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AMBOSELI ELEPHANT RESEARCH PROJECTReport for December 1, 2000 to January 21, 2001
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General
NewsChristmas in Amboseli was green, which meant it was a good Christmas for the elephants and the project. I was in Amboseli December 23-29 and again from January 4-10 and was out every day enjoying being with elephants that were stuffing their faces with huge clumps of green grass or taking the time to socialize now that their bellies were full and there was little danger. Families came together in large aggregations of 100-200 and the calves had great games with new and old play partners. Musth bulls started turning up at the end of the month hoping some females would come into oestrus. They still had a bit of a wait. It takes a month or two for the females to recover from a drought and to get into good enough condition for reproduction.
With the elephants concentrating in the
Park, the AERP team was able to carry out censuses on some of the families and
bulls we hadn’t seen for a weeks or even months. The drought has taken its toll.
The final figures aren’t in yet, but a number of the calves born in
1999 and 2000 died, at least one old matriarch (Gloria of the GBs) died of old
age aggravated by the drought, another female appeared to have died as a result
of snakebite, two big females, one a matriarch (Vee), disappeared and are
presumed dead, and in the end nine elephants died as a result of spearing (one
male, four females and four calves). Omega,
the injured matriarch whose photo appeared in the October report, plus four
other elephants who were speared, have recovered, most of them thanks to the
ministrations of KWS veterinarian, Dr. A. Sayyid. She did an excellent job of
immobilizing and treating the injured animals.
Beth Archie finished up her field season
in December and returned to Duke University with over 400 elephant dung samples
for DNA analysis. I haven’t heard
anything to the contrary so I assume US Customs wasn’t too horrified. (She did
have the proper papers and permissions in hand.) Beth will be working in the lab
for the next several months and will return to Amboseli later in the year.
In the meantime, we had fantastic news from Susan Alberts, Beth’s
supervisor and principal investigator on the DNA project.
She and Beth received a very prestigious five-year grant from the
National Science Foundation for the elephant work.
Among many good things about getting this grant, the most immediate
benefit is that Susan will be able to purchase a new Suzuki 4x4, which will be
dedicated to the DNA project.
The Suzuki will help with our vehicle
crisis, but we still don’t have a good, reliable vehicle in Amboseli.
However, things may be looking up. My
old Land Rover is back on the road, the old Toyota Landcruiser is more or less
ready to be sold, a Land Rover I ordered for the project through AWF 13 months
ago and has been “lost” may actually appear in the next two or three months,
and the fund for a new Land Rover is building up.
We have $26,500 and need another $16,500 so donations would still be
appreciated.
In
the meantime, on January 17th I bought a 1991 Pajero, which
miraculously and truly had only 43,000 kilometres on the clock.
It was owned by a woman who had two other cars and barely used it.
This vehicle will be based in Nairobi for the Amboseli Trust for
Elephants office, but it is a good, sturdy four-wheel drive, which can go back
and forth to Amboseli and can be used in the bush.
If necessary, it will spend the next few months in Amboseli until we get
our proposed new Land Rover.
Norah Njiraini, AERP’s Training
Coordinator, conducted a training course from January 8-16 for three students:
Dolmia Ndikibaye from Chad, Alfred Kikoti from Tanzania, and Patrick Ogola from
Kenya. This program teaches
elephant researchers from all over Africa how to study elephants.
Others who participated in the training were: myself who spent the 8th
and 9th with the students giving lectures and holding discussions;
Philip Muruthi from AWF; Jonathan Lekanayia, our Maasai outreach officer; Soila
Sayialel, AERP’s project manager; and Katito Sayialel, research assistant.
Each spent at least a day with the students covering a variety of topics.
Left
to right: Alfred Kikoti, Norah Njiraini, Dolmia Ndikibaye & Patrick Ogola
Alfred is studying the elephants across the border in Tanzania in the Longido area, which makes us very happy because many if not most of these elephants are also from Amboseli. With someone on the ground there, we will know much more about the movements of the population. Patrick is about to start a study of the elephants in Meru National Park in Kenya. There are only about 300 remaining there after the severe poaching in the 80s. His presence will not only provide information but will also be a deterrent to further poaching. Dolmia is the first student we’ve had from French speaking Africa. Luckily, he spoke very good English. The former Director of Wildlife in Chad, he has temporarily left his position to pursue a Ph.D. He will be carrying out research on a population of 2000 elephants in one of Chad’s national parks.
The Born Free Foundation held an auction at their annual fund raising ball to name Echo’s new calf. The actor Martin Clunes won the bid and named the calf Emily after his daughter. Since there had been an Emily in the EB family who died, I decided to use her middle name as well, thus EmilyKate for the records, but Emily for short. While I was in Amboseli I spent some time trying to find and photograph Emily for Martin. The following is the report I sent to Born Free on January 11:
I just came up from Amboseli yesterday feeling lucky to
have found Echo's family while I was there. We suddenly seem to be having a
whole new rainy season. It's been
raining for nearly a week in Amboseli as well as the rest of Kenya, which is
good news, but the rain always makes it harder to fine the elephants.
They tend to leave the Park on wet season migrations. Echo is usually a
homebody but she also moves around more during the rains, so it was fortuitous
that I came upon the EBs close to the Ol Tukai woodlands on the morning of
January 5.
Now that the EBs are such a large group, with a
membership of 25, it takes quite some time to carry out a census.
I started going through the family, first identifying each adult female
and then finding and identifying each of her calves.
This was all going along fairly well except for Echo.
She was off to one side and her calves weren't immediately with her. I found Eliot, Ely and Ebony but there was no sign of
EmilyKate. I found a little group
of calves playing and it was impossible to figure out who belonged to whom.
I waited hoping they would return to their mothers.
At various points one or two would go off to their mothers for a suckle
or to feed on vegetation near her. Echo
remained with some older animals. After
a half hour I started to seriously worry about Emily thinking she might have
died. Finally after 45 minutes a
small calf wandered nonchalantly over to Echo, suckled for about two minutes and
then immediately went back to mix with the other calves. Without a doubt Emily is the most independent calf I have
ever known. She even beats her
older sister Ebony who was and still is very outgoing.
Also
like Ebony, Emily (center in the photo) loves to play and seems to initiate many
of the games among the calves.
Good progress has been made on setting
up the new organization which will administer AERP. The transition from AWF to ATE should be complete by
the end of March. ATE is
registered, has a bank account, an office (photo right) and a vehicle (the
Pajero described above). The office was ready for occupancy the first week of
January. Betsy Swart, who is
working part-time for the Amboseli Trust for Elephants (AERP) in
Washington,
D.C. came out on December 29th for two weeks to help me set up the
office and to get a better understanding of how AERP and ATE will work.
The direct link between the
US-based AERP, the Nairobi-based ATE, and the Amboseli-based AERP means, despite
the different names, that the project is under one umbrella.
I am very pleased with the way things are going and I believe that with
the new organization I will be able to be much more effective both as the
Director of AERP and as an advocate for elephants.
January 22, 2001
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