One of the worst droughts in living memory is killing elephants and other wildlife in Kenya's Amboseli National Park and surrounding ecosystem, exacerbating a situation already critical because of a surge in ivory poaching.

Amboseli Trust for Elephants Program Director and noted elephant researcher Cynthia Moss posted an anguished account on her blog about this yesterday. Elephants she has known for decades are succumbing to the lack of water and food.

Funds are needed urgently to step up measures against poachers.

NGS photo of elephants in Amboseli in happier times by Frank and Helen Schreider

Here is what Moss writes:

We are losing old friends in Amboseli.

Amboseli is experiencing the worst drought in decades.

The Maasai elders say it is the most severe drought since 1961 when they lost almost all their cattle.

I have been through two previous bad years: 1976 and 1984. By the end of 1976, 68 elephants had died, many from the drought, others from the competition and conflict caused by the drought, and still others from poaching. During 1984, 70 elephants died, most from the same three causes.

Ulla

There is a pattern in the deaths due to drought. Young calves under three months old die, probably because their mothers do not have enough milk or rich enough milk.

Then older calves 8-12 months old die towards the end of the dry season in September and October when they should be supplementing milk with vegetation.

There is simply nothing for them to eat and their mother's milk is not enough.

Calves 4-5 years old also die. These have been weaned and also cannot find enough vegetation to sustain them.

Once an elephant is over five it seemed to be able to get through the droughts.

Unless elephants are speared or poached they tend not to die as adults until they are in their 50s or 60s.

The adults that suffer particularly during droughts are the old females. Their teeth are worn down and they cannot find enough food that they can process.

Losing these old matriarchs and other big females is by far the hardest thing I have had to deal with over my 37 years in Amboseli.

Grace, Odile and Ebenezer

Now at the end of July 2009 after three years of low rainfall and an almost total failure of the rains this year, there is very little vegetation for the animals to eat. There is still water in Amboseli. The springs fed from Kilimanjaro continue to flow into the swamps, but the vegetation in the swamps has been eaten down to almost nothing and in any case what there is is not very nutritious.

Animals are dying everywhere: zebras, wildebeests, buffaloes, hippos and elephants. It is very depressing and frustrating standing by and watching this tragedy unfold.

There is nothing we can do and we feel so helpless.

Even if it was a policy to feed wild animals during droughts, there is not enough hay in all of Kenya to feed the wildlife for even a week. We try to tell ourselves it is a natural phenomenon, but it doesn't stop the pain of watching the animals suffer.

During 2008, 137 calves were born which broke all previous records for annual births. So far in 2009, another 53 calves have been born.

We fear that most of these calves will die. A minimum of 30 young calves have died.

This is just the beginning of August; it won't rain until late October or early November so there is three more months to go and we have to face the fact that many of the remaining calves will also die. It won't be until it rains again and the families come back into the Park that we will know the total loss.

"I am losing some of my old friends whom I've known for 36-37 years."

In the meantime, I am losing some of my old friends whom I've known for 36-37 years.

So far the matriarchs who have died over the last year are: Echo, Grace, Isis, Leticia, Lucia, Odile, Ulla and Xenia.

Echo, Freda, Isis, Leticia and Ulla had been the matriarchs of their families since the 1970s and some from even earlier. Their families must be very distraught and confused. Personally I will miss them terribly. They have been a part of my life for so long.

Older males are also dying but not from the drought. They are being poached for their tusks.

Just in the last 10 days three more big males have been killed.

One, Ebenezer, had his tusks cut out with a power saw.

The poachers are definitely getting more serious. We are doing everything we can by working closely with the Kenya Wildlife Service and providing support to the Amboseli-Tsavo Game Scouts Association.

On Thursday, at a special ceremony, Soila and Harvey, representing ATE, presented a motorbike, tents, rations, and money for vehicle repairs and running to the Scouts. We were able to give this support thanks to a generous donation from the Elephant Sanctuary.

We need more help.

The day of the presentation the scouts set up two anti-poaching camps, but there is need for another.

It is our estimate that it will cost about $10,000 to set up and run one of these camps. If any of you can help it will be greatly appreciated and I believe it will save elephant lives.

Cynthia Moss

For more information and to learn how you can help, visit the ATE Web site >>>

This photo of a buffalo herd in Zakouma National Park was used to determine that there are exactly 794 animals in the herd. Photo mosaics made by Mike Fay and his team of conservationists allow them to make an accurate assessment of the types and numbers of animals in the sanctuary.

Photo courtesy Mike Fay

On the final day of an aerial survey of Zakouma National Park in Chad, central Africa, a team of conservationists led by J. Michael Fay spotted and photographed several herds of elephants. The animals will be carefully counted on photographs taken by the team and follow-up flights will be made for clarifications.

Texas-size Zakouma park is on the frontline of central Africa's ivory wars. Once a haven for hundreds of thousands of elephants, the reserve has been the target of rampant poaching that has reduced the elephant population to fewer than a thousand animals. Elephants could vanish from the park within the next two to three years if poaching continues at current levels, National Geographic News reported three months ago.

Fay, a biologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society and Explorer-in-Residence for National Geographic, made headlines in 2006 -- the last year the park's elephants were counted officially -- when he found evidence of entire herds of elephants slaughtered by poachers armed with automatic weapons just outside Zakouma's boundaries.

Once the final number of the current survey is in, Fay will share his thoughts about the status of Zakouma's embattled elephants. "I have been at this battle for almost 30 years and this is the last stand," he writes in this blog entry.

 

Zakouma Survey 2009

By J. Michael Fay

Day 5: March 8, 2009

The bronchitis is still with me, but I kind of feel like my body is winning at this point

We have been seeing millions of quelea birds along the river near camp here going to their roosts in the evening -- amazing site.

Today is the final day of the survey. We were going to try find and then decipher that big herd of elephants [seen on the previous day] before we embarked on our survey lines.

NGS photo of Zakouma elephants in 2007 by Michael Nichols

We got to about 3 km north of the airstrip and we could already see a few small herds milling around the waterhole just to the east of the road, so in the block that we surveyed yesterday.

One herd of 20 was headed south and another bigger group north.

On the west side of the road was the vast majority of the group.

We flew over one group that was probably a total of about 150 individuals. We took photos.

We took a few long loops to the east of the road down to Rigueik to see if there were elephants headed south. We saw none so we assumed that the vast majority of elephants were in the block to be surveyed today and broke to start transects on the south end of the block.

I believed that we would capture the entire herd on the transects.

To the south of the block we started to record large numbers of giraffe, some good sized herds of buffalo and the normal mix of antelopes, warthogs, ostrich and the ubiquitous elephant carcasses. It seemed that for all species except for elephants we were doing quite well.

NGS photo of Zakouma elephants in 2007 by Michael Nichols 

We started hitting elephants about half way up in the block. They were north of where we had seen them in the morning and on the move. This was a herd of about 80 or so.

There would be more further to the north.

Two transects later we hit another group of 80 or so.

And some transects north of that we hit the big group.

There were small groups huddled under about 10 acacia trees in a row. We estimated the number at some hundreds.

It seems with elephants you always overestimate a bit and with buffalo you underestimate.

NGS photo of elephants in Zakouma in 2007 by Michael Nichols

We positioned ourselves along the line of elephants and shot three mosaics of pictures that we could stitch together and count them very accurately. It looked like there were over 300.

We hit a few more large herds of buffalo, giving us another 1,000 or so to add to the total. They were hard to photograph, kind of hidden below a canopy of forest. Their exact numbers would be hard to count in the photos.

It will be a few days before we know what the total elephant number is, but I think we are looking at just over 600 total.

We plan on doing some follow-up complete counts, counting only elephants. So stay tuned -- we will have a good number in the next 4 or 5 days.

Then I will give you my thoughts on these results. I am remaining a counter here, [showing] no emotion, but believe me there is a lot. I have been at this battle for almost 30 years and this is the last stand.

NGS photo of elephant carcass and vultures in 2007 by Michael Nichols

Earlier entries by Mike Fay:

Day 1: March 4, 2009 (Survey begins)

Day 2: March 5, 2009 (Granite mountains, Bon village, eastern center of the park)

Day 3: March 6, 2009 (Gara Plain, Kieke Village, Rigueik pan)

Day 4: March 7, 2009 (First live elephants and a large herd of buffalo)

For maps, photos and data from the 2006 survey please go to National Geographic magazine's Ivory Wars.

Photo courtesy Mike Fay

A haven for hundreds of thousands of elephants only a few decades ago, Zakouma National Park in Chad in northern central Africa is now on the frontline of the continent's ivory wars. Poaching in recent years may have reduced the number of elephants in the reserve to fewer than a thousand.

Elephants could vanish from the park within the next two to three years if poaching continues at current levels, National Geographic News reported three months ago.

Conservationist J. Michael Fay, a biologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society and Explorer-in-Residence for National Geographic, is in Zakouma this week to survey the park from the air. He and others are hoping to get an accurate picture of the status of the park's surviving elephants.

Fay (in the photo above, on the right) made headlines in 2006 -- the last year the park's elephants were counted officially -- when he found evidence of entire herds of elephants slaughtered by poachers armed with automatic weapons just outside Zakouma's boundaries.

Zakouma Survey 2009

By J. Michael Fay

Day 3: March 6, 2009

My cold feels like it is transitioning to something more closely related to bronchitis. As soon as I put my head down to sleep I start a whooping cough. Glad I am just flying the plane and not counting or writing down data.

We were off the ground on schedule, windows washed, observers in place.

We began block 3 on the southeastern end of the park. The Gara Plain forms the eastern limit of the park. Normally there are thousands of cattle and nomads here, but they were invited to leave some weeks ago because of the frequency of incursions into the park. So we decided to push the transects out into the plain a bit because Darren has been seeing topi and ostrich out there.

NGS photo of Gara Plain after the rains by Michael Nichols

We flew over Kieke Village where there is a guard outpost on the southeast side of the park. There were sorghum fields right up to the border with the park. Almost immediately we spotted a herd of 18 giraffe. There was a time when giraffe tails fetched a high price here. They were given to brides as part of the dowry, but that practice has started to wane and the number of giraffe in Zakouma is definitely going up.

Counts of hartebeest, giraffe, water buck and warthogs started to mount.

We came close to the first of a series of large open water pans that we would traverse today, and there was our first large herd of buffalo. We estimated 200, but we circled to take photos because invariably people underestimate the number of buffalo in a herd. We circled low and got a complete shot of the entire herd.

Later we [will] compile all the photos from the various waypoints of all elephant and buffalo herds and hand count them on the computer screen. We usually find that the buffalo are about 20 percent underestimated and that elephants are just about correct.

We carried on for four more hours this morning. It is hotter than yesterday. We accumulated hundreds of hartebeest, roan, ostrich, giraffe, old elephant carcasses, waterbuck, and a second herd of buffalo of over 400. But no elephants.

We passed into the zone where in 2006 still we found many groups of elephants. There were none.

As we got further to the north on the east side of the park we ran into a herd of 400 camels. They were outside the park boundary but only by a few hundred meters. There were a large number of nomadic camps, cows, sheep and goats.

The number of elephant carcasses from years past continued to accumulate.

We decided to end the day just south of Rigueik, the largest pan in the park because we might find elephants there in the morning.

NGS photo of Rigueik Plain waterhole by Michael Nichols

Total for the day: 0 elephants, 203 old elephant carcasses. We do not find them all by any means. Some burn, some are hidden by the grass.

We can only hope we have a large package of elephants to the north of us.

 

Elephant carcasses found in Zakouma National Park in 2007.

NGS photo by Michael Nichols

Earlier entries by Mike Fay:

Day 1: March 4, 2009 (Survey begins)

Day 2: March 5, 2009 (Granite mountains, Bon village, eastern center of the park)

For maps, photos and data from the 2006 survey please go to National Geographic magazine's Ivory Wars.

A recent elephant carcass that the team discovered from the air on calibration flights before the survey.

Photo by Mike Fay

J. Michael Fay, a biologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society and Explorer-in-Residence for National Geographic, is back in Chad, Africa, to survey the elephant population in Zakouma National Park. The park is on the frontline of Africa's ivory wars, where conservation groups and the Chadian government are fighting daily to save some of the last surviving central African elephants.

Zakouma elephants could vanish within the next two to three years if poaching continues at current levels, according to recent population surveys, National Geographic News reported three months ago.

While on assignment for National Geographic magazine in August 2006, Fay made headlines when he revealed evidence of entire herds of elephants slaughtered by poachers armed with automatic weapons just outside Zakouma. The Texas-size park was a sanctuary for as many as 300,000 elephants in the 1970s. The most recent aerial surveys suggest fewer than 1,000 elephants remain.

Now Fay is back in the air over Zakouma to assess the situation.

 

Zakouma Survey 2009

By J. Michael Fay

Day 1: March 4, 2009

I woke up to the roaring of lions around 3:30 a.m. I could hear five different prides announcing their presence; the lion density here in Zakouma is high. It was already hot and I was coming down with a cold, not good conditions for the 30-some hours of flying we were to do to complete this survey over the next five days.

I peeled myself out of bed at 4:30. Only a few doves were cooing. Our plan was to get in the air at dawn every day of the survey, fly for 4 hours in the morning, until it got too unbearably hot and the animals were firmly hidden in the shade. Then we would try to fit in at least 2 hours in the PM to keep the time as short as possible.

The risk is that elephants will traverse from a non-surveyed to a surveyed area in the night and you miss them, or vise versa.

The team consisted of me, Darren Potgieter, Nicolas Taloua and Bechir Djimet. I was going to pilot since I hadn't flown in a couple of years and wanted to have some fun. Darren, the guy who actually works here in Zakouma for WCS [Wildlife Conservation Society] piloting our plane, would be the front-seat observer, collecting waypoints and observations. Nicholas and Bechir work for the anti-poaching unit here and often fly with Darren. They were the back-seat observers.

 

We don't know what this year's survey is going to show. What we do know is that Zakouma's elephant herd, the last great central African savanna population, has been getting hammered by poachers since 2006. A sample survey in 2008 and overflights using a WCS aircraft over the past several months seem to confirm our worst fears. The elephant population has been cut from 3,885 in 2005 to under 1,000 individuals.

Elephants drink at the last remaining water hole during dry season in Zakouma.

NGS photo by Michael Nichols

This survey is to give us the first definitive proof of that grim fact or perhaps worse. More importantly, it is going to show us how intense poaching was this dry season.

Using funds from private donors, WCS and NGS were able to provide full-time aerial support for antipoaching efforts, starting in May 2008.

Since that time Darren had only found 18 poached carcasses in the park. If poaching intensity was like it had been to reduce the population from 3,885 to under 1,000 we should find many more fresh carcasses than that. So this year's count sadly will be just as much about the dead elephants we find as live ones.

We were in the air by 5:45 and headed for the west of the park. This is the more arid part of the park and not a place where we expected to find elephants in the dry season. We started at the north and flew transects east-west separated by 600 meters.

The vestiges of a dust storm that completely obscured visibility only a few days before was still in the air. My throat was dry, the sun shone a dull orange cast in slight haze.

Conservationist Mike Fay in Zakouma National Park

NGS photo by Michael Nichols

The north of the park is bordered by the Korum River. In 2006 there were a lot of cattle herders using wells here to stage incursions into the park. Darren said that those wells were filled in and it looked like that cattle problem was solved.

As we flew our transects data started to accumulate via shouts from the back seats: warthog 4 left, roan 2 right, oribi 2 left. As the array of parallel lines accumulated on our GPS display a story of the wildlife and human presence in this vast western part of the park emerged.

Little Evidence of New Poaching

To the north we picked up a decent number of duikers, oribis and warthogs, and a few roan antelope.

As we progressed to the south, we found more and more roan, and giraffe, ostrich and grand koudou [greater kudu] near the rock outcrops in the south.

It seemed that wildlife numbers had increased in this arid part of the park since 2006. There was little evidence of any new elephant poaching from the wet season.

All in all conditions had improved here because the cattle problem was solved, the village in the southwest had not expanded their sorghum culture beyond previous limits, wildlife is increasing, and there is little sign of increased elephant poaching in this part of the park.

We didn't expect to see elephants today, and we didn't.

For maps, photos and data from the 2006 survey please go to National Geographic magazine's Ivory Wars.

A group of giraffes running across Zakouma a few years ago.

NGS Photo by Michael Nichols

 

NGS/Michael Nichols

Elephants that survived the trauma of the poaching of their relatives may struggle for decades to build new social relationships, new research suggests.

Some may still be living alone twenty years after losing their families.

"An African elephant never forgets -- especially when it comes to the loss of its kin," according to researchers at the University of Washington. Their findings, published online in the journal Molecular Ecology, reveal that the negative effects of poaching persist for decades after the killing has ended.

"Our study shows that it takes a long time -- upwards of 20 years -- for a family who has lost its kin to rebuild," said lead researcher Kathleen Gobush, a research ecologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency and a former doctoral student at the University of Washington Center for Conservation Biology.

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My daughter Catherine said recently, "Dad, you're in the luckiest generation. You've lived with all the animals and you've got all this new technology."

Photo by Michael Nichols/NGS

I know what she means. My generation has seen the best of times, I sometimes think. The planet seemed to be bigger, richer, more resilient forty years ago. And our technology today is, as the great biologist E. O. Wilson says, godlike.

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