.
Family life:
Resilience had at least six calves. The oldest two, Honesty and Tolerance, had calves of their own, making Resilience a grandmother. She also had two bull calves along the way. Her youngest consist of a female of about 6 years and a small one about 1 to 2 year old. The little ones are presently with the rest of her family.
Resilience belonged to the family called the Virtues. Generosity is the matriarch of the Virtues, but Resilience was one of the other dominant females. She was often observed leading her own subgroup, travelling and foraging separately from the others. If this process continued her subgroup may have split permanently from the main group. Thus, Resilience was on her way to becoming the matriarch of her own group.
Research life:
Resilience participated in a lot of research. She and her family ran from bees and bee alarm calls, and ignored our other control stimuli, showing researchers and conservationists just how effective bees might be for deterring crop-raiding elephants. And Resilience was a top-notch crop-raider. In fact, Save the Elephants put a GPS collar on her last year to check out her crop-raiding behavior. Sure enough, Resilience went around the farms where Lucy King set up beehive fences around the crops, and headed right for unprotected farms. Without knowing it, Resilience has furthered the cause for her species.
Cause of death:
Multiple gunshot wounds during a failed poaching attempt. Resilience lived to be about 40 years old, and lived a great elephant life.