Dzanga Forest Elephants

Category: Elephants, Forest | Date: Jun 21 2008 | By: dzangaforestelephants

We are still experiencing a period of calm in the area with our daily observations of elephant numbering between 70 and 100 elephants. Around camp which is located two kilometers from the clearing we have heard no gunshots so the area is safe for the moment. Three days ago however I saw two leopard skins that had been confiscated by park guards along with a massive amount of bush meat. The trove had been confiscated in the area north of the clearing which is infiltrated by poachers from a village notorious for illegal activity. One wonders how long such a level of poaching can be sustained for the smaller game.

We are also seeing a lot of musth amongst the younger bulls of the population. During the last three weeks we have seen three younger bulls in musth as well as three of the older well known bulls also in musth, Menelaus, Moses, and Malcolm. Orlo, a bull I described in an earlier blog, was observed guarding a female although he was not in musth.

Menelaus & Malcolm

Although there has been an abundance of musth observed in the clearing, the only copulation we have witnessed was between an non-musth male and a young female, Matoma III. Below is a photo of the mating. To the right is Matoma III’s mother, Matoma I and the younger sister of Matoma III, Matoma IV. The male was not guarding Matoma III but chased her around the bai and mated with her once he caught up with her. Matoma I and IV vocalized during the act and I could only interpret their sounds as ones of protest. This is usually the reaction of the other elephants during a mating, a chorus of vocalizations which start during the copulation and continue well after its completion. A lot of nervous energy in the air. This mating lasted less than a minute and then the male wandered off. Matoma III was observed on subsequent days in the clearing but attracted no other males.

Matoma III Mating

During a musth guard of a female there is far more romance than the scene depicted above. Musth males guarding females protect her from the younger randy males and allow her access to favored mineral sites in the bai. There is a rhythm to the scene and the younger and less dominant males skirt the edges of the clearing keeping close tabs on the courting couple. This guard usually last about 2-3 days when there are several copulations.

We should be well into a rainy period but since the end of May the rains have been scant which is unusual for this period of the year. There is cloud build up, thunder and lightning but very little rain. The surface of the clearing is dry and the elephants are still able to excavate holes for the extraction of minerals, an unusal sight for the month of June.

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Category: Elephants, Forest | Date: Jun 12 2008 | By: dzangaforestelephants

First of all I’d like to thank Melissa for her generous donation which will help us continue the work here at Dzanga. Thanks Melissa mille fois. These donations will help us defray the everyday expenses and give us time to devote to work.

The situation at the Dzanga Clearing for the past week has been a calm peaceful time for the forest elephants. Numbers have been well over one hundred during the daylight hours. Despite the peacefulness we are still maintaining our vigilance of the area. The poachers for the moment are not working in the immediate area around Dzanga but their presence is not far from the site. On my return from Bangui last weekend we drove through one of the villages which is notorious for poaching activity and sitting outside his house was one of the worst poachers in the region. He was making no secret of his presence and had recently returned home after laying low during the military operation against poachers. I can only think that he is well protected by some of those in power. This is perhaps one of the most discouraging parts of working here, that despite the effort there are always those untouchables that will always remain outside the law.

Back to a more positive note. Today the big bongo group was back and there were close to 30 bongos in the middle of the clearing where they spent the afternoon. There was a notable lack of adult males which we had seen on previous occasions a few weeks ago so the mating season is over. The only other species besides bongo were the sitatunga who are seen everyday in the bai. The individuals we observed were mostly female and their young with one impressive male amongst them. One of the younger males we observe we have known since he was born. The sexual dimorphism between the males and females is striking, the females being a brilliant orange and males a chocolate brown. It has only been in the last couple of years when we have been seeing adult males on a regular basis, before that it was rare to see adult males in the clearing.

Male Sitatungas

The spathe of new elephant newborns are doing well, learning the ways of the clearing. Tess III’s newborn planted himself in front of the observation platform the other day and amuse us with his antics. He spent much of the afternoon with Teddy a juvenile male and also a member of the same family group. There was much touching and exploring. Yesterday the calf got into a pushing match with another young calf a bit bigger than himself but this didn’t deter him from continuing his childlike aggression. Knowing these individuals and watching them grow over the years has never ceased to amaze me. So many of them who are now adults we have known since they were born. We wonder however how the future bodes for the newest generation.

Tess III’s Newborn

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Category: Elephants, Forest | Date: Jun 03 2008 | By: dzangaforestelephants

For those of us who are privileged enough to know a population of elephants, the first outstanding impression is how human they are. This is their most endearing quality. Family groups remain in close contact with each other, using vocalizations and when in proximity are very tactile. Knowing the individuals sets a stage for a continuing story and that is what really motivates those of us at sites where we can identify and observed the same individuals for long periods of time.

Forest elephants that I have observed are not particularly aggressive. In all the time I have spent here it has been rare to see a sustained fight between bulls. Forest bulls may face off but it is always momentarily with one eventually running off. Occasionally they may fight but it lasts no longer than a minute, unlike the battles between savannah bulls. Within the Dzanga population there are some definite personalities whose behavior one can predict after observing them at close range. One of the most predictable individuals is a young bull, called Orlo. We first identified him in September of 2005 and he makes his appearance at the clearing during the wetter months of the year. What makes Orlo unique is that he is one of a few bulls who is really aggressive and on any day we see him he inevitably attacks younger and smaller elephants. Other males are generally unaggressive toward calves and females but Orlo not only chases other elephants who are smaller than him but pushes and pokes them with his tusks. When this happens the other elephants in his vicinity move out of his way nervously and vocalize.

Orlo

A few days ago Orlo entered the bai with an adult female and her two calves and she appeared to be in estrous because Orlo did not leave her side and followed her wherever she went. He was not in musth and for the time that we have known him we have never seen him in musth. We thought the situation would change when Moses entered from the south and approached the favorite mineral hole. Moses who was in full musth didn’t detect the female in estrous and was more preoccupied with the mineral hole than any of the females in the clearing. When we left the clearing Orlo was still guarding the female.

One can only guess why Orlo tends to be aggressive toward other elephants who appear never to be posing a threat to him. Perhaps he was orphaned at a young age and was never properly disciplined by his mother or maybe he witnessed the poaching of his mother which resulted in such unique behavior. In the forest we do all our work on foot and Orlo is one of the elephants we would never want to meet on the path.

Orlo attacks pregnant female

Orlo attacks juvenile female

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Category: Elephants, Forest | Date: Jun 01 2008 | By: dzangaforestelephants

Protecting forest elephants is a much more difficult task than protecting Savannah elephants. The forest is thick and seeing the wildlife as well as locating the poachers is labor intensive. All the patrols here in the forests of Central Africa are done on foot, therefore covering only a small part of the protected areas. So despite enormous effort expended on anti poaching patrols the poachers always have the advantage where the vegetation covers everything. Flying over the forests presents a view of a vast sea of what looks like broccoli with the tree canopy covering everything, affording no glimpse into what is happening on the forest floor. Even if poachers are camped there within even sighting smoke from their camp fires is impossible. So the best tool in locating poachers is information from trusted sources. Guards have a difficult job not only in terms of their actual work but face harassment in the community where they are seen as a threat to many people’s livelihoods. In an area where employment is rife it is a job someone accepts for the money and not on the principle or interest of conserving wildlife. This is a harsh economic reality.

Park Guards

Hunting here is done for several species and includes several methods. The most widely hunted animal is duiker, a small forest antelope. These reproduce very quickly and are the most common animal for sale. They are generally caught using wire cable set on game paths in the forest. Another way of hunting them is at night with a gun. The local Bayaka people hunt them using two methods. The first is to call them by imitating their distress call which is a high, nasal whine. Various animals are attracted to this call and as they approach the animals can be speared or shot depending on the resources of the hunter. Perhaps the most exciting hunt of all is the net hunt with the Bayaka when everyone participates. The nets are made by hand using a forest vine from which twine is made, and then fashioned into a net. Several hunters string their nets together in a line or semi-circle and then beat the ground with branches and noise driving the animals into the net where they are trapped. Then the animals are killed by using a machete or stick. This all sounds cruel but of all the methods this is the most sustainable one and provides a good source of protein for forest people.

There are many arms used in poaching elephants and until about a decade ago only shot-guns, high caliber rifles, and home made guns were used here. Now we are seeing more and more Kalashnikovs or AK-47s. These are automatic weapons invented by a gentleman of the same name, Kalashnikov. They are responsible for so much suffering in the world being found in every war and civil conflict in the world. Poachers have found them to also be an effective weapon against animals especially bigger animals because it takes little skill with an AK-47. The Chinese also produced the same model of gun which is more widespread than the AK-47 and is cheaper which doesn’t bode well for the people and animals of this planet. With a couple of AK-47s one with a little skill can kill an elephant group in a few minutes. The sound of this gun in the forest from a distance sounds like a train coming at you. It reverberation fills the forest.

AK 47s or Kalashnikov

People here are very resourceful and if you don’t have the money to purchase a gun there are ways of making crude, rudimentary guns. These are called yalingas in the local language but since they are not precision instruments they often explode maiming the hunter. Another method is to modify ammunition making it more effective. Poachers take a 12 gauge shotgun shell removing all the shot and then melt the pellets to form a single piece of lead whose point is sharpened. This single piece of lead is put back into the shell casing. This is also dangerous and can cause a gun to explode in the hands of the hunter. These are used often in elephant poaching. Often they don’t kill the elephant but leave a huge hole in the animal. On several occasions we have seen wounded animals with sizable holes in their heads from these modified shells. My many years in Africa have been a continual lesson in the resourcefulness of people some of it positive but much of it negative.

Modified Shot Gun Shells

The Central African Republic until the 1980’s had thousands of elephants both forest and savannah species. This all changed with civil wars in both Chad and the Sudan which border the CAR on its northern borders. With wars in both countries there was spill over into CAR and the first casualty was the wildlife. Sudanese horsemen who formerly hunted with spears now had access to automatic weaponry and slaughtered thousands of elephants starting in the 1980’s and the poaching continues today. This area was vast and there was never enough resources for sufficient protection. Today the guns have been turned on the people who flee their villages and become refugees. So what was once a veritable eden has been transformed into hell.

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Category: Elephants | Date: May 28 2008 | By: dzangaforestelephants

Another remarkable day at the clearing, and in a way overwhelming. In the past two weeks we have observed four new calves to previously identified females. Two of the calves were born to older females whom we have known most of the study period of eighteen years. The calf born to Gonya was a male and we first saw them barely twenty-four hours after the calf was born. They entered from the south and the calf was the last to enter with the group and when I saw him I could barely believe his appearance since we had seen Gonya the previous day without him. He floated rather than walked, unsure of his legs but kept up with the group. I had no reservations with Gonya’s capacity as a mother since I had seen her with three previous newborns and they were all still alive.

A few days ago another of the older matriarchs, Dana, entered with a new calf which from out calculations was a few weeks old. We had seen other members of her group but she had been absent from the group during the last few weeks. The other two new calves were to first time mothers, Cybele II and Tess III, whom I mentioned in a previous blog. It is always a miracle to me that new calves appear, it’s magical to see a calf to a female one knows for the first time in the clearing. I can only imagine what the calf is feeling, perhaps an immense sense of confusion with everyone else being so much bigger. I am afraid that infant mortality in the clearing is because of the number of elephants and a calf can easily be trampled especially when a mother lacks the necessary experience to keep a calf out of harm’s way.

Dana and her new calf

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Category: Elephants | Date: May 28 2008 | By: dzangaforestelephants

Many of us in the elephant world received the devastating news this week of the death of Hezy Shoshani. Hezy was killed in Addis Ababa as he returned from work at the university where he had been teaching for the last one and a half years. For Hezy elephants had been a life long obsession and he knew more about their physiology and anatomy than anyone.

He was a rare individual whose curiosity and enthusiasm were infectious and after one encounter with him, he remained at the forefront of my memory. Not only those who knew Hezy feel a tremendous loss but the elephants of the planet have lost a true ally. My sincere condolences to Sandra Shoshani, his widow.

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Category: Elephants | Date: May 23 2008 | By: dzangaforestelephants

The military operation to rout out elephant poaching in the Dzanga area continues with the hope today of apprehending one of the worst elephant poachers in the region. So we are all anxiously awaiting the news about today’s anti poaching activities.The current mission which will soon end targeted elephant poachers when the situation here worsened. The news I am getting from other elephant sites in the Central African region is that the poaching is on the upsurge throughout the area. So unless there is sufficient protection and law enforcement, the future for these animals is dire. As I have mentioned in past blogs positive human presence is the most effective tool in protecting wildlife and that includes not only guard patrols but also research presence and tourism.

With the operation in motion the clearing has been very calm and numbers of elephant reaching over 100 yesterday afternoon. There was also more than 30 bongo observed accompanied by a large male. Rain which normally discourages large numbers of elephant frequenting the clearing has not deterred their appearance. Among the elephants there were several females I hadn’t seen in a couple of years, including a female called Cleo who I last observed at Dzanga in 1998.

The past week we have also observed a number of musth males. The first to be observed was Tim who has appeared several times during the week and was once observed with a female, Vicky III who already has two calves. Another big impressive male in musth was Freddy who on two consecutive days was seen guarding Bogota who is a female from a well known group. Yesterday Bogota appeared but Freddy was gone. Mafouz has also been in musth but not observed guarding a female. Musth provides much excitement in the clearing in terms of vocalizations. Females when approached by musth males tend to vocalize in an excited manner so the past week has been full of such episodes. So despite the increased poaching pressure there is reproductive success.

With the rains there is also lots of mud bathing by the elephants in the clearing who spend lots of time wallowing along the edges of the bai resulting in various colored elephants.The most common color is bright yellow which is the color of the clay in the clearing. Closeby in the forest there is another wallow which is a rich red in color. This is the rarer color and when a red elephant appears it is distinct and immediately noticed. Below is Finean bathed in red.

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Category: Elephants | Date: May 06 2008 | By: admin

Thanks to all of you for taking the time to not only read the blog but take the time to comment on the situation.

Poaching wherever it takes place is a complicated situation and is normally fueled not always by corruption but also poverty.  Elephant poaching in this part of the world is practiced by those who can afford the arms and ammunition and who are also protected from prosecution.  So it is not a matter of poor people hunting for self-sustainance.  There are well organized gangs of people who are under the thumb of one person hired by a local officials to hunt.  These criminal gangs are well protected and even when they are arrested they are only sent away for a couple of weeks or months before returning to the area to pick up where they left off.  There appears to be this tacit agreement that if the poacher keeps his mouth shut he will eventually be back at work in a short time.  I would also add that this is much the case in all of Central Africa where the forest elephants are being hunted full-time.

How do we work against this corruption ?  That is the perhaps the most difficult part.  Corruption runs deep and the more I learn about it the more I am frustrated and the most frustrating part is that most of the people here know about the system and how it works.  They accept it as the status quo, it always having been the situation and they know no other.  They also know as I have learned after more than two decades on the ground that it is virtually impossible to change the situation.  The only way I can deal with it is on a day to day basis and try to find some positive side of my experience.

In the end unless the corruption is dealt with Africa is doomed from an economic as well as social point of view.  The majority of people here deserve better because the majority of them are concerned with educating and feeding themselves but with the quality of leadership that now exists that is impossible.

I heard the news this morning on the BBC about the UN flying a helicopter into Virunga National Park and trading munition for ivory.  If this is true then it is another indication of how difficult the problem is and if there is corruption at that level one can only imagine how deep it goes.

A friend of mine said something very striking yesterday.  We were talking about the corruption and how it a form of adaptation, an adaptation of survival.  In other words in an environment where corruption is rife the only way to survive is also to be corrupt.

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Category: Elephants | Date: May 06 2008 | By: admin

Another amazing experience in the forest. Guards came to camp the other day alerting me about an elephant carcass they found at the edge of the river just below the camp. All I could think of was more poaching. I hurried to have a look and there in the middle of the path at the water’s edge was an elephant which I estimated to be less than 15 months old. Its tusks had not yet emerged and in forest elephants tusks usually are visible after they are 18 months old. It was in good condition and it puzzled me as to what could have killed it. I then heard trumpeting and looked up river and saw what was probably its mother and an older sibling coming towards us. The mother was obviously upset at the death and this also explained why we had heard so many vocalizations the previous night. From my calculation the calf had died the day before between 17:00 and 23:00 so we could exclude poaching since we had heard no gunshots. Now with the mother bearing down on us,we backed off from the carcass and the guards continued on a patrol of the area.

No we had to figure a way to get the carcass out of the way since it was right in the middle of the path where tourists walked to the clearing. I thought with the number of people we had near by. If we could move the carcass a couple of meters into the river it would most likely float. The next morning we went to the river with about 10 people which included the local guard patrol and people from my camp. Because it had rained and the water level was up it was easy to move the elephant. As we turned the body over we saw that there were wound marks and they were in pairs so this explained how it was killed. It looked like a buffalo had gored the elephant calf twice leaving considerble puncture wounds. After it was wounded the calf had walked and probably bled considerably before collapsing and dying on the path.

So we pushed and heaved and finally the elephant was in about a meter of water and floated. Rather than leave it to its own devices we guided the elephant a couple of hundred feet where it was in the midst of the current and then allowed the river to gently take it away. It was a sad farewell as we stood and watched it disappear in a bend in the river.

In the bai we frequently see small elephant calves challenging buffalo. In most instances the buffalo back off but in this case the buffalo charged and the calf paid with its life.

Patrolling 

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Category: Elephants | Date: May 05 2008 | By: admin

Another incident at Dzanga on the night of April 18th.  We heard the sound of gunshot again at about 18:30 and from the sound we knew it to be an AK47.  This is the strategy where here the sun sets at 18:00 and the poachers act knowing that guard patrols will not to risk the danger of trying to find the poachers and shooting in the dark.  The local guard patrol was dispatched immediately to the clearing and upon their return a few hours later they said that they could hear the poachers chopping away at the elephant in order to quickly remove the tusks.

The next day we went to the clearing and found the dead elephant at edge of the clearing where he had collapsed after being shot. He was a young male and was most likely shot in the clearing and then dashed about 50 meters before falling.  Yesterday the odor of the rotting corpse permeated the clearing and was a grim reminder of the poaching.  In the clearing however we were surprised to see about 30 elephants who although cautious remained in the clearing for the afternoon.  Among the elephants was Rachid, an impressive one tusker, who was in musth and trying to guard Juno.  Juno was skirting his advances and they made several passes in and out of the bai. The sexuality was infectious because another younger bull tried to copulate with a young female which resulted in a frenzy of vocalizations from the other elephants in the bai.

Later in the afternoon another bull arrived in musth. I had seen him a week ago when he came to the clearing and wasn’t able to identify him for lack of time.  This time I could clearly see and sketch his ears and identified him as Clyde. He headed for the same hole he occupied last week and didn’t pick up on the Juno being in estrous.

Since the last poaching incident the elephants have remained calm and their numbers have increased despite the constant danger.  Yesterday we observed 80 elephants in the clearing as well as bongo, buffalo, sitatunga and hylochere (Giant forest hog)  who have been scavenging on the most recent elephant carcass.

I think what amazes me about Dzanga is how unforgiving these elephants can be or it may be more sinister, perhaps Dzanga is the safest place for them in the area and they have few choices about where to go.

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