Elephants are coming down South
Thalefang Charles | Friday April 21, 2017 18:00
An image of an elephant loaded in an open truck with a dozen brazen men riding dangerously with the big animal through the streets of Maun like a scene from a cheap African action thriller, is still the talk of the town.
After that clumsy elephant relocation that is reported to have left a few of those men with minor injuries, the Department of Wildlife and National Parks (DWNP) requested the assistance of Elephants Without Borders (EWB) to come and monitor the elephants in the area.
EWB is a local non-profit conservation organisation based in Kasane near the confluence of Chobe and Zambezi Rivers, on the borders of Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. This area has Africa’s highest concentration of elephants. EWB is the region’s leading cross-border research organisation focused on elephant conservation and management. They do elephant research to study the migratory patterns, behaviour, and ecology of elephants and their habitats.
As the worldwide elephant population is dwindling Botswana is facing a different problems of over population of these largest mammals due the country’s best conversation initiatives.
The director and founder of EWB Mike Chase believes that the increasing elephants in Botswana is due to a conclusion that they have found safe refuge in Botswana.
“Elephants are fleeing away from the relentless poaching in our neighbouring countries and they are moving down south in areas populated by people and they are causing lots of damage to farmers’ crops and property,” says Chase.
A large herd of elephants is capable of destroying the farmer’s whole season yield in a matter of minutes. From elephants, to wild-dogs that could wipe out a flock of goats, farmers are in a way paying for the success of Botswana’s wildlife conservation with their farming yields. This is creating a bitter antagonistic relationship with communities and wildlife.
Farmers, most of whom do not see the direct benefit of wild animals other than the trail of damage that they leave on their farms, want animals dead. On the other hand, government is battling with the dilemma of protecting both the wildlife and people’s welfare. The situation is worsened by the excessive bureaucracy and government’s red tape with regards to compensation of wildlife damages.
But there are also conservationists in the middle of this big conundrum at pains to find solutions for human-wildlife co-existence. EWB is one of them and they are constantly called to the rescue. In an endeavour to help the situation EWB works closely with the government of Botswana through the DWNP to facilitate with the advisory services especially on elephants.
So after the recent sightings of rogue elephants around Maun, DWNP called EWB for help. Chase organised a small operation to search and collar some elephants in the area so that they could monitor their movements.
Collaring Operation
The operation according to Chase is a costly exercise that involves, helicopter, small airplane and experts including the veterinarian who is qualified to do the darting of the elephants.
The search for the elephants starts on a small four-seater aircraft colloquially called “folae’ in Maun. On board the small aircraft there are two Mikes in the controls, first pilot is Mike Holding an internationally accomplished cinematographer cum pilot who has produced award-winning documentaries from the Okavango Delta including the BBC’s Elephant Without Borders. Another Mike, co-pilot, is Mike Chase EWB’s director and founder. In the backseat is Robert Sutcliffe Program manager at EWB together with yours truly.
The small aircraft does most of the air surveying while the helicopter awaits at the base airstrip. The airplane fly very low around the Khwebe Hills and Lake Ngami on the southern part of Maun and everyone is busy scanning out for any elephants. Communities around these areas have reported sightings of large herds of elephants that graze around the area and destroying their crops.
From fruitless search around Khwebe Hills the team moved deeper south into the Central Kgalagadi Game Reserve (CKGR). We set up new base camp at Dinaka Airstrip just outside of the CKGR fence. Most part of the CKGR fence has been tumbled over by elephants, and there are lots of fresh tracks from the air.
With almost 20 years of working with elephants Chase still exudes so much passion and love for the elephants that a stranger might not believe that he is the first Motswana to read for a doctorate specifically in elephant ecology.
One could almost visibly touch his excitement when he spots the elephants.
After a whole day fruitless search, we sighted our first elephants over the plains of CKGR and Chase was the first to see them. We all learnt through his shouts, “Ele! Ele! There! One bull! Oh, there is more! Eles! Elephants!”
Sutcliffe then drops a pin in the GPS to save the coordinates before we return to base airstrip to pick up the helicopter. Back in the air, inside the Robison44 chopper, is Micheal Drager (the third Mike in the six-men team) a pilot from Helicopter Horizons, Larry Patterson EWB’s chief wildlife veterinarian, Mike Chase and yours truly. We are following the GPS coordinates pinned by Sutcliffe to go and collar one of the elephants from the herd we sighted earlier.
Along the way, we find even more elephants. A quick count and both Mikes agree on 45 as number of elephants. The chopper is then landed little further from the eles and the doors are removed to allow Patterson to dart with ease. The darting will inject the elephant with a 10mg of thiafentanil oxalate and it will immobilise it in 15 minutes. When it falls into a deep sleep the chopper fans away the rest of the herd and gets down after ensuring that other elephants are distant enough.
The actual collaring process is swift. The EWB team has perfected the process almost like a Formula One Race pit-stop. The collar with a state of the art satellite tracker is placed around the elephant’s neck and fastened quickly before it could wake up.
Chase says that the collar will provide, “baseline of information about the elephants habitat needs, density and distribution, demography, ecology, behaviour and social organisation.” And with that information it would be easier to provide solutions for maintaining and protecting their populations and the environment.
On this particular operation, the two elephants cows are the first ever elephants they have collared inside the CKGR. So their collars will shed light on this “uncommon” migration route in the vast plains of the Kalahari desert. Researchers will be able to study the migration pattern and know how far down south the animals will get and notify the DWNP accordingly if they get closer to the most populated Kweneng district areas.
The collars stay with the elephants for years providing timely updates on the activities of the animal. On the way back to Maun from the CKGR, near Boteti River we stop to replace the old collar of the elephant bull.
To everyone’s shock, we discovered a deep bullet wound on the shoulder of a big bull. The bullet perforated its flappy ear and luckily hit the hard belt of the collar. The team Vet, Petterson said the belt of the collar saved the elephant life because the belt appeared to have diverted the bullet from going into the animal’s neck, which could have been fatal.
The following day the operation worked around the area of Tsao to Xaixai in the northwest of Lake Ngami. At the end of the operation, EWB director gave yours truly the honour of naming the first two elephants that we collared in the CKGR. I decided to crown the first cow and named it the “CKGR Queen” and the second one “Khumo” inspired by the thoughts that I had when I saw the 45 elephants in the vast shrubs of the CKGR and marveled at the riches of Botswana.