Tumaren

Yesterday afternoon we received a report from one of our returning walking safari teams that they had passed a dying mother Elephant with one small young.  The guys said that the elephant had appeared like it was sleeping but it was shortly realized that it could not stand up even as it struggled with the fear of approaching humans.  Our team left the mother and young and returned to our camp to report what they had found. We jumped in the car and found this sad scene, the young female nibbling on her mums ear and appearing stressed and worried.

After deciding that the mother had a very short while to live, we decided to take the young Elephant to our camp rather than risk an almost certain death at night by Lion or Hyena.  When we approached the little ele tried to defend her mum which was very heart breaking.

After a bit of a struggle we got the little elephant to the ground tied her feet and covered her eyes with a blanket to reduce stress. We then drove her to our camp where we lodged her in Hassan’s room.

With orphaned baby elephants it is important to reduce stress (as much as humanly possible), retain warmth and keep fluids up.  This is why we had to keep the blanket on our little friend and also why I remained inside her room for long periods of time so that she would become accustomed to us and to realize that we were not going to threaten or kill her. To begin with she would ram me with incredible power into the wall. I learned to use the mattress below to divert her from squashing me completely matador style and then stroke and comfort her so that she knew that i was not going to harm her.

Conclusion of our long night to be told tomorrow as i slept very little last night.  In the course of the evening we decided that our little friend should be named Tumaren.

It is too easy to give animals human attributes, particularly when you have an animal dealing with the death of one of its own.  Yet the following pictures, that were taken over a 24 hour period after a young female elephant’s death, are compelling and leave little doubt that animals mourn.

In the next two shots the mother lies down beside her calf and sleeps for several hours. At this point the young Elephant had been dead for more than 12 hours.

In the past month a number of Elephants in our area have died of a strange, yet undiagnosed (atleast by us) disease.  Our tracker Leshilling Lemanyass says that he has seen this problem with Elephants many times and that he suspects it effects their stomach and digestion.  We have found two sick animals on us both of whom appeared to have trouble passing their manure (legs spread in a prolonged and uncomfortable looking way).  Our guys who work for us as Rangers and as trackers on our safaris have also described skin problems corresponding with this dissease.  If anyone knows anything about this dissease which has been killing many elephants in the greater Laikipia / Samburu area we would love to know the what it is.  These sad pictures are of a young female that we found this morning as it was dying.  Its mother was still guarding it and it was only for a few minutes that we were able to get to her.  We assumed that she was already dead but she was still breathing but with no movement from any other part of her body besides her blinking eyelid. Very sad.

This is an image of the mother and matriarch guarding the body:

Here is the young female:

30 Wilddog at Tumaren yesterday drinking water about our river camp!  I sent the pictures to the Laikipia Wilddog Project with two close ups of 2 of their collared animals.  Kayna from the LWP was able to confirm the identity of both dogs based on markings, one of which was the alpha male.  This particular pack also is one that typically spends more time north of here and it was informative for Kayna to know that they sometimes also frequent our area.  Now she says that when she cant get a signal during their tracking flights that they will remember to cover our area as well to see if they are in our neck of the woods.  Such incredible animals.

This is the alpha male:

A Leopard and an Elephant came to the carcass of a cow that succumbed to the drought the other night. (the date on our camera is off – this was only a week or so past). Cheers, Jamie

When I first heard suggestions that Chinese Road and infrastructure workers were behind a great deal of the recent wave of ivory and bush meat poaching in the country i was skeptical.  It sounded like a simple racist jab at some hard working people.  And yet the story is everywhere. I even heard a story about KWS officers who found a whole crocodile in a Chinese Road worker freezer last week.  This story like many could not be verified but what can verified is beginning to leak slowly to the press.  Here is a short list of stories i picked up from a simple google search:
 http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/kenya…
 http://www.africanconservation.org/conte…
 http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/news/-/2…
 http://www.bushdrums.com/news/index.php?…
 http://www.elephanttrust.org/node/541
 http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2…

Here is the sad story of another poached Rhino.  This pressure will never ease until more effort is spent addressing the underlining cause, the unbelievable market value for the horn.  We in Kenyan conservation spend so much money breeding Rhinos but i question whether it would be money better spent instituting stiffer sentences, laws and education in those places where Rhino horn is being purchased by the end user.
 http://www.nation.co.ke/News/regional/-/…

I was having a look at some of our past cameratrap pictures and looking closer at the Leopard images in order to see if i could identify the individuals.  I reckoned at first that the first two cats were the same and the third was a second cat.  The size of the first two males looks about the same and i suppose that is why i assumed they were the same. The third looked more juvenile, not yet with all the fat around his upper body, neck and head.  Anyway, have a look at these three cats and tell me your opinion:

Here is the first one. notice the sort of spiral around one central rousette three quarters down his left back end.

Now compare that same area to this cat caughtabout 2kms away. he is about the same size but that funny rousette does not appear on this animals rear end.

Now, here is the third animals left rear.  he appeared significantly smaller than the previsous two cats in the other images we got of him.

Tumaren’s Rangers have caught 2 more Poachers hunting Impalas with snares on our property.  These particular men have been selling us honey for many years.  Because the honey gathering was helping the local community there presence on Tumaren was tolerated and the honey collected was purchased by Kerry.  Kerry then would filter and sell the honey in Nairobi allowing the local community to sell to a much larger market.  Not only have we paid these men many hundreds of dollars for their honey but we have also spoken to them about other employment as their brother is the new Councilor for the Ol Motiok community to our north.  We were told that these men had to pay 10,000 shillings about the equivalent of 130 US dollars.  This kind of punishment is sadly pathetic but it will hopefully scare them back off our conservation area.  Should they try snaring again on Tumaren they will supposedly (hopefully) face a much steeper charge.

Here are a series of Rocks that I photographed on a recent trip down the Ewaso Nyiro River. I would appreciate any ideas anyone might have about any of these structures as well as some clue as to how they were formed.  I know that our area has experienced a great deal of interesting geologic activity associated with the the movement and spread of the rift valley but i dont know enough about it.  Thanks for any ideas. Cheers, James