Uniformed Kenyan Wildlife Service (KWS) rangers darted the 22-year-old a bull elephant planned to be the first of 400 jumbos to be moved and trussed up its legs before learning of the snag and postponing the operation until at least Friday.

The big male was then untied to sleep off the effects of the tranquilizer before being allowed to lumber back off into Shimba Hills from whence he was captured, according to an AFP journalist on the scene.

KWS officials said the bull was not winched as planned into a crate for the 140-kilometer (85-mile) drive to Tsavo East National Park because poor weather grounded a planned surveillance flight.

"We called off the operation because of bad weather," KWS spokesman Edward Indakwa told AFP. "It was foggy and we could not get the chopper airborne. We will resume the operation tomorrow."

The 3.2-million-dollar (2.6-million-euro) government-funded move has been billed by KWS as "the single largest translocation of animals ever undertaken since Noah's Ark."

It is intended to save Shimba Hills, south of the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa, where the elephant population has soared in recent years, from deforestation, according to the agency.

Increasing numbers of pachyderms have caused major damage to the rare flora in Shimba Hills and is threatening its critical importance as a main water catchment area for the coast, it says.

"The relocation will save Shimba Hills ... from impending ruin," senior KWS scientist Patrick Omondi, who coordinates Kenya's national elephant conservation programme, said earlier this week.

Shimba Hills, which is 192 square kilometers (74 square miles) in size, is now home to some 600 elephants but has a capacity of at most 200, while Tsavo East is about 13,747 square kilometers (5,307 square miles).

In Tsavo, where the elephant population was decimated by poachers in 1970s and 80s, the elephants will be deposited in the northern part of the park where large numbers of game wardens have been deployed to protect them, KWS said.

In addition, the service said it had taken steps to prevent the elephants from straying onto farmland outside the perimeter of Tsavo, a concern of ranchers in the vicinity that had delayed the planned July start of the operation.

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