Elephants of Botswana

What a morning we have had.

As dawn broke we heard elephants outside our tent so went out to try and see them and we came across a small herd, led by the female F121, getting an early morning snack. The light was still dim and so it was hard to see but a couple of the youngsters came out of the bushes and gave us a good view. After about 5 minutes something gave them a fright (not us) and they moved off, and we went up for breakfast and getting the troops ready to try and find Nandipa, Pula, Ntongeni and Nima. We headed out the way of we saw the herd leave the camp and came across them browsing in the Terminalia sericea forest. It was here that I was able to see the Matriarch was F121. The youngsters were in playing mood and were wrestling on the road in front of us. After about 30 minutes they wandered off the road and we decided to move on.

I wanted to find Nandipa and her herd to see how they were all doing, but they had gone the other side of some deep muddy water and so we had to give up on that idea. It was nearly 1000 by that time and getting hot and so I decided to head home, and it was on the road to camp that we saw Napoleon coming towards us. He looked agitated and kept walking directly towards us, very unusual behaviour! Then he started flapping his ears alternatively, the first clue that he was in musth. As he got nearer I could see that his temporal glands were swollen and he had a green penis sheath that was dribbling urine; Napoleon was in full blown musth.

I have known him since I started the project here in 2002 and he has grown into a handsome male elephant. He was called Napoleon because he had a broken tusk, but as you can see it has now grown back.

Unfortunately we were in deep sand and in thick vegetation so I could not turn around or reverse fast enough to get out of his way, so we had to stand our ground and see what he got up to. After shaking the palm tree in front of us he stood about 6m away and gave us a couple of head shakes and dusted – it was unsure of what to do about us and if we needed anything doing to!!! He was also very agitated – and after the show of power in front of us he spent a while rubbing his temporal glands against the palm tree, he was obviously uncomfortable. He soon got bored of us and ambled off and we were able to get a whole ½ h

Napoleon checks us out

our focal as well as a dung sample. A great start to the day.

Napoleon coming along the road towards us

We have friends from the UK visiting at the moment and so they joined us on our early morning drive to find elephants. I have been out of camp for a month, busy down in Gaborone and they area has changed dramatically as the annual floods have arrived. I am always very nervous when the floods are first down as you are fairly unsure as to which roads are going to be usable, we have some idea from previous years but it is always a bit of a gamble. Thankfully we did not get stuck in spite of endless stretches of water and deep crossings.

It was very quiet out and about, probably due to the winds that were constant all night (it was quite strong at times, so strong that a picture fell off the mantel piece above my bed and fell on my head. I now have a large lump!!!). Elephants do not like wind and I think they were still hiding, as were the other mammals. So we were about to head home when on the edge of Horseshoe Lagoon, we did see some elephants.

It was the Abu herd (used for Elephant Back Safaris) so we watched as Kettimetsi and her baby Lorato, feed on the rich riverine forest vegetation.  We were telling our friends about the elephants, and the difference between male and females when I spotted a male walking across the lagoon behind them. We went around the lagoon and found him with the female Sherini, we thought she was in oestrous so waited and watched and sure enough we saw, or rather heard them – as they hid in the bushes, it was a loud affair with trumpets and rumbles from the entire herd. Little Paseka, Sherini’s adopted daughter, was roaring away, I am not sure she was that impressed by it all.

We are monitoring Sherini’s hormones so it will be very interesting to see what happens now!!!!

Dr Kate Evans was awarded the Best Research Project award at the recent Wetnose Award Ceremony held in the Cholmondeley Room in the House of Lords  http://www.wetnoseanimalaid.com/wetnose-…). Unfortunatley she was unable to attend the awards in person, but the chairties Patron, Nick Knowles,  stepped in and accepted the award on her behalf.

Kate is excremely proud to receive this award.

Elephants For Africa Patron, Nick Knowles recieves the award on behalf of Dr Kate Evans from the actress Caroline Langrishe

We have just received the devastating news that early this morning the Save The Elephants camp was devastated by flood. All here at Elephants For Africa are thinking of our colleagues and friends at this time and hope that they are OK.

We had a lovely evening at Kwalata lodge and then Graham and Stacy dropped us off at our campsite, just down the road. We had mentioned where we were going to Gary at LA Sport when we dropped off our car and he said that he had a farm out there and we could camp there and so we did. So a huge thanks to Gary for sponsoring our accommodation costs. A lovely Zimbabwean, Andrew, was looking after the game farm and looked after us. It was a lovely spot and it was a shame that we did not have the time to enjoy it as every day was full from 0630 when we were picked up at 21-2200 at night when we were dropped off. The local owl made his presence known by pooping on Mphoeng’s tent – it was a large owl!!!! The staff of the National Zoo in South Africa who organised the event really went out of their way to help the program run and deal with all our demands. A huge thank you to them is well deserved. Graham and Mphoeng presented posters of their work during the week, which was very well received and I presented a talk on habitat use of the delta elephants on the Thursday morning, in the same group as Dr Iain Douglas-Hamilton and Professor Rudi Van Aarde and so I was a little more nervous than normal!!!! Iain congratulated me afterwards which really felt good and did my ego wonders. I would never have thought I would ever have the chance to meet him let along speak to him as one elephant researcher to another. During the week we had some interesting panel discussions about the major threats facing the African elephant today and also about the management and welfare of captive elephants. During both of which I was asked to comment by Harry Peachy of Columbus Zoo and Aquarium which was a huge honour and is was nice to have the opportunity to voice my opinion. We also discussed the upcoming CITES and the plans for the African elephant and we all agreed on the attached statement. One of the evening activities was a visit to Mandela Village down the road where we enjoyed traditional singing and dancing by school children, local bootleg liquor (which was not as bad as I had expected) and I even had my bones read by a Shangoma which was very interesting. The evening finished with supper at a local shebeen (pub) but the rain storm rather put a dampener on the dancing, although Mphoeng did Elephants For Africa proud with his moves on the dance floor. After a very productive and interesting week we enjoyed a week in Pretoria (we found much nicer Backpackers in Brooklyn for Mphoeng) and drove back to Maun on the Sunday.

On the 24th January, Sim, Mphoeng and I headed down to South Africa for the International Elephant Foundation (IEF) conference. Sim and I had a few nights staying at Meno A Kwena on the Boteti river. The river is flowing for the first time in 16 years and with the water the elephants have arrived, in particular male elephants in abundance. Groups of 200+ males have been sighted and so I have been trying to get down there for ages to see for myself and think about how best to implement some research down there. My friend David Dugmore owns the camp and he has created a wonderful rustic feel to the place. We had a fantastic weekend and did not have to move far from the cliff edge that overlooks the river to see male elephants coming down to drink. We left early on the Sunday and picked Mphoeng up from his home town of Serowe were he had to go to pick up emergency travel papers as his application for a new passport has not yet come through, even though he applied in January 2009! The rest of the trip down was fairly uneventful – except for the border where they wanted to confiscate my elephant dung samples which we were taking down for a friend to take back to the US for analysis. It was my own fault, I had all the permits for the export from Botswana and the import to America but not import/export permits for South Africa. Thankfully they gave me a special permit to enable me to get to Pretoria where I must then report to the state vet. Phweeeee. That night Sim and I stayed with my friend and had a lovely time catching up. Unfortunately she lives in a small place and did not have room for Mphoeng and so we got him to a nearby backpackers in Sunnyside. It was not a nice place and so when we came back to Pretoria at the end of the week we found a much nicer one in Brooklyn. Ellie, our Toyota Landcruiser needed some work to do and so we dropped it off at LA Sport and Graham and Stacy, who had flown in from the states the day before, picked us up and we headed out to Kwalata Lodge to register for the conference and enjoy a lovely meal and catch up with old friends (for me) and make new friends (Sim, Mphoeng, Stacy and Graham).

To be continued………………………………..

Dear all,
I am so sorry that we have not been in touch recently, for some reason we have been unable to log in and so therefore unable to post. We have had a busy time with Mthondo’s release, Thando digging up water pipes, conferences in South Africa and Botswana and now Sim and I are in Gaborone for a while. So we have lots of news and I look forward to filling you in……. so keep posted…………….

Yesterday afternoon Sim and I headed up to Tubu Lodge (our neighbours) to help advise on an elephant that keeps digging up the water pipes. They are only 16km away as the crow flies but it takes a good 90 minutes to drive there and more when you have issues to deal with on the way.

After we had crossed most of the deep water crossings and headed for the truck road that would take us to Tubu we smelt something dead and just by the road we could see vultures and marabou storks feeding on the carcass. We approached and found it be to a giraffe. After checking for predators I got out the car as something did not look right – on closer inspection it was obvious that this giraffe had not died of natural causes, he had been poached. Chased on horseback to the point of exhaustion and then killed. He had torn off the skin off one of his knees, so he must have hit the ground with huge force to do that. Both of his ears had been cut off, which we presume is for muti (traditional medicine).  It was heart breaking to see him like this and imagine his last minutes of life.

We radioed it through to the office who informed the Department of Wildlife and National Parks, but there was little they could do about this incident, except add it to the list of poached animals found in the area, as it was already a day or two old and the trial for the poachers would be long gone.

Today we leased a 34 year old male elephant – it is a long story – so I will do it tomorrow as it is late and I am tierd.