Day 309- Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!

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Day 308- The Timber Elephants of Myanmar

Elephants in captivity can be treated well- like the timber elephants in Myanmar, for example. 

 For thousands of years, elephants have been used to move timber from the forest to the neighboring towns.  

I love to see these elephants working hard just like horses, camels, or oxen do in other parts of the world!

Every morning at the break of dawn, Zaw Win and his team herd their elephants 
across the sweeping forest floor down to the riverbank. 
They scrub and clean the mighty mammals before harnessing them to begin their day's work. Zaw Win, a 
third-generation oozie (Burmese for "elephant handler") keeps a close eye on his animals - which are his livelihood.

Decades of military dictatorship has meant that many aspects of 
Myanmar are frozen in time. One of those traditions dates back thousands of years - the timber elephant.

But will the elephants and their handlers, who have survived 
kingdoms and military dictatorships, survive democracy and the open market? 
Is there a place for them in a changing modern world?

/Tiffany Ang/Al Jazeera

In Myanmar's challenging jungle terrain, elephants are the ideal form of transport during the monsoon season.

/Tiffany Ang/Al Jazeera

Myanmar is the only country remaining in Southeast Asia to use elephants for timber logging. Heavy machinery destroys far more of the forest.

/Tiffany Ang/Al Jazeera There are approximately 5,000 captive elephants in Myanmar, with 2,861 of them belonging to a single government logging agency, the Myanma Timber Enterprise. /Tiffany Ang/Al Jazeera Tusker Swe Kyaw Htay was one of the last elephants caught from the wild. Today he is one of the most obedient timber elephants owned by Myanma Timber Enterprise. /Tiffany Ang/Al Jazeera Every morning, oozies at Thayet San base camp bring their elephants down to the river for a good scrub. /Tiffany Ang/Al Jazeera The daily bath is important for a timber elephant's hygiene and also reinforces the bond between oozie, elephant handler, and animal. /Tiffany Ang/Al Jazeera A male elephant is ready for a medical inspection. Vets will check his tongue for signs of anaemia. /Tiffany Ang/Al Jazeera Forest cover in Myanmar has dropped to below 30 percent, and the government is taking drastic measures to protect its jungles from deforestation and illegal logging. /Tiffany Ang/Al Jazeera With Myanmar drastically reducing logging, timber elephants will be given lighter duties and some may be sent back into the wild. /Tiffany Ang/Al Jazeera Myanmar will have a complete ban on raw timber exports from April 1, 2014 and will reduce logging by 50 percent, putting privately owned timber elephants out of work. /Tiffany Ang/Al Jazeera Elephant activists are concerned that out-of-work timber elephants may be used as tourist attractions, much like the rare white elephants in Yangon's Royal White Elephant Park.

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Day 307- Young Adults Can Make a Difference!

This story inspires me. I find it amazing that a girl, 14 years old (one year older than me) did so much for her city's and the elephant's safety.  She risked her own well being to carefully escort eleven wild elephants, including two calves, out of an urban area and back into the forest.  

This is proof that a one young woman can make a difference!

Fourteen-year old Nirmala Toppo is nursing her injuries in a hospital in the eastern Indian state of Orissa. The teenager is the centre of attention these days and has become something of a minor celebrity.

In June, panic gripped the industrial city of Rourkela one night when a herd of wild elephants entered residential areas from dense forests nearby.

Nirmala, forest department officials say, acted as a real-life "pied-piper" when she managed to drive the herd back to the forest, much to the relief of the residents.

She walked many miles with the herd, guiding it out of town, in the process getting blisters on her legs which later turned septic.

"The infection is now gone and my wound has almost dried up," she tells BBC Hindi from her hospital bed where her treatment is being organised by the local Red Cross Society.

Pitch invasion

State forest department officials sought help from Nirmala, who is originally from the neighbouring state of Jharkhand, when they could not get the elephants to leave the city.

Forest official PK Dhola says: "When the herd entered the city, we tried our best to contain its movement. There were 11 of them, including two calves. We managed to make the herd go into the local football stadium, but we were not sure how we could drive them back to the forest. It was a difficult task."

Mr Dhola says that was when the department decided to seek Nirmala's help.

"We knew of a tribal girl who lived in Jharkhand, who talked to elephants and was able to drive them back. We called up her father and she arrived along with some other tribal people from her village."

The herd was made to go into the local football stadium in Rourkela

The state government paid the girl for her services, he added.

Nirmala says she talks to the herd in her local tribal dialect - Mundaari - and persuades the animals to "return to where they belong".

"First I pray and then talk to the herd. They understand what I say. I tell them this is not your home. You should return where you belong," says Nirmala who is a Roman Catholic.

Her mother, she says, was killed by wild elephants and that was when she decided to learn the technique to drive them away.

In her work, she is assisted by her father and a group of boys from her village.

"We surround the herd. Then I go near them and pray and talk to them."

'Lady Tarzan'

But some are not convinced by Nirmala's methods.

Orissa-based social activist Rabi Pradhan says there is no scientific evidence that wild elephants can understand what a human says. Mr Pradhan says the girl claims to talk to the herd in her own tribal language, but there is no basis for the elephants to follow what she says.

Nirmala is helped by family and local villagers

However, others explain such behaviour by saying that tribal people and elephants - or for that matter, other wild animals - have been cohabiting in the forests for ages.

Niel Justin Beck, a member of the district council in Jharkhand's Simdega area, where Nirmala comes from, says due to their co-existence with the wild animals, the tribal people know how to deal with them.

"In Jharkhand, we call Nirmala a lady Tarzan. Whenever marauding elephants enter a village or destroys crops, the local forest department officials never turn up.

"It is then that the villagers approach Nirmala for help. And she is able to successfully drive away the herd after talking to them."

Growing industrialisation

More than 3,000 elephants roam the forests of the three states of Jharkhand, Orissa and Chhattisgarh, stretching across central and eastern India, but over the past decade the region has become the epicentre of man-animal conflict.

According to the ministry of environment and forests, more than 200 elephants and some 800 people have been killed in the last 10 years.

Continue reading the main story

Elephant habitat in India

• Covers 110,000 sqkm (42,471sqm)
• 64 protected areas
• 22.35% of habitat protected

The region is rich in mineral resources and encroachment of their habitat due to increased mining and industrial activity have caused problems for the movement of wild elephants.

A violent Maoist insurgency in the region has also added to the problem, say experts.

Forests provide easy shelter for the armed insurgents and large parts of the forests are heavily mined - frequent encounters between the security forces and rebels have also disturbed the wildlife habitat, they say.

~Salman Ravi

BBC Hindi, Orissa

October 29, 2013

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Day 306- Cree Indian Prophecy & Elephants

"Only after the last tree has been cut down.  Only after the last river has been poisoned.  Only after the last fish has been caught.  Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten."

- Cree Indian Prophecy

It seems that wherever there are elephants, there are humans suffering from terrible greediness.  The Sumatran elephants are the most recent victims of the poisoning our planet and it's creatures.  When will we realize that what we do to our environment, we do to ourselves?

Elephants in search of food

Sumatra, Indonesia (CNN) -- The conflict between humans and critically endangered Sumatran elephants in Indonesia has been going on for decades, with the elephants on the losing end of the battle. The villagers and farmers don't kill them for food. They do it to keep their homes and crops safe. The grim result is the killing combined with shrinking elephant habitat contributes to an 80% population loss since the 1930s, according to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

In Riau Province alone, where the highest number of elephants on the island was recorded in the 1980s, the population decreased from 1,342 in 1984 to 201 in 2007.

The major contributor to this conflict is the fight over land. Elephant habitat is lowland, non-mountainous, relatively flat landscape below an altitude of 300 meters. That kind of land also makes great farmland, which is why humans have cut down the rainforest and planted crops.

Individual small farms may not seem like a big encroachment onto elephant habitat, but when that's combined with the forest loss from large companies cutting down hundreds of hectares of forest for palm oil and pulp and paper plantations, it results in the elephants running out of land.

That means, as the elephant habitat is whittled away, the elephants will inevitably intrude onto villages and farms looking for food. One of their favorite foods is heart of palm, the same heart of palm we eat, which can be found in the center core of an oil palm tree.Even though Sumatran elephants are relatively small compared to their African bush cousins, elephants are still the earth's largest land mammal. With a weight of up to 4,000 kg or 8,820 pounds and a height of up to 3.2 meters or 10 feet and 6 inches, these elephants aren't small and they need a lot of land to roam. Even forest blocks of 250 km are too small for a viable elephant population.

To get to it, an elephant has to knock the tree down, killing a farmer's valuable crop. Oil palm is one of the most lucrative crops Sumatran farmers can grow.

Even one elephant can be a destructive force, knocking down trees and trampling houses in minutes. A 3.2 meter tall, 4,000 kilo animal can be intimidating for any human, no matter how well armed. To make it even scarier, the animals usually look for food at night. A villager or farmer will do anything to stop the elephant from its path of destruction. The most common way of killing the elephants in these areas of Sumatra is poisoning. Villagers and farmers will poison a bit of food and leave it for the elephant. It eliminates a direct confrontation.

The local population doesn't want to kill the elephants. They feel as if they have no choice. In fact, some of the locals say they take pride in the Sumatran elephant and consider it part of their national identity. No villager or farmer thinks that killing one elephant threatening his home will wipe out the entire population. Unfortunately, the sad truth is, this killing is wiping out the population.

NGOs like the Sumatran Elephant Conservation Initiative(SECI) are working to change the way locals interact with elephants. They introduced the Riau province villagers and farmers to alternatives to killing the elephants.

The SECI created scare guns that make a loud boom that will scare the elephants away. There are also barriers that will sound an alarm when an elephant trips a wire. SECI has even helped locals install an electric fence that borders Bukit Tigapuluh National Park or Thirty Hills, which is protected land for wildlife.

One of the most important elements of these successful projects is the education and cooperation of the local population. These non-lethal alternatives use cheap materials that are easily found in the area, so they catch on quickly.

The locals have built lookout stations and formed a group like an elephant community watch that will gather when elephants are nearby so they can scare them away with loud noises and large fires.

The SECI programs have been so successful in their efforts to keep the elephants from being killed, they've expanded their operation.

Now, they have tagged some of the elephants with radio devices so they can track their movements and organize groups to scare the elephants away even more quickly.

These are small victories in a few rural communities around Sumatra, but they can have a big impact.

If the killing can be stopped and the cutting of the forest limited, this tiny population of critically endangered Sumatran elephants might have a chance to beat extinction.

~Jenni Watts
CNN
October 24, 2013

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Day 305- New Discoveries!

Black and white are the colors of photography. To me they symbolize the alternatives of hope and despair to which mankind is forever subjected.

~Robert Frank 

I love it when I come across new elephant pictures!  Send me your favorites so I can keep adding to my collection!

eis4elephants@gmail.com

Thank you, Johan Elzenga, Nick Brandt, P. B. Eleazer and others!

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Day 304- The National Elephant Center

"We will never buy or sell an elephant. We don't believe that that's right."

The story of Thandi and Moyo, below, immediately captured my attention.   After their families' were killed in the 1980's, they have been "inseparable."  NBC News did a great job explaining the poaching problem at hand, and the remarkable story of a few in Florida.

----->><<------->><<-------->><<-------->><<-----

FELLSMERE, Fla. --  It was dawn, and African elephant Thandi stood calmly chewing her early morning meal of tree leaves and twigs -- until she caught sight of our TV crew, gingerly approaching.

The 9,000-pound matriarch paused, took a step forward, and stared at the man she's known for 16 years: John Lehnhardt, the executive director of the new National Elephant Center.

"It's going to be all right Thandi," he reassured her. 

Erika Angulo/NBC News

Thandi, an African elephant, stares at the NBC crew from behind an enclosure.

Just a few yards away, her friend of 20 years, Moyo, and her two male calves Tufani and Tsavo, looked to Thandi for guidance.

"She's trying to make sure you're not a threat to her family," Lehnhardt said. 

A few minutes went by, with only mosquitoes breaking the stillness. Suddenly, Thandi turned back to resume her breakfast. She had given her silent consent, allowing us to visit her home.

Thandi is part of the first elephant family to live in the National Elephant Center in Fellsmere, Fla., which opened earlier this year. 

Supported by zoo donations, the 225-acre facility aims to preserve the threatened species while also offering a home to any elephant in need. By providing an environment closer to the animals’ natural habitat, managers of the sprawling park hope to eventually help elephants reproduce and enjoy a better quality of life.

But that doesn't mean the baby elephants will be sold.

"We will never buy or sell an elephant. We don't believe that that's right," said Lehnhardt. 

The center's mission is to function as a Plan B, in case conservation efforts in the wild do not succeed. 

“It’s important for us to have a backup plan,” said Lehnhardt, who plans to provide a home to 45 elephants.  “We want to be able to develop a self-sustaining population of elephants.”     

Elephants in Africa are being killed at a rate of 35,000 to 50,000 a year for their ivory, according to conservation experts.  That means on an average day, 96 elephants lose their life to poachers.

J Pat Carter / AP

Jeff Bolling, the CEO of the National Elephant Center near Fellsmere, Fla., checks one of the four African elephants living in the heart of Florida's citrus grove region on Sept. 4, 2013. The elephants are on loan from Disney. The land is leased from a private citrus grove at $1 per year.

At that rate, African elephants could be extinct in the next decade, said Washington State University professor Sam Wasser. His organization, Conservation Biology, has been tracking ivory seizures and advocating for tighter international anti-poaching law enforcement for decades.    

Wasser believes organized crime groups are driving the poaching because ivory sales are so profitable. "The wildlife trade has now become the fourth largest transnational organized crime in the world, just under drugs, weapons and human trafficking," he said. 

A pound of ivory can fetch $700 in China. Poachers sometimes resort to sharpshooters in helicopters to kill dozens of elephants in minutes, while workers on the ground quickly sever the animals’ faces to remove the pricey tusks. 

Another emerging killing technique is cyanide poisoning.  Several days ago the The Telegraph reported 300 elephants in Zimbabwe’s largest national park have been killed using that method over the past three months alone.

Often poachers leave only the youngest elephants of a heard alive, favoring the adults and their large tusks.

During the '80s, Thandi and Moyo were young, nursing calves when their families were killed in Zimbabwe.  The two have been inseparable ever since.

Lehnhardt says their friendship has helped them cope with the "tremendous trauma'" they endured when they were orphaned. They were sold as babies to a Tacoma, Wash., zoo in 1983, and then to Disney's Animal Kingdom in 1997. 

Disney allowed the two friends and Moyo’s calves to move to the National Elephant Center in May to give the family more space to enjoy their time together before Tufani leaves the herd. He’s 10 years old. Male elephants separate from their herds in their teens, or are pushed out by the family matriarch. 

J Pat Carter / AP

A young elephant makes its way through the remains of an old citrus farm near Fellsmere, Fla on Sept. 4, 2013. Officials at the center, quickly learned the elephants ate oranges from the old trees, eating up to 300 a day.

“They’re kind of like a teenage boy in our society,” said Jeff Bolling, Chief Operating Officer of the Center. “They just want to go roughhouse and play real hard then the females kind of help the process and push them out of the house a little bit.”

The Center sits on a citrus grove, and Moyo was first to notice the juicy Valencia oranges growing on trees.  

Florida may be known as the land of theme parks and tourists, but it's now home to a place designed to save elephants. Mark Potter takes us to the National Elephant Center.

“She sucked the orange to the end of her trunk, which is really part of their nose, and she picked it from the tree, put it in her mouth, and I just saw her eyes light up like, 'Oh my,'" Lehnhardt said.  “They all started picking oranges like crazy.” 

Adult elephants can consume 300 pounds of food in a day.

Many conservationists oppose the idea of holding elephants captive. But for the close to 500 elephants already in captivity in the U.S., Lehnhardt says the National Elephant Center may provide a future home.  He expects some zoo managers to ask if they can send elephants there to retire.

“We have a responsibility to provide them the best life that we can,” he said.

J Pat Carter / AP

Jeff Bolling, the CEO of the National Elephant Center near Fellsmere, Fla.

More than $2 million in donations from zoos paid for the facility's construction. Unlike a zoo, however, the center is not open to the public. 

“We just want elephants to be elephants,” said Lehnhardt, who has dedicated most of his life to helping these threatened animals.  "They are family oriented. They're honest and straightforward. We should learn from them."  

 ~Erika Angulo

NBC News

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Day 303- Hmmmm. So about those bullhooks....?

"We try to educate everybody on how we care for our animals, the commitment we have here at the greatest show on earth to ensure that these animals will be around for many, many generations."

Hmmmm. So about those bullhooks....?  

Sure, they can command these elephants in four different languages, but do they use that many verbal commands?  Or, maybe, they use physical harm so that the elephants do exactly what they are supposed to?  

CLEVELAND - Friday, six Asian elephants from the "Greatest Show on Earth" enjoyed brunch at Quicken Loans Arena.

"They eat about 200 pounds of food a day each. Their main diet is high in grain like a horse, lots and lots of fruits and vegetables," says Ryan Henning, assistant animal superintendent for the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. "Their favorite treat is a loaf of freshly baked bread."

Along with the 24 loaves of bread, the brunch included cases of yellow bananas, apples, lettuce, 50 pounds of carrots and 12 watermelons.

The elephants--all females--range in age from 7 to 56 years old. They respond to over 50 verbal commands in German, French, English and Hindi.

This year, the circus is celebrates its 143rd anniversary.

The circus is in the midsts of a two-year tour with visits to 90 cities. On average, they perform 10 shows a week, totaling about 900 performances over the tour.

The circus arrived from St Louis on Tuesday and will be performing until Monday, October 28.

~Mike Harris
Channel 5 News
October 25, 2013

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Day 302- Nature's Gentle Giant... And the Not-So-Gentle

Nature's great masterpiece, an elephant; the only harmless great thing.

~John Donne 

I 100% agree.  The elephant is Nature's greatest, gentle thing.  Don't you think that we should treat them like the amazing creatures that they are?

Los Angeles does.  The L.A. City Council is working on banning bullhooks- sharp, metal tools that force elephants to do what the circus ringleaders want them to do. 

I want to highlight a quote in this article- Stephen Payne, who works for the parent company of Ringling Brothers, said that banning the bullhook would be like "kicking us out of Los Angeles."  This was mind-blowing to me.  I find it terrible, and crazy, that the circuses depend so much on these spear-like tools to work with the animals for our entertainment.  

As human understanding of elephants has evolved, so has our treatment of them. Zoos decades ago freed these largest of land mammals from standing for hours in chains on arthritis-inducing concrete. Also gone from many zoos is the bullhook, an instrument that resembles a fireplace poker that is used to poke, prod or strike an elephant. Although the blunt end can be used as a lead for an elephant, the sharp end makes it a tool of coercion. The Los Angeles Zoo stopped using the bullhook in any manner in 2010. Similarly, the San Diego Zoo does not use it.

On Wednesday, the Los Angeles City Council will consider banning the bullhook — or any instrument that could be used like one — for use on elephants in any kind of performance anywhere in the city. That would mean that elephants in traveling shows, circuses and other events could not be managed with bullhooks. This is a smart and humane measure and should be adopted. The council will also consider an out-and-out prohibition on the use of elephants in traveling shows and exhibitions in the city.

Chances are the bullhook ban will amount to a de facto ban on circuses that want to bring elephants to Los Angeles, because handlers generally use bullhooks to train elephants to perform. This ordinance will certainly affect the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, which features performing elephants and makes an annual weeklong appearance at Staples Center.

Stephen Payne, a spokesman for Feld Entertainment, the parent company of Ringling Bros., said the ordinance would have the effect of "kicking us out of Los Angeles."

Ringling allows trainers and elephants to be in close proximity — or "free contact" — and therefore the tool must be used for safety purposes, Payne said. He contends that the company's handlers use it professionally and humanely.

The Assn. of Zoos and Aquariums, which accredits North American zoos, has instructed all its members, by 2014, to allow only restricted contact between keepers and elephants — meaning there will be a barrier at all times between person and pachyderm. Although the association does not expressly prohibit bullhooks, restricted contact lessens the need to use them.

If the circus can't come to town without bullhooks, then it shouldn't come.

~By The Times editorial board

October 22, 2013

Los Angeles Times

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Day 301- A New Way To Stop Poaching

The poachers are multiplying- and elephant populations are decreasing.  We can see this in the news headlines- "300 elephants dead in Zimbabwe"... "1,000 tusks confiscated from Tanzanian man"... "420,000 African Elephants left in the wild"... "50% of Cameroon's elephants killed for their ivory."  

However, Marc Goss may have come up with a solution for monitoring the dangerous areas in which the elephants and the poachers intersect.  With the help of drones, we could save a species- or two.  

Conservationist Marc Goss touches “take off” on his iPad 3, sending a $300 AR Drone whirring into the air - his latest weapon to fight elephant poachers around Kenya’s Maasai Mara National Reserve.

“It’s an arms race,” said Goss, whose green khaki clothing shields him from thorny acacia branches in the 30,000 hectares (74,132 acres) of savanna he protects. “We’re seeing larger numbers of poachers.”

Besides the almost 2 foot-long drone, Goss and other conservationists are using night-vision goggles and Google Earth to halt the decline of Kenya’s wildlife, which helps attract $1bn a year in tourism. With elephant ivory sold for as much as $1,000 a kilogram in Hong Kong, Kenya is facing its most serious threat from poaching in almost a quarter of a century, according to the United Nations.

At least 232 elephants have been killed in the year to the end of September, adding to 384 last year from a population of 40,000. Demand for illicit ivory from expanding economies such as China and Thailand has doubled since 2007, according to the UN Environment Programme.

Goss’s patch borders the Maasai Mara National Reserve, where semi-nomadic tribesmen, known as the Maasai, wearing checked-red robes herd their cows. On a warm morning he squints through the bush at a tusk-less elephant carcass, surrounded by 10 of its grieving family members in the hills above the village of Aitong.

'Drones are a future of conservation'

“It’s pretty grim,” Goss, a 28-year-old Kenyan who manages the Mara Elephant Project, said as he stood 50 metres (55 yards) from the carcass. “It’s an elephant without a face. It’ll be eaten by hyenas now.”

Poachers had speared the pachyderm in her back. Its ivory would be worth more than $8,000 in Asia. The carcass was the third found in four days, an unusually high number, Goss said. One was shot with an automatic rifle and the other animal was also pierced.

When he started using the drones, Goss thought they would help mainly with providing aerial footage of the landscape and tracking poachers armed with rifles and the Maasai who sometimes killed the animals when they interfere with the grazing of their cows. He soon discovered they could help by frightening the elephants, keeping them out of harm’s way.

Drones can do the work of 50 rangers

“We realised very quickly that the elephants hated the sound of them,” said Goss, whose week-old beard goes white near his temples. “I’m assuming that they think it’s a swarm of bees.”

Goss and his team have put collars with global positioning system devices on 15 elephants so they can be tracked on a computer overlaying their paths on Google Earth. That way the animals, who have names such as Madde, after Goss’s wife, Fred, Hugo and Polaris, can be followed to see if they’ve strayed into areas at risk of poaching or human conflict.

Goss hopes to buy 10 more drones and to modify them by adding a mechanism that releases capsaicin, the active component in chili pepper, when elephants stray near dangerous areas. Paint balls loaded with chili pepper are being used in Zambia’s lower Zambezi region to deter elephants from high-risk zones.

“Drones are basically the future of conservation; a drone can do what 50 rangers can do,” said James Hardy, a fourth-generation Kenyan and manager of the Mara North Conservancy. “It’s going to reach a point where drones are on the forefront of poaching. At night time we could use it to pick up heat signatures of poachers, maybe a dead elephant if we’re quick enough.”

Poaching battleground

East Africa is a key battleground against the poaching of elephants, whose numbers in Africa are estimated between 419,000 and 650,000, according to the 178-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, better known as Cites.

Kenya is proposing stiffer penalties for the slaughter of elephants and rhinos, with fines of as much as 10m Kenyan shillings ($117,000) and 15-year jail terms. The government has deployed paramilitary forces and plans to acquire drones to fight poaching.

The development of new towns and urban sprawl in Kenya is intensifying the conflict between humans and elephants. The UN says the country’s population has more than doubled to about 43.2 million people in the past two decades.

“Kenya very soon will have to make some tough decisions on how to manage the elephant population because they will be at high levels of human-elephant conflict,” said Matthew Lewis, senior programme officer of the WWF’s African species conservation programme.

Night-time surveillance

Across the Maasai Mara, which means spotted land in Swahili, Calvin Cottar uses a €86,000 ($116,000) gyrocopter to enforce land agreements he made with neighboring Maasai communities. His camp, part of Cheli & Peacock’s safari lodge portfolio, is built on plots he leases from the Maasai for $45 to $50 an acre. As part of the deal they won’t graze their cattle on areas that Cottar is trying to conserve.

“A big issue we have is night-time surveillance,” he said. “I can’t use the gyro at night so we’ll probably resort to using these drones.”

Later, Cottar sits at a wooden table where a member of the Kenya Wildlife Service recounts the previous evening’s close call. With his G3 rifle leaning against a concrete wall, the ranger eats a lunch of rice and beans as he tells Cottar that he thinks an elephant was shot and wounded for its ivory.

The rangers are planning a night-time operation nearby. Anti-poaching forces only fire on illegal hunters if they have guns, said Cottar, who runs a 1920s colonial-style safari camp with his wife Louise.

“It could have been poachers, so now we’re setting a trap for them,” said Cottar, who hunted game in Tanzania in the 1980s. “If they see someone with a gun, those rangers will shoot them. If they’re without a gun, they’ll chase them.”

~The Guardian 
October 10, 2013

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