Gunshots were heard during the evening of 13th April 2012 by the community of the Lpus-La-Mpasion area near Wamba in the Samburu tribal area of Northern Kenya. The next morning (14th) a severely wounded female Elephant with a calf at foot was spotted in the area, bullet wounds in the chest area and front legs had rendered her barely able to even move.
ARRIVING IN AFRICA seemed in some ways like coming home. "Kenya is wild, uncultivated, primitive, mad, exciting, unpredictable. It is also slightly degrading on it's effect on some rather weak characters, but on the whole I am living in the Africa that I always longed for, always felt stirring in my blood. Right from the moment I got here I felt at home. Out here I am no longer mad...because everyone is mad."
Jane Goodall (1957)
On the 21st of February the DSWT got alert from a camp manager in Meru National Park of a lone young elephant calf, who appeared to have a broken leg. The Camp Guides said that they had seen this orphaned elephant over the past few days.
One month old "Lumo", rescued from the water of a dam in the Taita Hills Conservancy by the Salt Lick staff during the late evening of the 11th of Feb. Having spent the night there, the Rescue team from our Voi Elephant Stockades drove in to assess the size and condition of the calf, before calling Nairobi to organize the rescue plane.
In the Galana Wildlife Conservancy, abutting the Eastern boundary of Tsavo East National Park, a lone calf of approximately 14 month old was sited alone on the 7th February 2012. The lone calf was again sited by the Galana Conservancy Warden on the 11th February, it now being clear that this was a milk dependent orphan with no chance of survival unless rescued.
In the depths of northern Tsavo East a unique baby was born; a baby elephant strengthening the bond between the wild herds of Tsavo and the orphaned elephants of the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust. The Ithumba Unit's second wild-birth was sealed twenty-three months ago between twelve year-old Yatta and a young wild bull of twenty-six years.