POACHING

The only part of Tembe Reserve that is closed to us is a portion of the northern boundary, which also happens to be the border between South Africa and Mozambique, where poachers cross into Tembe and wreak havoc on the wildlife here, making fortunes from their mostly Chinese clientele who lust after rhino horns, elephant tusks, lion paws and heads and other animal body parts for what the Asians believe are their medicinal and aphrodisiac properties.  

The third largest tusker in the world, a bull named iSillo, died from old age several months ago.  His carcass was discovered by reserve rangers mutilated and with his tusks removed.  

A lion, ensnared by a trap, was found with neither head nor paws.

Rhino are killed at the rate of 3 per day in Africa and will be extinct by the end of the decade.   There are only 6 known white rhino left in the world.   The 7th was killed in Kenya just a short while ago. Almost half of the rhino herd here has been slaughtered by poachers.

There is an anti-poaching unit stationed up at the border, but many here question the loyalty of some of the patrol units.  Since Tembe is administered by the government for the benefit of the community, most employees are local residents.  Some may be informants for the poachers, but there is no way to prove  it.   The poachers have already informed the head of the anti-poaching unit that they will use their new AK-47's and other advanced weaponry against those patrolling the reserve's border.

Although no one has yet been killed, poachers from northern Mozambique, where sophisticated syndicates are hugely successful, will inevitably move south as their prey numbers decrease and the fight here will intensify.  

Researchers and monitors at Tembe hope that a protected path will open sometime in the future that will enable animal migration between Tembe and a not-too-distant Mozambique reserve.    Animals cannot survive without the space their species requires.  Without room to hunt, chaos will ensue. and will result in the animals breaking through the fence and escaping into the community, killing people and damaging crops.  Rage among the populace will cause them to (understandably) seek the animal's destruction.  An animal population that exceeds the ability of the geography to sustain it will require culling.  Management of the eco system here is therefore crucial.  Among other things, more space is required.  Negotiations between the Mozambique and the South African governments are continuing.

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS

We had a very close encounter yesterday with two elephant bulls who were feeding on roadside vegetation.  They had blocked the road with their enormous bodies as they fed and we were stuck waiting for the traffic to clear, as if on the LIE, so that we could pass (one never goes around an elephant.  A safe radius of about 75-100 feet must be maintained).   It was getting dark and we were anxious to get back to camp but we were forced to sit there, safely in the open air jeep, for quite awhile.  Neither elephant seemed to mind that we were watching.  Finally, the elephant closest to us disappeared into the bush and we edged forward waiting for his friend to clear the path.  We sat for awhile longer.  I was dying to pee.  Suddenly the elephant in front of us started making his way towards us, ears flapping furiously.  We knew there was an elephant behind us, but there was a curve in the road and we couldn't see where he was.  We were stuck between two elephants without an exit strategy,  a potentially dangerous situation.   If an elephant decides to charge he can destroy his target in seconds.  

A drunken field guide and his equally drunk tourist decided to taunt an elephant here not too long ago.   The tourist was urged by the guide to get out of the vehicle and approach the elephant.   The animal charged the tourist and "smeared" the floor with him.   He died immediately.   The guide was fired.

Philip, the monitor with whom we were working and the driver of the vehicle, decided to reverse in the hope that the elephant behind us would still be off road in the bush.   His gamble worked.  We raced in reverse, sped past the elephant and made a quick getaway.  We had to take the long way home and made it back only 2 hours late.

INTERESTING ELEPHANT FACTS

Did you know that...........

1.  Elephants have 6 sets of teeth throughout their lives that move forward at different stages, as if on a conveyor belt, to replace the older, previous teeth as they fall out.   Once the last set of teeth falls out, at around the age of 67-70 years, the elephant dies not of old age, but of starvation as it is no longer able to eat.

2.  Elephants must eat for 16-18 hours a day.  While elephants sleep lying down they cannot do so for more than 2 hours at a time as their weight makes it uncomfortable.   After age 35, an elephant sleeps standing up by locking its leg joints and leaning against a tree.

3.  The ears of an African elephant resemble the map of Africa while the smaller Asian Elephant's ears resemble the map of India.  When an elephant is threatened it will extend its ears as wide as possible to seem larger and more terrifying.  Elephants hear infra sounds which are to deep for humans to hear and they communicate with each other over long distances by using deep, throaty groans that only they can hear, similar to whales.  They use these deep mumbles to locate other elephants and warn each other of danger, hence the nickname "Silent Thunder," for their incredibly sophisticated way of communicating.

4.  Some elephant tusks can grow to weigh 100 pounds each and are used to dig for water, rip bark off trees and defense.  Elephants rest their heavy trunks on the tusks.  The tusks become visible at around age 2 and never stop growing.   An elephant's age can therefore often be estimated by the length of its tusks.  There is a certain Indian elephant species with no tusks at all - its ancestors were wiped out for their ivory.   Five percent of today's African elephant population are born without tusks, an increase due to poaching.

5.  An elephant's trunk has 100,000 muscles (humans have just over 600 muscles in their entire bodies).  Their sense of smell is 500 times that of a dog.  The African elephant has 2 "fingers" at the end of its tusk which enable it to use the tusk as a hand, with extreme dexterity in its fine motor coordination.   Asian elephants have only 1 'finger" so they must wrap their trunks around things to pick them up.  Trunks are used as snorkels when the elephant is underwater and to greet other elephants.    

6.  Elephants don't produce sweat.  They flap their ears like giant fans to cool down their bodies and, using their trunks, throw mud and dirt over their bodies to protect their skin from the sun.

7.  When an elephant is stressed or mourning a lost relative, the holes behind their ears start to cry.   Drops of moisture drip from them and run down the side of their temples.  

8.  Elephants' brains are the largest of all mammals.  Their brains grow from infancy as they age and learn.  

9.  When elephants walk they barely make a sound since they walk on their toes, which are cushioned.

10.  If male elephants ("bulls"), fail to leave a herd voluntarily at around age 15 they are forced out by their mothers and will eventually join a herd of other bulls.  The matriarch, the strongest and wisest leader of the female herd stops the young bulls from intra-breeding among the herd.  Young bulls are strictly disciplined by their mothers while in the herd and later, by the older bulls in the male group he joins.  The matriarch also prevents the young females ("cows") from mating until they are 16 years or older.   Their hips are not yet adequately developed before that time to carry a 200-pound fetus to full term (there is a 22 month gestation period).

11.  At about 20 years old, the glands on the sides of the bull's head ooze a watery substance and they begin to smell of a strong scent.  This condition, known as "musth," lasts for three months a year and is an indication that the male is ready to mate.  Only then can he temporarily join the herd of cows and mate with a suitable partner.     

12.  An angry elephant will life up his trunk, let out a loud trumpet and charge at up to 50 km per hour.

There are loads of incredible stories about elephants, such as my favorite, as told by the author of The Elephant Company, the true story of a young Brit sent to Burma in the 1920's to use the local elephant population to harvest lumber for export to Europe.   A mother elephant had been accidentally blinded by a poisonous leaf and was being lead to and from work and feedings by her young, 3-year-old daughter, whom she followed by placing her trunk on the youngster's rump.   When the daughter was swept away by floods, the mother heard her cries but couldn't see her.   She trumpeted and became very agitated.  From that day on she refused to either eat or work and died only two weeks later from a broken heart, wrote the Brit in his diary, who knew elephants well.

Big night tonight!   Call up of the lions.   Bait will be placed and the lions darted by the vet with an anesthesia that lasts 45 minutes.  The race will then begin to place monitoring collars around their necks, perform partial hysterectomies and certain pre-selected lions will be moved to the 'boma," a large, fenced-in area where they will be then transported to another reserve, a much needed exchange of lions to prevent in-breeding.

Tembe Elephant Reserve

KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

There’s a legendary Kenyan elephant, who, locals say, worked diligently over the course of several months to saw off his tusks by rubbing them against the trees of the dense forest to prevent his own death by poachers. 

When I heard this story in 2010 I was intrigued not by its disputed veracity but rather by the awe of those who know elephants well.   Elephants, they said, were intelligent enough to understand unseen specific danger, access advanced reasoning to formulate a solution and use a tool (the tree) to protect their long term interest even though the consequence would be physically disabling;  an extreme act not unlike the American hiker who cut off his own arm when trapped by rocks in the Utah desert.

I was intrigued enough to begin reading in earnest about elephants.  The more I read, the more I began to admire elephant intelligence, their ability to communicate over long distance and familial bonding.  I was struck with the same awe as those Kenyans.   Did you know for example, that elephants will mourn dead family members for a week and work together to spread the bones of the dead over large distances in designated elephant cemeteries?   Or that elephants are pregnant for 22 months and nurse their infants for almost two years?  If the mother is unable, for whatever reason to nurse (i.e., death) a lactating female relative will nurse the infant in her place.  The entire herd, which stays together for life, will protect their infants, even if it means losing their own lives in the process.

I wanted to get closer and learn more. 

So here I am, at Tembe Elephant Reserve in the far northeastern corner of South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal, Nelson Mandela’s birthplace.   Wild elephant, lion, and giraffe, as well as rhino, leopard, hippo, buffalo, and many more species of wildlife populate these 30 square miles in a unique venture between the local community and the government.  When nearby farmers grew tired of the elephant who were trampling their crops and the lions who were attacking and killing their workers and families, they asked the government for help.  After lengthy negotiations, Tembe’s land and animals and all of its revenue belong to the community while the government manages the ecosystem.

But this is  Zululand, not Disneyland, as the park rangers like to say.   This is not a zoo or Florida’s Africa Safari.  The animals here are wild and can be dangerous. 

Most of the reserve’s original elephant herd fled here from neighboring Mozambique during that country’s civil war and its tolerance of poaching, which together were decimating the elephant population.  (Ivory can earn the lucky poacher $50,000 per pound.  An elephant’s two tusks can together fetch $500,000).  The elephants were rightly fearful of and furious at humans.  It took two years for them to understand that not all humans were killers.  Two rangers however, lost their lives to elephants during those early years.   

Before coming here I spent many tortured days deciding between working at a sanctuary, where rescued animals are fed, cared for and rarely released back into the wild, or at reserve, which is a far different “animal.”  

In a reserve, the animals must hunt for and kill their own food.  They are not fed by humans.  They are rarely treated for injuries, even if life threatening.  But the eco system is limited and must be managed to prevent over-population of a species, gene-tainting by intra-breeding, and break-outs by dangerous animals who will cause havoc in the community.  If for example, there are more lions than the reserve geography can handle, the lion will break out looking for more territory to control.  Lions are therefore selectively sterilized to prevent overpopulation.  But here at Tembe, management believes that the risk of temperament and behavior change is too great in complete sterilization, so only 1/2 of a lioness’  ovaries are removed, allowing them to give birth to half the amount of cubs they normally would.  A male lion will be traded for another from a different reserve so that his DNA is not disproportionately spread among the pride, resulting in tainted genes.  Nyala, the prevalent antelope prey populating the reserve, are overabundant and decimating the plant life for herbivores.  They must be culled to keep the delicate balance between predator, prey, and vegetation vital to the survival of all.

Despite popular opinion, there are very few large wild animals left in the world.   Nowhere on the planet can one find prides of lion, herds of elephant, buffalo or rhino roaming freely in significant numbers.  Lions have been killed for their paws and heads and rhinos for their horns (at the rate of 3 killings per day in Africa), all sold in Asia for medicinal purposes.  Elephant may likely be extinct in our lifetime.   Other large animals, including buffalo, have been hunted for sport, sustenance and trophy.  The only safe place now for these animals is on the world’s reserves, like the Serengetti, Chobe, and other government-owned and private, protected lands in Africa and Asia. 

Here at Tembe, there are 5 of us working with Monitors who travel the reserve twice daily by open jeep -10 hours per day - ensuring that the balance is maintained.  We are housed in a small, bare, but clean and comfortable bungalows with communal toilet, shower and kitchen facilities.  Our camp is entirely surrounded by fence with a gate that is open during the day, but closed at night, to protect against entry by the animals, although nyala and chimps visit daily.  Just today the chimps got into the kitchen (someone forgot to close the door) and wiped out our apples, onions and bananas.  Rice, oatmeal and cracked eggs littered the floor.  Fences are mere “suggestions” to animals to stay out.   If a large animal wants to enter he can - just like a thief can break through a locked door.  Elephant have broken into camp before, although since I’ve been here, I’ve only seen them feeding on the trees just outside the fence. We’ve been briefed on how to behave if there is a close encounter with a dangerous animal, which mostly involves giving the animal its personal space and moving slowly backwards.  Contrary to popular opinion and the films that fuel it, large wild animals will not attack without good reason. But one never knows if the animal he meets has a good reason or not.  Caution and prevention are key.

Clinton, Philip and Leonard, the South African monitors with whom we work, are all degree candidates in related fields such as nature conservancy, animal behavior and environmental management.  We are up at 3:30 a.m. and on the “road” by 4 using telemetry equipment to locate collared alpha lions and wild dogs.  At certain key junctures we stop the open jeep, (taking care to NEVER leave the vehicle), stand up, turn to the radio frequency of the animal we are searching for and slowly rotate an antennae 360 degrees above our heads until we get the telltale beep of an animal’s location.   We then head in that direction hoping for a visual siting.  Since both the lions and the dogs sticks together in packs, only a few from each pack need be collared.  If we visually locate the pack, we park the vehicle and observe their behaviors, which makes the early rise and tedious monitoring worthwhile.

We’re back at camp by 9:30, eat a quick breakfast and then head back out for another 4-5 hours.  In the afternoons, we catch up on sleep, do laundry, read, prepare dinner or any of the other mundane things one does anywhere in the world. I’ve been leading an hour of yoga a day for my English and German cohorts, since it is just about the only time we have to significantly move our bodies.  

Tembe, is a “sand forest,” a unique eco system where the ground of the entire reserve is composed of fine beach sand, with thick and abundant vegetation, including scrub brush, acacia trees and much more.  There is a tourist lodge here, but the capacity is low.  It takes almost 2 hours to reach the northern boundary of the reserve from housing in the south.  Travel is at a speedy 15mph over sand “roads” just wide enough for one vehicle.  The numerous animal paths that lead into the thick bush are off limits to all vehicles so visuals can only be made if the animal is on or near the road.  Just as we were rounding a curve in the road the other day, we practically rammed into an enormous agitated elephant in musth (a kind of male heat), a potentially dangerous situation.  We put the car in reverse and made a successful getaway.

This week there are planned “call-ups,” where targeted animals are “called up” with nyala carcass.  They are then darted with anesthesia by the vet hiding in a vehicle nearby.  The group then has 45 minutes to collar the animal, perform contraceptive work, or ready the animal for transport to the reserve’s “boma,” an enclosed area where the animal is kept until ready for exchange with another reserve.  The work is intense and stressful as the work must be done while the clock is ticking.  Guards with rifles protect the group.  But its the opportunity of a lifetime to get very up close and personal with a wild, free and dangerous animal, albeit a sleeping one.

Will write about that when I can.