FYI -- Tsavo National Park is a Magnificent and Huge and Vast Wilderness in Kenya. It is the Ultimate Stronghold of Africa's Famed Tuskers.
The Tsavo Trust, is a not-for-profit organisation working alongside the Kenyan Wildlife Service (KWS) to protect Tsavo’s emblematic elephant herds, in particular the last giant tuskers for which the park is renowned.
Two days ago it had rained, bringing the ashen bush back to life. Now, herds of oryx scud away beneath our wings, long horns laid back across their shoulders, like troops of lancers on patrol, and at one point one can pass 500 buffalo trekking towards a waterhole.
After two hours in the air we must have seen at least a thousand elephants. Then Moller spots what we have been looking for: five big bulls, all carrying heavy ivory, including one with tusks that almost touch the ground. As we circle overhead the bull with the biggest tusks thrusts them into the bushes, as if to hide them. “It’s almost as if they know it’s their ivory that gets them killed,” says Moller.
Tsavo has always been classic elephant country and it was primarily for them that it became Kenya’s second national park in 1948. Here, it was hoped, the herds might wander freely and at peace. But in the Seventies and Eighties it became an elephant’s graveyard as poaching reduced their numbers from 44,000 to just 6,000. The worldwide ivory trade ban in 1989 brought a few years’ respite in which Tsavo’s elephant population has increased to about 12,000, but today the poachers are back with a vengeance and KWS is struggling to hold the line.
In May last year, poachers killed Satao, one of Africa’s most revered elephants.
Although it is the tuskers that have lured me back, I am thrilled to return to the park I last saw eight years ago. Tsavo is by far the biggest wildlife stronghold in east Africa. It is so big that it is administered as two separate parks, Tsavo West and Tsavo East, sprawling either side of the Nairobi to Mombasa road, which runs through it for 60 miles. Yet compared with the Maasai Mara, it receives far fewer visitors and surprisingly little press coverage.
Satao is where Richard Moller and I had taken off on our flight in search of Tsavo’s last tuskers. Now, having pinpointed their whereabouts from the air, it’s time to track them down by Land Cruiser – no easy task in a wilderness bigger than Wales. But find them we do, and drive ahead so that they might walk up to us.
Warily they draw closer, huge ears spread wide and trunks held high, vaguely aware of our presence. The biggest bull is well known to Moller. “Already his tusks weigh maybe 90lb a side,” he whispers. “Give him another five years and he’ll be a worthy successor to Satao – if he survives.”
In awe I stare into his wise-seeming eyes. I note his shrunken temples – a sign of old age – and the gleaming ivory that has been the downfall of so many of his comrades. For the past four decades he has wandered freely across the dusty face of Africa. Now for a moment the world stops turning and he stands before me, four-square and formidable, a living monument to a vanishing world.
Then he and his companions catch our wind. They whirl around and are gone, swallowed up by Tsavo’s fathomless thickets.
Credits : Face To Face With The Elephants Of Tsavo
By Brian Jackman
12 August 2015
The Telegraph Newspaper, The United Kingdom
The Tsavo Trust, is a not-for-profit organisation working alongside the Kenyan Wildlife Service (KWS) to protect Tsavo’s emblematic elephant herds, in particular the last giant tuskers for which the park is renowned.
Two days ago it had rained, bringing the ashen bush back to life. Now, herds of oryx scud away beneath our wings, long horns laid back across their shoulders, like troops of lancers on patrol, and at one point one can pass 500 buffalo trekking towards a waterhole.
After two hours in the air we must have seen at least a thousand elephants. Then Moller spots what we have been looking for: five big bulls, all carrying heavy ivory, including one with tusks that almost touch the ground. As we circle overhead the bull with the biggest tusks thrusts them into the bushes, as if to hide them. “It’s almost as if they know it’s their ivory that gets them killed,” says Moller.
Tsavo has always been classic elephant country and it was primarily for them that it became Kenya’s second national park in 1948. Here, it was hoped, the herds might wander freely and at peace. But in the Seventies and Eighties it became an elephant’s graveyard as poaching reduced their numbers from 44,000 to just 6,000. The worldwide ivory trade ban in 1989 brought a few years’ respite in which Tsavo’s elephant population has increased to about 12,000, but today the poachers are back with a vengeance and KWS is struggling to hold the line.
In May last year, poachers killed Satao, one of Africa’s most revered elephants.
Although it is the tuskers that have lured me back, I am thrilled to return to the park I last saw eight years ago. Tsavo is by far the biggest wildlife stronghold in east Africa. It is so big that it is administered as two separate parks, Tsavo West and Tsavo East, sprawling either side of the Nairobi to Mombasa road, which runs through it for 60 miles. Yet compared with the Maasai Mara, it receives far fewer visitors and surprisingly little press coverage.
Satao is where Richard Moller and I had taken off on our flight in search of Tsavo’s last tuskers. Now, having pinpointed their whereabouts from the air, it’s time to track them down by Land Cruiser – no easy task in a wilderness bigger than Wales. But find them we do, and drive ahead so that they might walk up to us.
Warily they draw closer, huge ears spread wide and trunks held high, vaguely aware of our presence. The biggest bull is well known to Moller. “Already his tusks weigh maybe 90lb a side,” he whispers. “Give him another five years and he’ll be a worthy successor to Satao – if he survives.”
In awe I stare into his wise-seeming eyes. I note his shrunken temples – a sign of old age – and the gleaming ivory that has been the downfall of so many of his comrades. For the past four decades he has wandered freely across the dusty face of Africa. Now for a moment the world stops turning and he stands before me, four-square and formidable, a living monument to a vanishing world.
Then he and his companions catch our wind. They whirl around and are gone, swallowed up by Tsavo’s fathomless thickets.
Credits : Face To Face With The Elephants Of Tsavo
By Brian Jackman
12 August 2015
The Telegraph Newspaper, The United Kingdom
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