LIWONDE
NATIONAL PARK, Malawi (AP) -- Half a dozen African elephants lay strewn
on a riverside plain in Malawi, immobilized by darts fired from a
helicopter in a massive project to move 500 elephants, by truck and
crane, to a sanctuary for the threatened species.
As
development squeezes Africa's wildlife areas, this kind of man-made
animal migration is increasingly seen as a conservation strategy in
Malawi, one of the continent's most densely populated countries, and
beyond.
Conservationists
flipped the prostrate elephants' large ears over their eyes to block
out light, and propped open the tips of their trunks with twigs to
ensure unimpeded breathing. Then the multi-ton elephants, hanging upside
down from ankle straps, were loaded by crane onto trucks for a road
trip of about 185 miles (300 kilometers) to a safer, more spacious area.
African
elephants are in particular peril from human encroachment, while
poachers have slaughtered them in the tens of thousands to meet demand
for ivory, mostly in Asia.
The Malawi elephant project differs from other wildlife relocations because of its large scale.
"This
is very much the way that we'll have to manage things in the future,"
said Craig Reid, manager of Malawi's Liwonde National Park, which is run
by African Parks, a non-profit group based in Johannesburg. Reid
described Liwonde as "an ecological island in a sea of humanity."
African
Parks is relocating hundreds of what it calls "surplus" elephants from
Liwonde and Majete, another park, to Nkhotakota, a third reserve where
poachers have virtually wiped out the elephant population.
African
Parks, which manages all three Malawian reserves, is moving the 500
elephants this month and next, and again next year when vehicles can
maneuver on the rugged terrain during southern Africa's dry winter. The
Dutch PostCode Lottery and the Washington-based Wyss Foundation are key
funders of the $1.6 million relocation.
An
Associated Press team witnessed a day of catching elephants in Liwonde.
Dr. Andre Uys, a wildlife veterinarian, rode in a helicopter that
flushed elephant families from woods onto a floodplain, where he darted
them in their hindquarters. Then capture teams in vehicles raced across
the rutted earth toward the prone elephants' dark silhouettes.
The
immediate priority was to check the health of the elephants before they
were hoisted, trunks dangling, onto flatbed trucks. Monitoring included
the intimate act of placing a hand over an elephant's trunk to feel the
hot blast of exhaled air every few seconds.
Teams
rounded up 24 elephants, including a gargantuan bull, in a day's haul
that they described as a record. In one case, an immobilized calf
struggled to breathe, and conservationists funneled oxygen up a tube in
its trunk and measured vital signs. Uys speculated that the calf had
river water in its sinuses.
"Those
little guys actually can't walk along the bottom, they have to swim
across the channels when we push them out into ground where we can catch
them," he said. "In that process, with all the splashing from the
mothers and everything, they get a lot of water up the nasal cavity."
The
elephants were revived with injections in "wake-up" crates, and cattle
prods were used to maneuver the animals onto vehicles bound for their
new home.
There
is some risk and stress in drugging and moving the animals, though
South African conservationists and the commercial wildlife industry have
refined and shortened the process over the years. Many animals can
adapt to a new habitat if it is roughly the same as the old one.
The
Malawi relocation is "a win-win for elephants and people" and an
example of wildlife management that "will likely become the new norm in
many places in Africa," said Bas Huijbregts, African species expert for
the WWF conservation group.
While
disease transfer is a concern, species restocking in Mozambique's
Gorongosa National Park and South Africa's Addo Elephant National Park
has been successful, said George Wittemyer, an African elephant expert
and associate professor at Colorado State University.
"I see it as something that's here to stay, for better or worse," Wittemyer said.
African
Parks hopes elephants in Malawi can eventually serve as a reservoir to
restore other African elephant populations. One estimate says Africa has
fewer than 500,000 elephants, down from several million a century ago.
A
South Africa-based company, Conservation Solutions, is contributing to
the Malawi relocation project. Its leader, Kester Vickery, said the key
to successful relocations of what he called a "higher-thinking kind of
animal" is to keep tightly knit elephant families together.
Unlike many other species, Vickery said, the first thing that a darted mother elephant does on recovering is look for her calf.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/500-elephants-home-massive-african-relocation-140204314.html
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