The Elephant Conundrum

In parts of Africa elephants are viewed as problematic species by the ever-growing demands of human beings. We just keep on competing for a finite resource with elephants: land! Elephants also get targeted by poachers who take their lives for tusks. The tusk, a mere dental, has become a curse and a blessing for the poor pachyderms. The Southeastern Asia black market continues to yearn for their tusks. Here at home in Botswana, local farmers are ready to kill them for trespassing onto croplands and breaking fences. Understandably so. In some instances, they are killed for merely straying into the wrong neighbourhoods.

So, elephants are simply running out of space, but their numbers are increasing. The concern of overpopulation is not just a local phenomenon, it’s a national and regional problem: southern Africa has more elephants than they can handle, especially Botswana and Zimbabwe.

Limpopo-Lipadi often finds itself overburdened by the population of boisterous bull elephants tipping over its ecological carrying capacity. Within our fenced Reserve there simply is not enough space to accommodate so many elephants and other species. They re-engineer the habitats quickly, positively, and rather largely in a negative way, by knocking over centennials-old trees. Hence, the reserve management find it imperative to stringently maintain elephant numbers within sustainable scale and in alignment to the Reserve’s ecological carrying capacity. As such, we opted to preserve their lives and give them a second chance by translocating them elsewhere.

How do you move an elephant? This is a question we often get asked first before we even get asked why?! It is quite a complex process that requires experienced, variously skilled personnel, coordination and above all, good teamwork. First, you need an experienced veterinarian to dart and immobilise the animal without risking its life. A skilled helicopter pilot makes life easier for the vet to dart the animal from the air. Then the pilot must shepherd the darted elephant to the closest road before it falls down under anesthesia. The ground team consists of the APU rangers, a crane operator, TLB operator to quickly open the bush for the crane truck to move where the darted elephant fell. The rangers must move into the site within minutes of the animal falling to make sure it hasn’t fallen in a compromising position, like not lying on its belly or chest to compress its lungs so it could suffocate. The crane is used to quickly lift the sedated giant onto the flat bed of the truck and to transport it to the transport crates. These crates are stationed at the Boma. Once the elephant has been loaded into the crate, the vet injects it with a reversal drug to let it wake up and stand in its crate. Then the same process is repeated for the second elephant.

The perilous journey across the country to release the elephants took on average 8 hours. We released the elephants into the breeze of the world, mostly into the moonlight. They usually move slowly out of the crate, hesitantly and carefully. Then they suddenly disappear like mist. The waterhole was several hundred meters away for them to smell the water to quench the thirst of a long journey.

We will wait with curious anticipation to see how well the collared elephants will settle in their new environment. Or perhaps they will embark on a journey into the unknown, in any of the cardinal directions. Maybe even find their way back to Limpopo-Lipadi, where it all began. It has happened before!

If you would like to support our conservation efforts, have a look on our website: https://limpopo-lipadi.org/donate/. For discreet information on share sales, contact generalmanager@limpopo-lipadi.org. To book a safari, request our rates via reservations@limpopo-lipadi.org or via WhatsApp: (+267) 76770191.