The park ranger at the mountain post ran to Mareja when the fire went on and on. Dominik and two rangers (perhaps unsurprisingly the rest would not come) quickly set off in the gathering dusk to the mountain and fired warning shots over the canopy, a rather futile attempt to scare when the damage had already been done. Dominik says he then heard hacking as the ivory was removed. It is surprisingly hard to locate sound in the dense forest and now night had fallen.
Christmas day revealed this body, a lone teenaged bull and after much searching another old kill of a decaring mother and baby, all ivory removed.
It turns out this male was the shy teenager I had watched half hidden by large trees down by the big river. My first sighting of an elephant in the wild. He allowed us to quietly observe him eating before eventually becoming wary, flapping his large ears and disappearing. He was about 18 years old.
It turns out this male was the shy teenager I had watched half hidden by large trees down by the big river. My first sighting of an elephant in the wild. He allowed us to quietly observe him eating before eventually becoming wary, flapping his large ears and disappearing. He was about 18 years old.
There have been a steady stream of poaching attacks over the last 2 years, taking between 1-3 animals at a time and across the wider national park it is estimated that the population may have been reduced by as much as 30-40%.
It is a huge task patrolling nearly 40,000 hectares of forest at Mareja with a team of only 10 local rangers, and safeguarding these magnificent beasts against the horrifying force of poaching. I just hope that every animal killed brings us nearer to radical action. It seems that that action has to come quickly and with huge international will - they say our largest land mammal has only 10 years left at this rate of persecution, what a sad world that will be.
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