Dzanga Forest Elephants

Category: Elephants | Date: Apr 23 2008 | By: admin

I apologize for the lack of recent blogs and will try my best to keep these posts coming. There has been a recent rash of poaching near the Dzanga Clearing and we are trying our best to be vigilant and report any suspicious activity. I was away for a few weeks in Europe and the USA for professional and medical reasons. In my absence there was a young male elephant killed near the northern end of the clearing.

No one heard gun shots which means the elephant was either killed in the middle of the night or during a storm. One of the research assistants who goes to the clearing every day started to smell the unmistakable odor of an elephant carcass. Despite the rain he and one of the trackers went in search and found it in the forest at the edge of the clearing. The front of the head had been hacked off and the tusks taken with the meat left to rot. With the poaching the elephant numbers in the clearing dropped dramatically.

Just after my return on Easter I had been to the bai for the afternoon where the numbers has resumed normal levels. At about 18:20 ( 6:20 PM) I hear what at first I thought was tree starting to fall but the sound continued and I then knew it was the sound of an AK47 or Kalashnikov. I counted the number of shots and there were about twenty in all and the sound was coming from the direction of the clearing which is located about 2 kilometers from the camp. There were two guards nearby but between them there was only one arm, also an AK47. So I grabbed the truck keys and drove immediately to the village in search of more guards. I have never driven the rutted road so fast and made the 12 kilometers in about 20 minutes.

I found Cyril Pelissier, the technical advisor for anti-poaching for the Dzanga-Sangha Project and he found more guards and we drove back to camp. Then he and the guards went off in the night to the bai, courageous to say the least given the elephant density in this area. They arrived at the bai but were unable to see anything but they did hear elephant activity in the bai, however once the sun appeared in the early morning hours they saw the carcass at the northern end of the bai, it was also a male, a medium adult.

I awoke in the early daylight hours and thought immediately about yesterday’s incident and readied to go to the clearing, fearing the worst. Enroute I encountered the guards and Cyril on the trail and they told me what they had found. I continued to the clearing and they returned to camp to do radio with the project. Upon arriving at the clearing there were no elephants present, just the carcass in the open at the northern end of the bai. We walked toward it and saw that the tusks had been removed with the front of the head chopped away. My only question was did I know this individual ? The only way to determine this was to examine the ears to see if there was any pattern I would recognize. The elephant was lying on his left side so the only ear to look at was the right one. The right ear was marked and I photographed it and let the details set in. Then I realized that I knew him and that he had been present a day before. His name was Winky and I had first identified him in 1991. He was one of those bulls who came to the bai on a regular basis and was never one of the dominant players. He also had a very distinct posture and gait and without binoculars he was easily identifiable at 100 yards. Now he lay in front of me quickly becoming a memory.

This for me is forest elephant reality. In this area of the world poaching is escalating and we are up against a formidable enemy which rears its ugly head in the form of corruption, greed, and poverty. The solutions are few and the political will isn’t there to even give us hope for the survival of these animals but we continue to work to perhaps insure a meager future for the wildlife.

The past few days at the clearing have lifted my spirits but I have no allusions. Yesterday there were more than 90 elephants including a few bulls and newborns. Most of them however are oblivious to the Easter event and come to the clearing with no fear. A few of the elephants approached the slowly disappearing carcass. They approach, extend their trunks and then back off as if they know all is not right.

Tags: 1059, 1060, 311, 82

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