The Kenya Wildlife Service will relocate 400 elephants to Kenya’s largest national park, from a smaller national reserve in the country’s south-east that has too many elephants, a spokesperson said on Monday.
The $3,2-million exercise will begin on Thursday and involve transporting elephants more than 350km to the northern part of Tsavo East National Park, from Shimba Hills National Reserve, said Edward Indakwa, a corporate communications officer with the Kenya Wildlife Service.
Indakwa said in a statement that the government is funding the relocation project.
The first 50 elephants, comprising six families, will be moved within 10 to 12 days, Indakwa said. Officials will then wait to see how they fare in their new environment before moving the rest, he said.
”With a current elephant population of 600, the national reserve is choking. The elephants destroy the habitat, break park fences and cause mayhem and destruction in villages surrounding the park,” said Indakwa.
He said the organisation’s researchers estimate that the Shimba Hills National Reserve can only hold 200 elephants, while Tsavo East National Park has 10 397 elephants, down from a peak of 25 268 in 1972.
Tsavo East suffered its heaviest loss of elephants during the 1980s and early 1990s when poachers decimated Kenya’s pachyderms to supply an insatiable ivory market.
Poaching has since subsided, helped by a 1989 global ban on the ivory trade that has seen prices drop and a more autonomous wildlife authority.
Kenya Wildlife Service director Julius Kipng’etich said in the statement that his organisation has increased security in the area where the elephants will be relocated.
”We deployed 83 young ranger recruits to Tsavo East last month … If the poachers come, they will find us ready,” Kipng’etich said.
He said there will also be regular aerial patrols.
Kipng’etich also said that the Kenya Wildlife Service has taken steps to reduce the possibility of elephants damaging nearby farms, a constant threat facing wildlife authorities as Kenya’s population grows and more people move to once-empty land to farm, at times close to national parks.
”We have also radio-collared six matriarchs … and will be monitoring their movements using geographical positioning systems so that our rangers can drive them away before they reach private farms,” Kipng’etich said. ”We want to be pro-active in our management of problem elephants.” — Sapa-AP