Archive for the ‘Elephants’ Category
Rangers went out in the “pirogue” last week with a couple of the visitors. They saw a lone elephant. You can see the grass is still green - we will start heading into dry season soon and the grass will lose its color and go yellow-ish. Dry season is from December to April, but we notice this is changing. Climate change? It is something we read about a lot.
This is the same lone elephant. We have not seen large herds of elephants for a few days. I think they are wandering further. This is good news because it means the elephants feel safer to start roaming the park more and more. Before they were always scared, but now it seems they are venturing further. I will try my best to keep them safe.
I took these photos the other day. This is the first time I have ever seen such a large group of elephants in Ishango. There were 26 of them. This gave me a lot of hope that by protecting the elephants their numbers will increase, despite the poaching problems.
These elephants were just a few hundred meters from the patrol post.
I took this with the zoom.
And you can see the babies.
And then I saw Vita again, the elephant called War. He is a loner and would never hang out in such a big group.
One of the elephants at Ishango is called Vita, which is Swahili for War. He is the second elephant, to the right of the picture. He is missing half of his left tusk, and also with the binoculars we can see that his eye has been permanently damaged and is almost completely closed.
It is difficult to determine where these injuries have come from, but I would guess from Vita’s behaviour that he has been attacked by a poacher. These two always stay close to the station here at Ishango, maybe because they feel safer here, however even though they know we are always nearby if you are unlucky to find yourself near Vita he will charge you. He is incredibly aggressive towards humans, much more than is normal, and it is because of this behaviour that I am certain he has been attacked by a poacher. It is very sad to see the affect that these types of attacks can have on the elephants. It is why we have called him Vita, because he forever carries the memory of the battle he has fought with man. This war will always continue as long as there is a demand for ivory, and it broke my heart when I discovered on the internet how active and open the ivory trade now is. A couple of months ago the BBC published an article stating that the US was a heavy importer of ivory goods, and it went on to say that a website company called Ebay was partly responsible for these movements. I didn’t know what Ebay was until I read this article, but after Will explained it to me we had a look at the site, and more importantly we had a look for ivory products. There were hundreds of items, and we even found whole tusks. Included in the description of the tusk someone had written the following: “Is this Tusk From Kenya: Who knows and who cares. Whether these were from Kenya, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia or from an Elephant in the San Diego Zoo - it’s an Elephant Ivory Tusk. And, they’re legal. (period!)” Unfortunately it is legal to own and sell an ivory tusk within the US according to USA and international law, and so this tusk being sold from Florida was perfectly legal, despite its unknown origins. However although the international trade in ivory was banned by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in 1989, it is clear that this is openly being ignored by many people as we found ivory items for sale on Ebay which were offering shipping to other countries. We found ivory items coming from countries such as China, Italy, Germany, Canada, Uruguay, Switzerland, Belgium and the UK. We even found this pair of tusks being sold from Thailand to the US.
It’s quite hard to believe how open this market now is, even after Ebay promised it was tightening its policy on ivory sales and that the ban on international trade in elephant ivory would come into effect by the end of June.
It seems that Vita is right to stay angry.
Monuc Observers regularly visit Ishango to check on the security here, and on one of their last visits we profited from a trip in the pirogue to survey the surrounding area.
We were not the only ones to be enjoying our time in the lake, as a group of six elephants were also passing their time in the cool waters.
And two of the elephants decided to enjoy themselves even further.
It’s the first time I’ve seen this type of behaviour in the water, and they completed the act for a total of three times.
Only a couple of weeks ago did we find this trap for elephants.
Although small it can be deadly. A cut tyre with nails pushed through, the trap is placed on known elephant routes. When stepped on it causes the elephant pain and will slow down his walking pace. This leaves him vulnerable to attack and, walking injured, he can be brought down by poachers armed only with lances. With elephant poachers in the area we have cause to be vigilant, and my heart sank last week when rangers from Museya, in the Ishango sector, found an elephant carcass. The bones were left clean, nothing else left, and from this we deduced that it had been killed about six weeks earlier. We do have a suspect, but I cannot say any more for now.
Great news to tell you all today, and maybe some bad too. Just the other morning we saw 10 elephants at once in the Semliki River here at Ishango. Along with the Ishango Two, who were in the bush next to the river, we spotted a further seven in the distance and another lone elephant to the far left of the picture below.
I took some more photos of the seven in the distance but the zoom on my camera is not so great.
Here is the lone elephant, I’m not sure but I think he might be the third elephant who occasionally visits the Ishango Two.
It is very rare for us to see so many elephants here all at one time, and it is certainly something I hope to see more of in the future. Just briefly, the bad news is that there are rebels once more in the area. I already have a good idea of where and who they are, but I need to check once more with sources before I release details on this blog.
Most afternoons there are two elephants which visit the Semliki River at Ishango. They make their way through the vegetation before traversing the river through the shallows. Today, they were joined by a third elephant, who met them in the middle of the Semliki, which you can see in the video below. I’m sorry that the light is not so good, and neither is there any sound, but the video on my camera is very basic. There was a greeting between the third elephant and the Ishango Two.
And then the third elephant left and made his way to the water’s edge. Except, rather than heading towards the river edge closest to where he was, he diverted to where the hippos were bathing. In the video below you can just make out the elephant chasing away a hippo, which quickly exits the river leaving large ripples in his wake. Leaving the Ishango Two looking on.
I have yet to see these two chase the hippos. Maybe they don’t need to prove their position within the Ishango hierarchy.
Most afternoons, once the sun has lost its intense heat, a small group of elephants come to the river’s edge near the Ishango Station. Today just two of the group came and I took a moment to watch their movements.
They pushed their way through the vegetation, taking pause every now and then to take their fill.
And then made their way to the cool waters of the Semliki. <img src=’http://atamato.wildlifedirect.org/files/2007/03/les-elephants-2.jpg’ alt=’les-elephants-2.jpg’ style=”DISPLAY: inline; WIDTH: 470px; HEIGHT: 352px” title=”Les Elephants 2.jpg” It’s great to see the animals return to the area after the war, and only recently have we also seen lions come back to Ishango. The next time I see them I will hopefully have my camera with me so I can show you too.
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