Operation Dumbo Drop

(Disclaimer: The following is my interpretation of the events described hereafter, including my own observations of the situation in the delta and does not reflect any of Anna’s research findings nor does not contain her expert opinion on the matter of human elephant conflict in the Okavango delta)

Timeline: This event happened the first weekend in May. It just took me a while to get it together ;-)

Ok, it was really an airlift sort of mission, but I couldn’t resist the title.

It began, as things often can, in Maun. I had gone there for my last HIV test (still negative---whoo hooo!) with my friend Anna the elephant researcher (the last three words of which Simon often combines to become her de facto surname. The entry for her in his phone is just Anna Elephant. Nice) and her research assistant Eva. Her research base camp is out near Gunotsoga, where she lives on an island in the delta with her flamingo researcher husband. (Which sounds glamorous, but let me assure you, it’s a pain in the ass to hang out with people who live on islands. Mokoros and Hippos and Crocs, oh my. And for whichever reason it seems many of my friends this side do live on islands. Weird.) Add in Anna’s husband Graham and the house was soon full of people who had been in the bush too long, which tends to make for an exciting weekend.

The time we were there also coincided with the Maun festival, which is the closest thing to a live music festival I’ve seen in a while. It’s still Botswana, so it has a long way to go, but I can see the effort there, and think it has the potential to be amazing. Me being myself, I managed to help paint and ride on the top (I cannot get over this fairy princess problem I’ve got;-) of the Sefofane and Wilderness “Flying Rhino” float in the parade. (How do I manage these things? And who has the photos?)

So anyways being with Anna and Co. in Maun was good, as it’s always nice to be around a place with a few more amenities, as well as being able to get things done a bit easier. I’m not embarrassed to admit that being out in the bush for so long has made me forget how to competently operate a washing machine and thus ended up making everything I washed completely soapy. I attempted to remedy this situation by restarting the washing machine without soap and ended up watching the entire hour long cycle through the front end loaded window with altogether too much interest. I again blame bush life.

But this entry is supposed to be about elephants…

The incident I’m attempting to describe began altogether too early on a Thursday morning. We had celebrated our arrival back in Maun the night before a bit to vigorously, so when all of our phones began ringing at such an early hour as 7am we were less than charmed (although to be honest between the roosters and the sunlight streaming into my hut I’m usually up long before that in Seronga, but it would have been nice to sleep in!!!). On the phone was Simon, informing Anna that an elephant had been shot near their camps at Gunotsoga. Anna, of course being a vegetarian and an animal lover, as well as (duh) an elephant researcher had some vested interest in what was happening with this elephant.

Anna’s research is specifically on human elephant conflict, which is a problem with the large number of elephants as well as people in the delta. The number of people inhabiting the delta continues to increase, especially with improved access to health care as well as ARV’s being readily available.

As the human population increases in the delta, so do the number of elephants. As conservation has become “trendy” and more research is being done to learn about elephants (google: “Elephants Without Borders”) there have been increasing interventions by the Botswana Wildlife departments and improved sanctions against poaching. The growth of the tourism industry as a major contributor (it could be argued that tourism is one of the main pillars of the Botswana economy along with mining) to the economy has resulted in the government and tour operators having a vested interest in protecting one of the token animals of the fabled Big Five.

As both populations increase, as does the fight for resources, namely food, water and space. There is extremely little formal employment within the eastern side of the panhandle from which people can make a living. Thus the area’s main economy is based in subsistence farming.

In addition to having a plot “in town” people also continue to move out from the villages to settlements and cattle posts and fields to raise cattle and grow crops. Villagers tend to apply for fields from the land board that appear to have less bush overgrowth, which also means less work to clear, and are thus easier to begin farming. Now for those of you scratching your head in confusion as to why this is relevant I want you to ask yourself why these random bush plots would be cleared already. If they didn’t currently have things growing on them why would they be bad to try to plant crops or raise cattle on?

Gentle readers let me shed light on this perplexing issue. The farmers are placing their fields directly in elephant superhighways. To the farmers it makes sense to make use of the work the elephants have already done in clearing trees and stomping down all the brush. In theory a great idea. In practice, a bad one.

Before the rains come and when the land is dry the elephants often head out into the bush away from the delta to find safer and more plentiful watering holes and eating spots. They stay out there eating everything they can find until the rains come and they wait for the flood. When the flood comes they return to the delta, using the very same paths they’ve cleared the years prior and have likely always used. But now instead of their highway they find a farm, as someone has moved in while they were away and sown their seeds to grow all sorts of green and wonderful things for hungry elephants. No problem for them, they just push over whatever tiny fence the farmer has surrounded his crops with and eat everything in sight.

Which of course then leads to angry farmers. At this point score one team Ellies, they’re full and can for the most part still use their highway, someone’s just put in a fast food joint for them. While the farmer has probably lost his year’s livelihood. You can see where the conflict lies.

The only other time I have seen the sort of destruction which could compare to what elephants can cause is after a tornado back home. Seeing areas that elephants have crop raided or even passed through is very surreal. It seems they are at times very deliberate about which trees they choose to completely upend and which ancient roots they chose to pull out to nibble on. They selectively smash some areas to bits while others they seem to tip toe through with the grace of little nymphs. Very strange. They’re smart animals.

As part of her research and personal interest in elephants and the humans that live amongst them, Anna also does educational projects at the primary schools in the area. I’ve participated with one of her educational presentations and it’s interesting to note the children’s attitudes about these animals they live amongst. Although there are a few children who have never seen an elephant (this is rare) many of the ones who have express fear of the animals. It’s not common that elephants attack and kill people (although it can happen) but it only takes one instance in an area this size for all sorts of misconceptions to start.

Sidebar: Allow me to refer you to a blog written by Anna’s most recent research assistant, Eeva. She lived with Anna on her island camp for three months this year and kept track of her adventures that side. www.eevasafrica.blogspot.com
(There’s also a stellar-thanks a lot, Eeva, flattering photo ;-p of me doing some sort of horrible beer bong type activity called a shot gun. And I hate beer.) She details the nitty gritty of the research process more coherently than I do here, as well as providing interesting commentary on true bush tent style living. I make a few cameos as well.

So back to the morning in question. An elephant had raided a field near Gonotsoga. A farmer had attempted to protect his field. With a gun. And in the dark had shot the elephant. Not realizing that the elephant was female. With two small calves.

Elephants are extremely social animals. Whenever you see one alone, it’s likely an old bull that has been displaced from his herd by a younger male. These old bulls might run at you to screw with you, but are for the most part like your old uncle at your cousin’s Christmas party, still pulling the quarters out of young kids ears for fun after they’re much to old to find this amusing and constantly telling the same jokes as the previous tens years and laughing hysterically. In a word: pretty harmless. (ooops I guess that was two).

Most of the herds you see consist of many, many females and their young. As I learned in my first weekend out in the bush, these are the herds you don’t want to mess with. The mothers are interested only in protecting their babies, and let’s just say they don’t put the mock in “mock charge”. These ladies mean business.

So in this instance when the mother was shot the herd disbanded, or at least fled the scene. Elephants are one of the few animals who have been shown to exhibit signs of PTSD, so this was a bad scene. The babies, frightened by the shot, followed their mother rather than the herd, and the mother, being wounded and disoriented, separated from the herd. Momma and babies ran a ways into the bush and ended up near Anna’s camp. Which is where they were when Ian, the old ex pat elephant hunter living out that side, caught wind of the story.

After Simon’s call, Ian himself called, reporting that one of the babies was probably about three months, no taller than thigh high (and, Anna reported, likely still with pink ears) and most definitely still suckling. The other couldn’t have been older than three years, and would likely be able to fend for itself if it could return to the herd. There was limited information about how long the mother had been dead, or if the herd had been sighted anywhere nearby, and Anna could only speculate on whether the herd might come back near a wounded elephants for fear of endangering themselves, regardless of the presence of the calves.

By this time the tears of horror had evaporated into pure adrenaline in Anna. I could actually almost see the wheels in her head turning, as she and Eva and Graham discussed the possibilities for the baby. There was talk of catching it and keeping it in their vegetable garden while continuing to nurse it (of course old Ian had the recipe for elephant milk formula) as well as trying to get one of the local camps that specialize in elephant back safaris or elephant reintroduction into the wild to take on the calf. This ended up being the better and more realistic option.

As with anything in Botswana, this grand scheme required permission and often the permissions and bureaucracy needed to do most anything is mind boggling and confusing in its logic. This elephant situation was no exception. All wild animals in Botswana-especially the elephants-are property of the government. In this case the elephant had been identified as a “problem animal” by the farmer, who had shot it raiding his field. This in and of itself was not illegal. But in terms of the calves, there were no laws and indeed no precedent for what should be done in a situation like this one.

The ministry finally allowed that Anna would be permitted to intervene with the smaller of the two if she could find a place for it to go with the understanding that it would later be released into the wild. No camps would agree to make a move to do anything with the elephant until they had government permission. In a lovely and typical problematic case of Botswana circular procedural issues, the situation was at a standstill.

The information we were receiving (Which we later found to be all from villagers eyewitness accounts, rather than Ian the former elephant hunter himself. It was the fact that this information was allegedly coming from Ian that was the basis for many of the decisions that would be made throughout the course of the operation, as certainly a man who hunted elephants for most of his life would be able to accurately recount the details of the situation, namely the ages and conditions of the elephants involved. His reputation in Maun and indeed the whole of Botswana were what gave legitimacy to the claims. In the end it was a story that came across what was likely two different language barriers and an eighty two year old man’s less than stellar command of Setswana in the first place. But we’ll get to that part.) was that the babies were still near the dead mother whom the villagers were impatiently waiting to carve up for its meat (a common practice). I will now remind you of the little elephant psychology lesson about PTSD. Not good. Even baby elephants are sorta big, and a nervous three year old being protective of both itself and its younger sibling wouldn’t be something you’d want to mess with.

So Anna went into rescue mode, preparing letters and arranging meetings to get a plan sorted to rescue this baby elephant. The older one was determined to be able to fend for itself, but the baby was causing all sorts of worry. Anna called in all sorts of favors and resources to try to get a place to take this baby elephant. There was one camp who might take it, but the camp already had an orphan baby elephant (Who knew there was not only a problem with too many orphan children in Botswana but also orphaned elephants?) that they had managed to get to nurse from a lactating female. The camp managers very much doubted that the mother would have the energy or milk to provide for two babies, and indeed the introduction of another one might upset the balance of the herd.

Anna continued in her persistence, even sort of (well I don’t think “ambush” is the correct word, but maybe it’s close) “meeting” one of the managers from the camp at the airport. It appeared it was an American owned operation, and they happened to have some of the American owners in Botswana right now. The owners are apparently the type who buy luxury camps in the Okavango delta in order to occasionally turn up with their khaki outfits and belts weighted down with bush necessities like GPS’s and oversized Leathermans and fly around in helicopters to be the masters of all they survey. Yes, there are enough of these sorts of people running around Maun for there to be a “type”. Hell if the heir and the spare to the throne of England hang out here, why not all sorts of moneyed others?

This factor ended up pushing the whole operation in Anna’s favor, as it meant the owners would likely be keen for an adventure come rescue operation, and furthermore, the chopper was already fueled and in the air. It was arranged that a fixed wing caravan plane would also be commissioned for the rescue operation, and a veterinarian was also called in to oversee the progress. All the seats were to be removed from the caravan plane so that the baby elephant (once sedated by the vet) would be able to be loaded into the plane and taken to the camp, where it would hopefully get some elephant therapy to recover from its PTSD and become a productive and healthy member of a herd.

So in the midst of all the arrangements, Anna didn’t think to ask if she might be able to fly in the plane up to Seronga/Gunotsoga to meet the little ellie dude whose life she undoubtedly just saved until the plane was already gone. She’d done all that she could, and so we went about our evening, knowing that the whole operation would have to be completed soon, as it was winter, and night would soon be falling.

It was soon after the fixed wing plane took off however, that the problems began rolling in through various phone reports.

The first major problem was a big one. The mother was still alive! How can someone mistake a dead elephant? Anna reports that elephants in distress will flap their ears back and forth, especially to keep cool under the hot Botswana sun and due to their size the ears would have had to appear almost flag-like.

That the mother was still alive posed a problem because now there was the issue that it’s illegal to kill an animal which is the property of the government of Botswana without a permit. So now at this late point in the evening, the Vet who had arrived in the plane started making calls to the cell phones of various ministry officials who had already left the office for the day. He was able to get the necessary permission to kill the animal on the grounds of ending its suffering. Due to the size and the level of distress the animal had been under, the only humane way to do this at this point would be to shoot the elephant, and the only equipment appropriate for this would be a gun. And who is the only person that side whom is known to both have a firearm and the knowledge of how to shoot an elephant to properly kill it? Of course the hero (?) of the story thus far, Ian.

So the chopper heads over to Ian’s island to collect him and have him put down the mother. In the mean time more reports come in to us in Maun. It turns out the babies aren’t babies at all. While the elder appeared to be between 7 and 10 years old (Ian had earlier reported the elder was three), the younger was between 3 and 5. Likely not still suckling, and too big to be able to do anything to help it in any way.

So you can imagine the embarrassment and frustration that Anna was experiencing at this time. She had been running around the whole of Maun, appealing to various ministers in various departments of the national government to get this whole rescue operation accomplished only to have it be a tangled web of wrong information. In the end, most of the blame was transferred to Ian, whom at 82 years old is likely both unaware of the chaos he incited and furthermore likely quite unconcerned.

My take on it is that it was an amazing feat to have been pulled off in the span of a day in a village like Maun, in a country like Botswana, and really made me respect Anna’s passion for her subject and also her perseverance for her cause. I consider myself quite lucky to be in her sphere of influence. It made me realize what can be accomplished when you refuse to take no for an answer, and you’re determined to do something. The owners of the camps and planes were a little less than pleased (to put it mildly) about the incredible waste of money that the day had been, but despite the less than happy ending it made for a hell of an exciting day.