Rescuing a Baby Elephant in Kenya
How USAID’s community conservation model protects wildlife
The bond between mother and baby elephant is one of the strongest in the animal kingdom. A motherless baby elephant does not last long on the African savannah. In their emotionally devastated state, they are vulnerable to predators and unable to care for themselves.
Unfortunately, the rise of poaching in Kenya during the COVID-19 pandemic means there are likely to be more motherless elephants looking for comfort and shelter as time goes by.
When Big Life rangers in Kilitome conservancy received information last month from community members that a baby elephant was wandering alone in the bush, they knew they had to act quickly. While this case does not appear to be because of poaching, USAID and our partners at Kenya Wildlife Service are working to intensify joint operations to better detect and prevent poaching during the pandemic.
With support from USAID, the conservation non-profit organization Big Life Foundation partners with communities in the Amboseli-Tsavo-Kilimanjaro ecosystem of East Africa to protect wildlife and wildlands for the benefit of all. Kilitome conservancy is part of this ecosystem, which boasts one of the greatest populations of elephants in East Africa.
The greatest danger to Kenya’s remaining elephants are humans. Increased human populations in Kenya are crowding elephants out of their habitats and closing off their migration corridors. In addition, loss of habitat and roaming space leads to human-wildlife conflict and an unhealthy elephant population with too little genetic diversity.
And then there’s poaching. An estimated 10,000 to 15,000 elephants are killed each year. There are only an estimated 350,000 elephants remaining in all of Africa. As demand for products like elephant ivory and rhino horn continues to rise and poaching methods become increasingly sophisticated, wildlife crime threatens the security, economy and biodiversity of East Africa. International networks for poaching, transit, and sale of illegal wildlife products target wildlife populations across borders, creating a complex problem that transcends national boundaries.
Big Life employs hundreds of local Maasai rangers to mitigate human-wildlife conflict. Many of those rangers focus on human-elephant conflict, which is increasingly common as human populations grow and compete for space and resources in wildlife areas. The rangers chase elephants off farms, build crop-protection fences, and keep water supplies safe from damage caused by elephants. In turn, Big Life relies on the community to be the eyes and ears of the savannah and to alert Big Life about wildlife crime, especially poaching.
It is thanks to the local community and their fast action to alert the rangers that this baby elephant’s life was saved. The Big Life rescue operation, which included Kenya Wildlife Service rangers, found the 3-month-old male baby elephant just before nightfall. When the rangers arrived, the calf was weak and scared. Even in his emaciated and confused state, the young elephant playfully charged at them, relieved to make new friends after hours of walking alone not knowing where his mother had gone.
The ranger team called the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, which landed moments later to airlift the baby elephant to its rescue shelter in Tsavo West, Kenya.
Days later, the Big Life rangers received a report of an elephant carcass not far from where the baby elephant was first sighted. As the carcass was a few days old, the ranger team could only assume that the dead elephant was the rescued baby elephant’s mother. Though the death of the mother thankfully does not appear to be caused by poaching, the baby elephant will need a great deal of care, which the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust can provide.
The rescued baby elephant was named ‘Sabuk,’ which means big or large in Maasai. Sabuk’s chance of growing into a large bull and roaming the Amboseli-Tsavo ecosystem one day has increased thanks to the combined efforts of the local community, Big Life, Kenya Wildlife Service, Sheldrick Wildlife, and donors like USAID.
USAID has pioneered community-driven conservation and is supporting local communities, organizations and rangers on their journey to self-reliance to save and protect their iconic animals and landscapes.
About the Authors
John Kasaine is a Monitoring and Evaluation Field Officer at Big Life Foundation, a Kenya-based non-profit organization protecting over 1.6 million acres of wilderness in the Amboseli-Tsavo-Kilimanjaro ecosystem of East Africa. Katie Moulton is a Communications Consultant for the Environment Office at USAID’s Kenya and East Africa mission.
