Real Africa is very proud to support the work of the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Kenya. We have adopted a baby black rhino and a baby elephant who are currently doing very well at the Daphne Sheldrick Animal Orphanage in Nairobi. We will be keeping you posted with regular updates on their progress.
However the Wildlife Trust does a lot more than simply operate the orphanage. They do a huge amount of work fighting against poaching, educating the local people about how to preserve their wildlife and working to help endangered species in the area. We checked in with them recently to find out what they had been up to. And boy have they been busy! Just the small challenge of moving 62 elephants from an area around Narok North into the Masai Mara National Reserve! These elephants were living in an area which was becoming increasingly crowded by development with large scale farms taking over their traditional bush territories. This was bringing them into conflict with the local farmers as they were destroying precious crops. The Sheldrick Wildlife Trust stepped in to help in its battle to save the African elephant and offered to relocate the elephants to the reserve where they will be free to roam safely.
Now as you can imagine moving 62 wild elephants is not an easy thing to do. It took weeks of planning and in the actual operation itself. First of all the elephants had to be tracked down from the air, then tranquilised with dart guns before being loaded onto trucks for the trip down to the Masai Mara Reserve. Animals can die when knocked out as their internal organs are often not meant to take the weight when lying down so the vetinary team had to be extra cautious and monitor all the elephants extremely carefully. The elephants were captured and transferred in their natural family groups which could be up to 10 animals at a time. The relocation was done over a period of two weeks in total as the heat, the terrain and the weather all combined to make this a very tricky operation.
All 62 have now been moved successfully with no complications and are happily adapting to life in their new and much safer home in the Masai Mara. Another success for the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust but just a small victory in the ongoing battle to protect the wildlife of East Africa.
