This is certainly good news to follow up the report posted on 12th February this year by Robert. Around mid-March we organised and led a construction team to Sinya where the slipping and falling of young baby elephants in to the wells was becoming a common occurrence.

After much consultation, we decided to dig trenches around the well edges in order to lay foundations for concrete walls. The concrete walls were to be raised up to 3 feet above the ground enclosing the whole well perimeter where elephants stand to drink. We have tried three designs, depending on the shape of the well and local terrain (the first and fourth image show the completely closed well; image 2, the well with one wall; image 3, two walls).

Baby elephants' feet do not have enough gripping power to keep from sliding on wet ground like those of adult elephants. For this reason baby elephants are the most frequent victims falling into the wells, sadly resulting in the inevitable outcome. The fallen babies are eventually abandoned by the families after the adults try their best but in vain to rescue them.

We hope our well walls will assure that adult elephants will not wet the soil around the wells while drinking from it, reducing the possibility of baby elephants slipping-in. So far, it seems to be working!

You can follow the progress of some of the baby elephants that were previously rescued and taken to the David Sheldrick Trust Elephant Orphanage.

I would like to thank all who were involved in constructing the concrete walls that we hope will be a permanent solution to the problem.

We diverted some money from a US Fish and Wildlife Service Grant to ATE to fund the construction, and Cristina Boelcke, my 'co-contractor' in Nairobi, organised purchasing and transporting materials. Purity Waweru, as ever, provided us with administrative support. The AERP field team who never got tired of cross checking the construction work, and also the staff at our Elephants Research Camp made sure the construction crew had enough to eat. Thanks also to Robert Ntawuasa for good ideas and expert placing and moving the electric fence that protected the concrete wall from damage by elephants at night. I would like also to thank the community of Isinya for being patient and providing labor during the construction.