Kenya steps up war on elephant poachers with satellite collars

KWS and the International Fund for Animal Welfare officials in a collaring exercise in Tsavo National Park. PHOTO | FILE 

By DOREEN WAINAINAH, dwainainah@ke.nationmedia.com

In Summary

• Technology allows rangers to track movement of wildlife within parks in real-time.

As dusk was falling rapidly in Samburu, Bonsai, an elephant, was shot as she grazed in the bushes with her herd called the Hardwoods family.

Bleeding, she managed to flee from the poachers, but only for a short distance. At 2am, she died. The Hardwoods lost yet another matriach. That was on June 8, 2013.

Bonsai had taken over as the matriarch of the Hardwoods after her mother, Ebony, died two years before. She too was butchered by poachers.

Ebony had survived the hunt time again, taking over a dozen bullets, but the poachers finally prevailed, taking her tusks and leaving her carcass to rot in the hot savannah.

“She was shot in the head and the poachers burnt and buried her GPS tracking collar,” said David Daballen, the head of field operations at Save The Elephants (STE) as he held up one of Ebony’s bones that had over 10 visible bullet marks.

“There are many elephants with bullets in them and in extreme pain,” he said.

Ebony and Bonsai are not isolated incidents, but rather an increasingly common script in the story of the conservation of the African elephant. It is a script that has forced conservationists to seek ways to protect the remaining elephants that are under threat of extinction.

Hadija, the matriarch of the Swahilis, another elephant family, came to Samburu National Park with her calves in tow, suffering from multiple gunshot wounds.

She was treated by the STE team and fitted with a global positioning system (GPS) collar to track her movements.

But the collar did not deter the poachers. She was eventually killed and the poachers shot at her collar and buried it to hide the evidence. Her calves, afraid and alone, were attached to Cinnamon, the matriach of the Spices family.

“Though Hadija’s story ended sadly, had we not been tracking her, we might not have known her fate for some time,” said Mr Daballen.
The GPS tracker on her neck transmitted her last location which enabled the team to track and trace the matriarch’s carcass.

Satao, one of the largest elephants to have walked the earth, was shot with a poisoned arrow by poachers in May last year. They took his tusks and chopped off part of his face, leaving the mutilated carcass in the bush.

Apart from poisoned arrows, poachers are turning to even more crude methods and are now using snares to trap elephants before butchering them.

Data collected in 2010 showed that 2,000 snares were used in botched poaching attempts in Bura. The use of the snares was also prevalent in Meru and Yatta where 800 snares were recovered in 2014.

As poachers cut out the pricey tusks off Satao, Hadija and Ebony for sale in international black markets, a part of them was left in a museum in Samburu