Elephants released into the wild

WILDLIFE RESCUE  

At the end of May, orphaned elephants Njanji and Kakaro graduated from the Lilayi Elephant Nursery to the Kafue Release Facility, marking a huge milestone in their rehabilitation. After spending almost two years at the Nursery, they are both in fantastic health and ready to be weaned from the milk formula, which enabled their physical recovery from point of rescue. Usually the orphans are weaned at around three years old when they are capable of sustaining themselves on vegetation only and at a time when their mothers would be naturally weaning them in the wild. It is also at this age when the Nursery elephants start to become more boisterous, especially the bulls who are often seen pushing each other around and trying to establish a hierarchy. This makes their graduation to the Release Facility very timely as it is important these young elephants learn to fit into a herd structure and learn their place.

For Njanji and Kakaro the journey to Kafue National Park took a total of ten hours, with stops every two hours to conduct health checks and provide them with milk and fresh browse under the watchful eyes of DNPW Vet Dr Katampi. They arrived at their new home in the dark and exhausted from the long journey so slept well in the stables overnight. The following morning as the sun rose, they were introduced to the Release Herd. The other 12 orphans were instantly intrigued, quickly approaching and smelling them. The matriarch of the herd, Chamilandu, warmly welcomed the pair, reaching her trunk over their backs to comfort them. In the following days, Njanji and Kakaro interacted a lot with their new surrogate siblings, receiving a variety of friendly and dominant behaviours from the well-established herd members, all of which were normal and necessary to ensure the newcomers learn their rank within the herd. As matriarch however Chamilandu was often seen protecting these little ones from the other bulls in an attempt to make them feel at home.

It therefore came as a huge surprise to us that after only a couple of weeks within the Release Herd both Njanji and Kakaro followed Chamilandu on an excursion with a local wild elephant herd and then decided not to return with her, instead they remained with the wild herd.  GRI and DNPW implemented immediate monitoring efforts and two days later the orphans were seen close to camp with a small herd, led by a tusk-less female (who is familiar to us). The orphans’ Keeper Oscar, who had hand raised them for the past two years, was part of the team and both Njanji and Kakaro came into close range of him, their trunks up smelling him in recognition before they turned away to get closer to the tusk-less matriarch. She in turn became protective of them and chased our team away. Their decision to choose a wild herd over the Release Herd is a very exciting development and one which we have not experienced before as most of the elephants have not felt ready to leave the Release Herd and Facility until they were much older, but their early departure means they are now living in the wild where they belong and forming relationships with wild elephants who will teach them the skills they need to survive. Our efforts are now being put into locating them to remotely monitor their on-going progression and development, as we do for all Release Elephants to ensure they are safe and healthy and have remained with the wild herd.