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 on Thursday, they said.

"Finally, it's heave-ho," Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) spokesman Edward Indakwa said in a statement, noting that the plan - originally announced in late May - had been postponed from July for logistical reasons.

The elephants are to be tranquilized, winched onto large trucks and then driven the 140 kilometers (85 miles) from Shimba Hills to Tsavo East in the 3.2-million-dollar (2.6-million-euro) government-funded move, he said.

The move is seen as critical to saving Shimba Hills, south of the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa, where the elephant population has soared in recent years resulting in damage to its rare flora and threatening its critical importance as a main water catchment area for the coast, KWS said.

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

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 pachyderms will be deposited in the northern part of the park where large numbers of game wardens have been deployed to protect them, KWS said.

"If the poachers come, they will find us ready," KWS director Julius Kipng'etich said, noting that 83 ranger recruits had already been stationed in the northern part of Tsavo.

One reason for the delay in the move was opposition from nearby ranchers who feared the elephants would encroach on their land, a persistent complaint from neighbors of Shimba Hills.

But Kipng'etich said Tsavo residents had been "sensitized" to the elephant release and that KWS had dug water holes and erected a 41-kilometer (25-mile) electric fence "to discourage elephants from wandering into community farms."

In addition, he said six matriarchs, elderly females that lead elephant families, had been fitted with global positioning devices to allow wardens to find them and prevent them from leaving the park.

"We ... will be monitoring their movements using GPS so that our rangers can drive them away before they reach private farms," Kipng'etich said. "We want to be pro-active in our management of problem elephants."

Poaching reduced the number of elephants in Kenya from nearly 50,000 in 1965 to about 10,600 in the early 1990s but KWS said determined conservation efforts had seen that number rise now to 28,000.

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