Memories of a charismatic wild elephant (an all too familiar ending)
For the past few years a growing male elephant nick-named Romeo has been providing service as a one elephant breeding programme amongst the domestic camps in Chitwan National Park, Nepal. His night-time forays into these camps are the stuff of legend, screaming females, enraged males, torch and spear waving mahouts - perhaps it is because I left the jungle before he entered his prime that I can bring rampant nostalgia to bare on these events.
I have written in these pages of his first tentative introduction on the dating scene, his elopement with a blushing Government employed beauty, I've even published photos of his progeny so you'll excuse me if I consider myself a part of the family.
The video is one that I took from Tiger Tops Tented Camp balcony, again one of his first tentative appearances...
I have written in these pages of his first tentative introduction on the dating scene, his elopement with a blushing Government employed beauty, I've even published photos of his progeny so you'll excuse me if I consider myself a part of the family.
The video is one that I took from Tiger Tops Tented Camp balcony, again one of his first tentative appearances...
...more sad news for wild elephants, in Thailand this time - one has to admit that K. Soriada has some pertinent points.
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Epidemic might have killed six elephants, says veterinarian (Thailand)
The Nation
October 27, 2007
The skeletons of the six elephants found on Thursday in Chanthaburi indicated that the animals might have died in great pain, a veterinarian said yesterday.
Pattarapon Maneeon said chemical poisoning might not be the only possibility and an epidemic could have killed them. The carcasses of the six cows, aged 15 to 40, were decomposed but vets managed to retrieve some flesh, bones, abdomen fat, grass from their stomachs and maggots.
The jumbos were dead for two months so traces of disease or chemicals might have disintegrated and disappeared, Pattarapon said. He will contact the Medical Science Depart-ment, National Institute of Animal Health and veterinary faculties at universities to see if they can help with testing.
Chalermsak Wanichsombat, director-general of the National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation Department, said he would ask for assistance from labs at Kasetsart and Mahidol universities. He believes the elephants probably died from an epidemic, not chemicals, but wants scientific results to confirm the cause.
Pattarapon said it appeared that the jumbos did not perish instantly and might have suffered a lot, as they appeared to have been struggling. Villagers had also spoken of hearing elephants crying in agony.
The spot where they were found was known to have had other dead elephants before, so it was probably a graveyard where these six elephants hurting from food contamination came to die, he said. Judging from their position with their heads close together, they might have intertwined their trunks as they were all from the same herd. The comment that the jumbos were poisoned was a bit too harsh on villagers, he said, as it was possible that they might have indirectly ingested agricultural chemicals from water sources or caught a disease.
Officials are now looking for two to three other members of the same herd and will survey the forest for risk factors.
Pattarapon said these deaths were regretful because the pachyderm population was already dwindling and the six would have been useful to the ecological system. Since the economic value of one elephant's life was estimated at Bt17 million, their deaths cost the country Bt102 million in foregone tax money, he said.
Saksit Tridech, permanent secretary of the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry, said he had ordered the National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation Department to speed up an investigation into the case. The jumbos' exact cause of death should become clearer next week
He said this case would also lead to implementation of wildlife conservation measures. He urged locals to report similar wildlife deaths.
Soraida Salwala, secretary-general of the Friends of the Asian Elephant Foundation, said the deaths were a great loss and concern, as they were abnormal. If they died from an epidemic, that would affect other elephants in the same forest. But if they died from human action in an attempt to solve the problem of wild elephants, this would be regarded as a tragedy. Authorities should investigate if it was the handiwork of humans.
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(JR comments)(more reminiscences from Romeo's days of power - 2006 elephant polo time in Chitwan - click the link above for the full article including interviews with polo characters, bits about our ITNC tiger tracking efforts and a few statistical errors! - read on for selected highlights featuring Romeo, two of my favourite elephants - Ram Kali and Chan Chun Kali - and the ever stellar Dhan Bahadur Tamang - here shortened to Danny )
..."Hut-hut-hut!" The look-out boy on Ram Kali suddenly became agitated. "Hut-hut-hut!" The mahout responded by whacking Ram Kali on the head with a stick, making a sickeningly resonant thud. As Ram Kali and Chan Chan Kali lumbered ahead at full speed, the shouting look-out boy and the mahout began to jump up and down. I expected to see tiger ready to pounce, but everything around us seemed absolutely tranquil, except for the ground shaking as Ram Kali and Chan Chan Kali put on an impressive turn of speed.
A quarter-mile behind us, I saw the cause of the panic. We were being stalked, not by a tiger, but by another elephant, a wild bull elephant built like a tank, with fork-lift tusks. It was doing a feeble impersonation of a pachyderm pretending not to be following us. "The bull might charge us, tear us off the back of Ram Kali, gore us with tusks, remove our heads as if they were grapes, trample us and throw us in the river," said the look-out.
We forded the Rapti River and double-backed along the opposing bank. The bull looked increasingly disgruntled, but for appearance's sake continued along his path, while we went in the opposite direction. We truncated the afternoon's safari, and headed home...
...The following morning, before dawn, I ambled over to the elephant camp, where feeding, watering, grooming and saddling were in full swing in preparation for the day's polo. A sudden ripple of anxiety washed over the camp. I heard screams, looked up and saw a scene of bedlam rapidly unfolding in the twilight. Mahouts were shouting, "Hut-hut-hut! Hut-hut-hut!" and sprinting in my direction, leaping over watering cans, wheelbarrows, chairs and any obstacle in their path. In Chitwan, beastly doom is never far away, but here I was, ironically, about to be crushed by a stampede of mahouts.
Then I saw the problem: Romeo was still auditioning for his Juliet and was inspecting the camp as if he owned it. Far from going on the rampage, as I'd hoped, he calmly wheeled left and rolled out into the bush, looking as if he owned that, too.
I asked Danny, the chief naturalist at Tiger Tops who has lived in Chitwan for 37 years, what was happening. During the night, he explained, Chan Chan Kali had broken her chain and eloped with Romeo. "He had copulated with her," he said, adding helpfully that "elephant copulation takes about one hour". Now, Romeo was back for more. "Last year, he went off with one of the females for a whole week," grinned Danny. " When they eventually returned, Romeo began flirting with a second female. The first female went mad with jealousy and knocked down two trees."...
...Soon, the convoy came to a halt in mid-jungle. Two-way radios were consulted. Nepalese chatter filled the air. I looked behind me. The elephants patiently shuffled from foot to foot.
It emerged that Romeo, having somehow managed to overtake the convoy, had turned around and tried to charge the leading vehicle. I was hoping he'd flatten a couple of Jeeps and bring me home a story about the world's first carbon-neutral elephant. The threat soon receded, however, and we were on our way again.
Overexcited bulls are not the only hazard in Chitwan. Danny, the naturalist, regularly spots tigers. The last tiger census here produced some 40 adults and 60 cubs. Tiger movements are recorded by camera traps dotted about the park. In 10 years, these feline Gatso cameras have shot 1,200 pictures of more than 100 tigers. The photographs are studied for face markings and stripes. Paw prints are another means of identification....
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...hmmm, just found an old poem I wrote on the way to the rescue, about his time in our camp with the lovely Dipendra Kali and the contraceptive effects of an elephant stable.
True Story:
A Jungle Hathi turned up
and love was on his mind.
Dipendra was the sweetest
so he crept up behind.
No matter how he climbed up,
no matter how he tried,
he'd hit his head
on the elephant shed
and his amorous passions died.
...think I had more time in those days!
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