Poaching „epidemy“ on African elephants gets its toll in number of injured and orphaned elephants as well. Some of them recover and get back to a normal life, others remain permanently handicaped and still others die later - days, weeks or months after the poaching attempt. These elephants could be agressive, dangerous and affect with their altered behavoir the whole elephant society. Nowadays, unfortunatelly, there are only very few elephant subpopulations left in the whole Africa which do not know people as poachers of their fellows.
Following images represent a short glimpse to the world of suffering but also certain hope in some cases.
Elephant baby Max in Chad is resting after the rescue and transport from the bush to an enclosure. Arthur keeps permanent contact with the orphan to make him feel safe and calm. Chad, 2013
Max was a bush elephant less than one year old when he lost his familly in a brutal poaching event. An American family, Gary and Wendy Rogers, organised his rescue and attempted to rehabilitate him untill the planned release back to the wild. Chad, 2013
It is not easy to use the trunk for a young baby of this age. Max was able to drink water to some extend but still had many difficulties in operating the complex trunk musculature. Chad, 2013
Max is slowly getting used to solid food, beside milk-feeding. Green leaves however are scarce during the dry season in the savannah belt of norther Central Africa. Wendy Roberts is taking care the bush elephant orphan. Max needed between 18 – 20 l of milk everyday according the charts. Despite our efforts, he died several days later. Diarrhea, stress, maybe some internal injuries from before. R.I.P. Chad, 2013
An elephant youngster in the Nairobi's rescue centre has been saved from being captured into metalic snare (see the leg) and injured by a machete on the head. In the David and Daphne Sheldrick's elephant orphanage elephants like this get professional treatment and are later release to the wilderness of the Tsavo National Park in Kenya. This is a top class facility with experienced stuff, experts and management and you can also support their wonderful work by donations or adoptions for instance. Kenya, 2015.
During the elephant collaring in Zakouma National Park the veterinarians and conservationists discovered a bullet injury in the leg of the tranquilized elephant female. The badly inflamed leg got treatment from Pete Morkel and the young female finally recovered from the worse. Chad, 2013.
Another elephant female in south-western Chad selected for collaboring also got some serious wound on its neck. The deep inflamed hole with abscess would have originated from shooting – for instance when the elephant was resting on the ground. This female died 2 months later, maybe due to this injury. Chad, 2013.
Chari river in Central Chad in the peak dry season and an elephant survivor of an massacre of 17 elephants at least. This female has been injured on the hind-leg and could not move fast enough to follow other possible survivors, Chad, 2017.
She was resting most of the day in the shallow water of the river and during the night moved slowly along the shore to get some food. This was however particularly difficult in the dry season with little fresh vegetation. Chad, 2017.
The conservationists from „SOS Elephants of Chad“ attempted to rescue the female by organizing a daily delivery of fresh leaves, branches and dry hay and bean plants. She always accepted the offered food with great apetite. Chad, 2017.
The female always took all food given to her plus some antibiotics to support the healing of her wound. There was a hope for recovery. Chad, 2017.
SOS Elephants of Chad based in this zone did their best to allow this elephant female to survive. It would have been a long process. Chad, 2017.
Unfortunatelly, this elephant finally passed away some days later. She followed her 17 fellows at least which were massacred earlier. R.I.P. Chad, 2017.
Arthur F. Sniegon, June 2018
Founder & Coordinator of @save-elephants
www.save-elephants.org
E-mail: arthur@save-elephants.org
FB: save.elephants.org