With a Nursery heaving at the seams with baby elephants, our hearts sank when we received the call from our Tsavo Mobile Veterinary Unit with news of yet another baby elephant of approximately 7 weeks old needing to be airlifted from the Voi airstrip in Tsavo East National Park to the Nairobi Nursery
With a Nursery heaving at the seams with baby elephants, our hearts sank when we received the call from our Tsavo Mobile Veterinary Unit with news of yet another baby elephant of approximately 7 weeks old needing to be airlifted from the Voi airstrip in Tsavo East National Park to the Nairobi Nursery. It was before 7.00am on a routine patrol that our Ziwani Antipoaching team, camped in an area in Tsavo West between Kisushu and Ndii, that our team came across a distressed female elephant at a heavily trampled area around a breather tank in the Mzima Springs pipeline. The men kept their distance, and observing through binoculars concluded that her calf must be trapped in the tank. They immediately radioed our Mobile Veterinary Unit based in Voi to come and assist, for as long as she was standing vigil, rescuing her baby was impossible. The area was dense bush, with a single track running parallel to the pipeline, and all antipoaching patrols have to be done on foot. It was hoped that the vet could dart the mother, rescue the calf and reunite them. However, as the sun rose higher into the morning sky the mother grew increasingly agitated. and they watched helpless as she made the decision to move away from the scene melting into the undergrowth, seemingly resigned to the fate of loosing her calf forever. By the time the Veterinary Unit arrived, two and a half hours later, due to the distances and the nature of the bush track, any sign of the elephants had disappeared.