Emsaya's Story

On the 8th of Oct 2011, a young orphaned elephant calf was reported alone on Galana Ranch, just outside of Tsavo East National Park’s eastern boundary. This report was made by management of Kulalu camp Poaching in this area has been particularly bad this year, with a number of elephants, and some beautiful big tuskers, being poached for their ivory now that ivory is commanding such high prices. With the poachers now earning as much as a US$ 100 a kilo from the Middle Men, when just a couple of years ago the price was US$ 10 a kilo. If Africa’s elephants are to be saved the demand for ivory has to be eliminated within its far eastern destinations, and only will a total ban on the sale of all ivory and ivory products, whether legal or illegal, will stem the slaughter. Impoverished communities living alongside National Parks cannot resist temptation of this nature. And so Emsaya’s mother more than likely met this fate, killed so that her tusks could be calved into a decorative ornament, or hanko. If it were not for the people that spotted her, and reported her fate, and for both the KWS and David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust teams that helped save her, she too would have been the ivory demand’s collateral damage. Poaching ravages elephant society. It is never just the poached elephant, but the dependent young that die too, and the whole herd is torn apart and irreplaceable wisdom lost as matriarchs fall, those with the understanding and vital knowledge of how to guide their families through the harsh dry seasons that grip this area almost annually, with the knowledge of where vital water sources lie, where safe migratory passages are, all that crucial wisdom goes with them. The beautiful big breeding bulls whose guidance and discipline is so vital for the younger male generations growing up in their wake, their demise is immeasurable too.