Jumbo-Size Elephant Relocation In Kenya Hits A Snag

TERRADAILY

Kenya wildlife service rangers load a 22-year-old male elephant, that was put to sleep, 25 August 2005 in the Shimba hills in the coastal area of the Kwale district, during the translocation of 400 elephants to the national park. After a one-month delay, wildlife officials in Kenya 22 August they will begin this week moving hundreds of elephants from an overcrowded coastal game reserve to a larger park further inland. In a scheme dubbed 'the single largest translocation of animals ever undertaken since Noah's Ark,' the first of 400 elephants will be taken from the Shimba Hills National Reserve to Tsavo East National Park 25 August. AFP photo by Simon Maina.

Shimba, Kenya (AFP) Aug 25, 2005
A planned mammoth-sized relocation of hundreds of elephants from this overcrowded coastal reserve got off to a ceremonial start here on Thursday but immediately hit a hitch as bad weather forced a new delay, officials said.

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.

TERRADAILY

Analysis: Global Poverty Woes

United Nations (UPI) Aug 25, 2005
In face of unprecedented growth and improvement in living standards in some parts of the world, much of the globe remains entrenched in poverty, spelling a persistent and deepening disparity between the two, the United Nations said Thursday in its 'Report on the World Social Situation 2005: The Inequality Predicament."

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