The Kenyan Wildlife Service (KWS) on Wednesday suspended the relocation of elephants from an overcrowded coastal reserve to a more spacious park in order to monitor their resettlement and avoid bad weather, officials said.
The operation, which began in August to move 400 animals from Shimba Hills National Reserve to Tsavo East National Park, about 140km away, will resume in three months’ time, said KWS spokesperson Connie Maina.
”We have translocated 150 elephants but we had to suspend the operation because we had to concentrate on monitoring their resettlement in northern part of the new park,” Maina said.
”In the relocation process, five elephants died,” she added.
The $3,2-million government-funded move has been billed by the KWS as ”the single largest translocation of animals ever undertaken since Noah’s ark”.
In addition, the suspension was necessitated by the short rainy season that is expected soon and could pose logistical problems, according to KWS elephant programme coordinator Patrick Omondi.
KWS trucks will pass the Shimba hills terrain during the rainy season, which is expected in the coming weeks, he added.
The relocated elephants comprise ”32 different family units and 20 independent bulls. The bulls had been identified of straying out of the community area,” Omondi said.
”When the short rains come, we will not be able to work in the reserve, so we had to suspend the relocation,” Maina said.
The operation is aimed at reducing the elephant population from the 192-square-kilometre Shimba Hills reserve to the larger Tsavo East, where their population was decimated by poachers in 1970s and 80s.
Compared to the failure to relocate the elephants in July last year, Omondi described the relocation’s success as historic.
”This is history to us. It is history to the world and we are proud of it,” he said.
Before the relocation, Shimba Hills was home to about 600 elephants but can accommodate at most 200.
”We hope that when the operation resumes in January, we shall be able to move at least 30 elephants a day — from the current at least 10 a day — because we are planning to get better equipment and we can work on our previous flaws,” Maina added.
”But for now, we see this as a huge success because we have handled the largest translocation in history without the help from outside and we only managed to lose five elephants,” she added.
At the northern belt of Tsavo East, the KWS has deployed three aircraft and several rangers to monitor the new lifestyle of the translocated jumbos, which have been fitted with global positioning system collars to assist in tracking.
”We have to ensure they are comfortable, [and have] enough food and security. We also have to ensure that they do not pose a fresh problem in the human-wildlife conflict while in the new habitat,” she added.
Early this month, the KWS said it was planning to move hundreds of jumbos from wild Laikipia, about 130km north of Nairobi, where there are about 3 200, to reserves around the country as part of larger plans to reduce conflict between humans and wildlife.
In March this year, the KWS said the elephant population in the country had jumped by about 10% in the past three years to stand at about 30 000 thanks to a severe clampdown on poaching. — Sapa-AFP